Redistricting is Here! Match Your Addresses to New Districts with District Match
We’re excited to announce that you can now match your spreadsheet of addresses to newly drawn districts in Cicero’s District Match tool. Following many pandemic-related delays, the decennial process of redistricting is finally in full swing across the United States. All states must have the process completed before elections take place this fall — and many states have already finished. For more general information on redistricting, read our Redistricting FAQ blog. If you’re ready to start matching to new districts, keep reading.
Access new districts in District Match
In District Match, you can continue matching addresses to current districts as usual — and now you can choose to match to future districts as well. Wondering why we call them “future” districts even when a state has completed redistricting? It’s because the new districts don’t technically take effect until candidates run to represent them in the next election and the winners take office. So for instance, all newly drawn US House districts are “future” districts until a new congress is seated on January 3, 2023. Ready to get matching? When you get to the “Select Data Fields for Stamping” screen in District Match, you will have the option to select current, future, or both districts.
When you match to future districts, you do not have the option to add information about elected officials like you do with current districts. That’s simply because officials have not yet been elected to represent them. The files returned to you will contain the following for each address:
- Latitude/Longitude point
- Geocoded address
- Match status
- District ID
- Chamber
- State
- OCD-ID
If you match a list of addresses to future districts but some of the addresses are in states where redistricting has not yet been completed, you’ll see a mix of results. For the addresses in states where redistricting has not yet been completed, the “Match status” will be “unmatched”, and there will be no data in the subsequent columns. Just like in other District Match projects, you will not be charged for any unmatched data.
If you don’t know whether or not a state has completed redistricting (and therefore whether or not future districts are available), our new redistricting tracker can help.
Follow state-by-state progress in our redistricting tracker
Every state has a different timeline and process for redistricting — thank you, federalism! (We say this a lot on the Cicero team.) With that in mind, you might be wondering how you’ll know when a state will publish new district plans and when we’ll have them in Cicero. Enter our redistricting tracker. This tool shows you at a glance which state legislative and congressional districts are still a work in progress, which are finalized but not yet in effect (“future” districts), and which are finalized and in effect. The tracker is updated nightly to reflect any new information the Cicero team has gathered that day, so you can trust that it is accurate.
How to read the tracker
First, note that the redistricting tracker actually contains three sets of maps — one shows the status of congressional districts, one the status of state senate districts, and another the status of state house districts. Click on the type of district you would like to see an update for. Note also that when you hover over a state, the tracker gives specific dates for when redistricting is expected to be completed in a state (or when it was completed) and when the next election using the new districts will occur.
If a state is labeled “Redistricting in progress”, one of several things could be true: the state has not completed the redistricting process; the state has completed the process but it is in litigation; the state has completed the process but final detailed plans are not yet publicly available and therefore not yet in Cicero. If you match to “current” districts, you’ll see districts published between 2010 and 2020. If you match to “future” districts, you’ll get no data (and you won’t be charged for it). For the API, you should make no change to your calls in these states.
If a state is labeled “Future districts in Cicero”, they have completed the redistricting process and we have added them to Cicero. Remember,these districts are considered “future” because they don’t technically take effect until candidates run to represent them in the next election and the winners take office. If you match to “current” districts, you’ll see districts published between 2010 and 2020. If you match to “future” districts, you’ll get the new districts that will go into effect after the next election. For the API, use the ‘valid_on_or_after’ parameter to access new districts in these states.
If a state is labeled “New districts in effect”, they have completed the redistricting process as well as the election using the new districts, and the newly elected officials have been sworn in. The new districts in these states are now the de facto districts and you do not need to do anything special in Cicero to access them. Note that many states will not have this status until later in 2022 or early in 2023. If you match to “current” districts, you’ll see districts drawn and published after 2020. For the API, don’t worry about the validity parameter.
Once again, we’d like to thank federalism for how complicated this all is. We know this can feel overwhelming and confusing. But this is literally our job! Don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions or need help running a project.
