Submit your map in DistrictBuilder
We’re excited to launch new enhancements to support redistricting competitions and map submissions for Organization pages on DistrictBuilder. Thanks to an award from the U.S. Census Bureau Open Data for Good Challenge, we were able to extend DistrictBuilder to include a submit button and provide other metadata on plans for Organization accounts. Let’s take a look at what is possible for our Organization accounts.
An official submit button for competitions or commissions
We added an option to add a Submit button on maps created in any Organization account. This Submit button lets the user know that their map has been officially marked as submitted and provides them with additional instructions — such as visiting a google form to fill out a competition application or going to the official website for a redistricting commission.
For Organization account administrators, this lets them know that the map is finished, which is a common issue that many redistricting competition and commission administrators have requested to be provided. In addition, the date and time the map was submitted are recorded. Finally, the map is locked and moved into read-only mode — meaning users won’t be able to edit their map once it's submitted and Organization administrators have peace of mind that the map submission won’t change. They’ll still be able to copy their map and create a new version.
More metadata for mapping competition administrators
In addition to the submit button, we added more metadata to map exports for Organization administrators. This includes the PlanScore URL, as well as the submitted map date and time, to better enable competition judging and scoring.
We’re confident these enhancements will make DistrictBuilder work well for advocacy groups organizing redistricting competitions as well as redistricting commissions seeking to accept official map submissions from the public. Contact us to learn how to make this work for your Organization account on DistrictBuilder.
