Creating Communities of Interest

Using our Custom Overlays feature, you can create a COI in DRA 2020.

In the context of redistricting, a Community of Interest (“COI”) can be thought of as a “group of people with a common set of concerns that may be affected by legislation.”[i] The group can be defined along social, racial, cultural, or economic lines, among others. In the summer of 2020, we launched our Custom Overlays feature, which enables a user to import a COI defined in another service such as Districtr or Representable, and to reflect that COI on a district map in DRA 2020.

While we did not design this feature explicitly to do what is described below, by assigning precincts to a “district” that represents a COI, and then exporting and importing those precincts, you can create and represent a COI all within DRA 2020. Yes, the current process is a touch wonky, but also kind of fun.

Let’s suppose you want to testify before the Washington State Redistricting Commission to demonstrate that your COI is currently split between two congressional districts. Here are the steps.

Create a New Map

First, start a new WA map from scratch. For ease change the District Count to 1 in Map Settings, and then relabel the district with a name — in this case “My COI.”

Assign Precincts to the COI District

Next, create the “My COI” district by painting precincts as you would in the ordinary course. These painted precincts will define your COI.

Export the Map

Click the export button. The file created for export will include only those precincts you painted.

Select District Shapes (as .geojson) and click Export. The file will be saved to your computer.

Import and Display the Custom Overlay

Recall in this scenario, we are demonstrating that the COI is split in the current WA congressional map. To show this, in Official Maps in DRA 2020, select and duplicate the WA 116th Congressional Map. Open this map and click the Overlays gear icon in the upper right corner of Custom Overlays at the lower left of your screen. Click Import New at the bottom left, select the file, add a name and description, and click Import Overlay.

The file now shows in Manage Custom Overlays. Select the file and click Apply.

The COI is now reflected on the WA 116th map, and you can see it is split between districts 4 and 5. The “My COI” label will appear when Toggle Labels is selected in Custom Overlays.

If it so happens that the color of the COI is same color as one of the districts in the statewide map, you can change the color of the district by clicking the Map Settings gear icon in the upper right of your screen.

As mentioned earlier, this process is a touch wonky, but it does the trick. We are considering whether to streamline the ability to create a Community of Interest within DRA 2020. What are your thoughts? Please let us know and thanks!

[i] https://ballotpedia.org/Community_of_interest#cite_note-def-1