by Joyce Choi Li
On November 8, 2016, I watched an onscreen battle unfold through maps. As election results rolled in, they seemed to glow in anger. Across the major television networks, analysts manipulated these maps on large touchscreen monitors beyond the usual red and blue distribution across states. We were shown deep dives into contested counties, dense urban districts where the vote could still go one way or another, and surprise areas where Clinton had lost, even though President Obama won them in years prior. Each take further revealed our country as a nation divided, the swathes of red and blue evident of deep fissures in our political beliefs and hopes for the future.
Since then, many other maps have been produced to help explain the surprise upset of that night. Mark Newman of the University of Michigan created cartograms that showed the election results adjusted for population. Max Galka of Blueshift even created one projected into third dimension. Each made an appeal to to the public: certain maps can lie, and they are lying to you.
Planners are taught to follow the data, so it also seems natural for us to pick up the post-election datasets and manipulate them to gain insight into how the country feels, or what our action steps will be in the next four years. I propose we take it a step further – we planners need to intervene for cartographic justice. We have to help draw the map a different way.
In reality, the fight over who represents a particular legislative district begins long before any vote is cast. The way that political districts are drawn at every administrative level can influence the distribution of electoral votes, because parties either “pack” constituents into one district to prevent their influence in more than one electoral district, or “crack” them into multiple districts to prevent political cohesion. Popularly known as gerrymandering, the political party in power re-draws districts to benefit itself over its opponents. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 created protections against this vote dilution.
Though this practice does not discriminate by party, it is estimated that Democrats lost between 20 and 41 House seats in 2012 due to Republican gerrymandering of districts, where the party was able to draw lines haphazardly so long as they did not target minority voters. Former President Obama has made the issue one of the major priorities of his post-White House work, naming former Attorney General Eric Holder to help lead legal battles. This is a mobilization that transcends disciplines: in August 2017, Tufts University will host a training program for mathematicians to become expert witnesses to testify in gerrymandering court cases, aimed at combining extant theoretical geometry expertise with mapping insight.
Gerrymandering isn’t exclusive to federal politics. It begins with local political control. For a project in my GIS course last Fall, I explored the impact of local election redistricting. I focused on Queens New York City Council districts, which are re-drawn every 10 years with a great deal of local input. Queens County experienced significant ethnic demographic shifts between the 2000 and 2010 U.S. Census, particularly for Asian-Americans, whose population in the borough grew by 31%, well above the second-highest growing group (Hispanics, at 8%). In some districts, such as District 23 and 25, the rate of change for Asian or Hispanic adults far exceeded their representation. For instance, in District 25, Asians were drawn in at a higher rate than their total percentage of that district, while a large number of Hispanics were drawn out. Overall, I found that if you were a non-White person in Queens, you were more likely to have your Council district changed in 2014.
The implications of these numbers carry political weight. In New York City, the fight for local resources and representation can be sharply divided across ethnic lines, particularly because a history of immigration restrictions in the United States created the need for community consolidation since the late 1800s. A City Council Member plays a pivotal role in allocating municipal funds to community-based organizations that provide local services. The matrix of local and state elections also yields significant impact on national party politics in general, including how a presidential candidate may campaign and build relationships in a certain area.
But how do you prove intent with a map? Scholars and advocates are trying to do that at the national level, but the lines that cement area influence leading up to legislative districting are fought over just about everything. Beyond racial and ethnic demographics, there are countless other factors: do more residents drive or take public transit? What types of occupations and subsequent union affiliations are associated with different areas? In 2013, former City Council Speaker Christine Quinn called for a sudden review of the redistricting process when her team discovered that the personal residence of now-deceased former Brooklyn Assemblyman and Kings County Democratic County Organization Chair, Vito Lopez, was quietly drawn into a Council district with a vacant seat in the 2014 elections. At the time, Assemblyman Lopez also faced ethics investigations involving sexual harassment claims. This is an egregious example of how haphazardly districts can be drawn, and how the redistricting process can have an outsize impact on the politics of a certain area.
As a result of these nuances, my GIS project yielded relatively inconclusive results. Was the impact on certain ethnic groups intentional or merely an unforeseen result of other factors? It can be hard to prove exact intent with only a map. We need context for a fuller picture, which means research into the full constellation of factors that drive local voter behavior.
As planners and map-makers, we must not be afraid to take on these issues. Our training teaches us the necessary tension between technocratic and political approaches to affecting the urban landscape. We must also understand the unique opportunity we have to intervene in how our country is parceled and re-drawn. There is a cartographic war in elections; we should deploy our planner skillset to prevent further voter suppression and create a more effective democracy.
Joyce Choi Li is an NYU Wagner urban planning student. She lives in Brooklyn and sometimes makes maps. Email thoughts to jcl664@nyu.edu.
This is a fantastic article, Joyce! This makes me think that if urban planners remain in a bubble, this sort of information is lost. Sentient technologies (i.e. map renderings), regardless of how informative and accessible they are, cannot change who is asking what kind of questions, and cannot show alternatives, or give anyone a sense of agency. Map renderings can only do so much; interfaces, however, allow the public not just to take note of a dataset, but also provide agency to actually get involved. If planners raise awareness around the issues of gerrymandering, for example, then this information is finally in the hands of the right groups: the public.