Redistricting: Making the Maps That Make Your Vote Matter Less

The New York Times reported on Saturday that efforts currently underway to draw new boundaries for Congressional districts across the country, a process called Redistricting that takes place in America after each Decennial Census, the most recent of which occurred, of course, in 2010.

Above, an interactive map of the current population of Colorado from the Census Bureau.

The Times points out that 28 states -- including Colorado -- have already had or are in the process having their new district maps challenged in court due to a process called gerrymandering.  Gerrymandering is a process named for Elbridge Gerry, former Governor of Massachusetts, whose "Democratic-Republican partisans," according to the blog Big Think... 

...had stitched together the district in such a way as to assure the electoral victory of their candidate and therefore the defeat of the candidate for the other main party, the Federalists. The year was 1812, and the first of many recorded uses of the term occurred that spring.

From Big Think, an 1812 Editorial cartoon by famed American artist Gilbert Stuart that
gave birth to the term "Gerrymander."

Essentially, gerrymandering is the process by which the party currently holding a majority at the time of redistricting oversees and approves the process of creating new district maps.  The downside is that this is done in a manner that makes it highly unlikely, if not statistically impossible, that the party in party will lose an upcoming election.  In some cases, the dominant party make gain seats through redistricting.
To understand the effects redistricting can have on future elections, it helps to note how congressional seats are initially assigned -- or apportioned, to use the official term. The U.S. Census Bureau has, to that end, released a video summarizing the process of apportionment.

Once seats are apportioned, the creation of districts are up to the state.  The State of Colorado has a detailed Redistricting Web site to make the process as transparent an open as possible.  This site includes definitions of terms, access to the data files used to draw the maps, as well as GIS files and even Google Earth friendly KMZ files to view existing and proposed changes to congressional boundaries.

If after viewing these files a person doesn't quite understand how the mix of population and political representation can affect the creation of congressional voting districts, then they do have the opportunity to try their hand at redistricting via The Redistricting Game.

As its title implies, The Redistricting Game allows players to work to balance congressional districts in favor of their party.  It also serves, according to its creators at the University of Southern California, "to educate, engage, and empower citizens around the issue of political redistricting."

By exploring how the system works, as well as how open it is to abuse, The Redistricting Game allows players to experience the realities of one of the most important (yet least understood) aspects of our political system. The game provides a basic introduction to the redistricting system, allows players to explore the ways in which abuses can undermine the system, and provides info about reform initiatives - including a playable version of the Tanner Reform bill to demonstrate the ways that the system might be made more consistent with tenets of good governance. Beyond playing the game, the web site for The Redistricting Game provides a wealth of information about redistricting in every state as well as providing hands-on opportunities for civic engagement and political action.


Players can try their hand at congressional redistricting via The Redistricting Game.

Were you able to draw up boundaries that approtions voters fairly into districts?  Did the game affect your perceptions of bias and gerrymandering for future elections?  Let us know your thoughts on the process as a whole in the comments below.

Listeria Outbreak Update

Today the Food and Drug Administration released a report providing an overview of a variety of factors that may have contributed to the listeria outbreak at Jensen Farms in Colorado. If you want you can find a timeline with all the pertinent documents on the FDA's web site. Want more alphabet soup? The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also has a page on the outbreak.

Want some help on food safety? Why not check out this video:

If you are all set on fresh produce prep, but the the start of the Walking Dead season has you running scared, the CDC also has Zombie Preparedness 101 kit.

Still want more information? Why not check out the library's guide to the food supply.

Video: How to Use FDsys

Continuing from the "What is FDsys?" video made earlier this year, the latest video from the Government Information Library, "How to Use FDsys," is a short introduction to the three main ways to find content in the GPO database.  The video has been embedded below, but can also be found on the CU Boulder Libraries YouTube Channel.

We hope you enjoy it, and if you do, please feel free to share and embed the video elsewhere. Thanks for watching!

What's Up with Iran?

Iran has been in the news quite a bit recently.  First it was the detained hikers.  Then on the 11th of October, 2011,  the FBI announced that "Two men were charged today in New York for their alleged participation in a plot directed by elements of the Iranian government to murder the Saudi Ambassador to the United States with explosives while the Ambassador was in the United States".  Allegedly, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF) were involved in the plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador.  According to a non-classifed Defense report, IRGC-QF's "global activities include: gathering tactical intelligence; conducting covert diplomacy; providing training, arms, and financial support to surrogate groups and terrorist organizations; and facilitating some of Iran's provision of humanitarian and economic support to Islamic causes." 

Photo taken at a press conference announcing the arrest.

For additional information on Iran and to follow this emerging story, we suggest exploring the Government Information country page on Iran, the State Department page on Iran, and the Homeland Security Digital Library.  You can also explore the links on the department's Foreign Relations and International Aid page. 

Justice Clarence Thomas Can't Catch a Break

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas returned to the news recently for two very different reasons.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Earlier this month, Democratic lawmakers asked that Justice Thomas be investigated by the government for failing to report -- for 13 years -- an accurate reflection of his wife's income.  Judicial watchdogs and some left-leaning media outlets feel that the sources of her income may indirectly influence cases where their interests come to judgment within the Supreme Court.  An opinion piece from the USC Annenberg School of Journalism collects several reports on Thomas' behavior, including an item pointing out that the Justice received a $15,000 gift from The American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, and decided favorably toward AEI in three cases before the Court.  The New York Times had written earlier this year on the increased scrutiny facing Supreme Court Justices.

Now, as reported today by National Public Radio, October 11 is the 20th anniversary of Justice Thomas' infamous confirmation hearings, when the nominee -- then a judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit -- was accused of sexually harassing an employee who had worked for him at both the Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.  (The events of Thomas' confirmation hearings were a point mentioned by this blog recently when looking at the widely polarizing, and ultimately unsuccessful, Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Judge Robert Bork.) 

Transcripts of the Thomas nomination hearings -- as well as transcripts for all successful nominations to the Supreme Court since 1971 -- are available for download at the Web site for the U.S. Senate.

Rather than rehash the Thomas hearings, however, NPR approaches the Justice by taking a long view of his influence on the Court.  NPR reports of Thomas:

"Thomas is not a traditional conservative, not the kind of justice who believes that law should be built up incrementally over time and that adhering to workable precedent means the law is predictable and can be relied on. Instead, he, more than any other justice, believes that the court over the past century has gotten large swaths of the law wrong, and that those rulings should be reversed.

Though his defenders shy from calling his views radical, they trumpet Thomas for being the only justice to so consistently return to what they see as the original meaning of the Constitution when it was adopted in 1789. UCLA law professor and academic blogger Eugene Volokh compares Thomas to the Supreme Court's most famous justices — Louis Brandeis, Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Marshall — in the sense that he has a clear vision of where he thinks the court should go."

What is striking -- and to some, similarly controversial, is that for as non-centrist as his judicial opinions place him, Justice Thomas is far from the most outspoken of the Supreme Court justices.  Indeed, Justice Thomas has not spoken -- at all -- during an argument before the Supreme Court for was is going on five-and-a-half years.

The last time Justice Thomas spoke was on February 22, 2006 -- when most CU Freshmen were about 13 years old -- in the case of Bobby Lee Holmes v. South Carolina.  Transcripts taken from the Supreme Court Web site, show this to be his last remark:

There is no question that aspects of Thomas' tenure on the Court have their place in the American judiciary.  Reticence, however extreme, can be as much a virtue as a flaw, and hard-leaning political beliefs -- whether Left or Right -- are essential to challenging and even overturning commonly held assumptions of legal interpretations.  American political and judicial history has similarly been rife with individualists, radically independent thinkers, and those with an agenda to promote an internal systems of political belief that they see promoting the intentions of those who penned the country's legal boundaries.
So what, if anything, makes Justice Thomas different?  Did Thomas enter until a light of scrutiny unfairly applied to his later behavior?  Or are his actions so extreme that they deserve federal review?

To look at Thomas' legal opinions, other judicial decisions, and for sources that will help you explore the world of the American legal system, take a look at the Government Information Library's page on The Supreme and Federal Courts.  And feel free to express your own thoughts in comments below.