Once the boundary authority has successfully completed a redistricting plan by assigning all geographic units in the territory to a district, summary information for the plan should be produced. This information may be used to evaluate the plan. Also, it is often needed to prepare legislation in order to enact a plan. Certainly, it will be needed to implement a plan once the final plan has been approved. A summary description of a redistricting plan should include:
- a description of the plan listing the geographic components of each district
- map(s) of the plan showing the district boundaries
- a report summarising the most relevant statistical information for each district in the plan
Description of the Plan
A description of the redistricting plan should include a detailed list of all of the geographic units contained in each district. A narrative description of the plan could also be created. In the United States, for example, a detailed street-by-street description of district boundaries, called "metes and bounds," is often required, especially in urban areas.
Advances in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) now allow for the production of highly detailed maps. The British Columbia (Canada) Electoral Boundaries Commission in its redistricting of provincial electoral boundaries ”chose to forego metes and bounds and submitted their proposed boundaries digitally. A DVD packaged with the commission’s final report contained their proposed electoral districts saved as shape files, a data format common to GIS software. The DVD included software allowing users to view the electoral district boundaries in the context of geographic features and local administrative boundaries. Together with the printed maps available in their reports, the commission felt satisfied that “the traditional metes and bounds descriptions of proposed electoral boundaries [had become] unnecessary.” In establishing the new electoral districts in the Electoral Districts Act, the Legislative Assembly referenced the digital files rather than including metes and bounds descriptions in the Schedule to the Act. By doing so, the Legislative Assembly established the digital files as the legal source of the new boundaries.” (Report of the Chief Electoral Officer on the 2008 Electoral Boundary Redistribution)
Maps of the Plan
Maps of the redistricting plan may need to be created at different scales. A large-scale map will be needed to show the entire redistricting plan while a series of smaller-scale maps may be needed to show district boundaries in more detail in areas with higher population densities. These maps may be used to inform legislators and voters of the new district boundaries. In addition, these maps will be needed by election administrators to implement the new plan.
Summary Report of the Plan
Summary reports of the redistricting plan can be produced displaying district population totals and any other statistics for data items that have been included in the redistricting database. These reports may include detailed demographic data as well as political data, if desired. The design of the report should reflect its intended purpose. Of course, more than one report can be compiled for each plan. The only constraint on reporting capabilities is that the information must have been included in the database. For this reason, it is important to construct a database that includes as much of the necessary information as possible.
Summary reports allow redistricters to evaluate a redistricting plan according to established criteria. For example, the redistricting criteria may specify that districts be as equal in population as possible, and that some districts afford minority voters the opportunity to elect candidates of choice. In this instance, the summary report of the redistricting plan should list the total population, the population deviation from the electoral quota, and the racial and ethnic composition of each district.
Other interested groups may request summary reports for different sets of data items. Political parties and legislators, for example, may be interested in a detailed political profile of the proposed districts. A political report could include such information as the electoral history of the district. This can be calculated by summing all the previous election results for each of the geographic units included in the new district.
It is a relatively straightforward procedure to construct reports that calculate summary statistics for data items such as total population, population by race, and votes for candidates in previous political contests, provided that this information has been included in the redistricting database. But there may, or may not, be constitutional, legal, or court-specified standards that specify, for example, what constitutes an acceptable level of population deviation. If no set standards exist, then it is still a matter of discretion as to what the summary statistics tell us.
