Building a Redistricting Database By Kimball Brace Election Data Services, Inc.
Raise Your Hand If You: Have agreed to participate in Census Phase 2? Have collected current precincts maps for every county/town in your state? Have collected precinct maps for 2006, 2004 and 2002 for every county/town in your state? Have election returns for each of these election years? Primary and general elections?
Lessons Learned. The Hard Way Don't design and build the plane as it's rolling down the runway. Start planning now. The sooner you get behind, the longer you have to catch-up An error here, can sink your whole ship Most important activity of whole process
Redistricting Data Cube Type of Data Tabular Spatial TIGER/Line Files Redistricting Summary (PL 94-171) & ACS Files Census Precinct and Electoral District Boundaries Election Returns and Voting Statistics Political Source of data Election Data Services, Inc.
Registration, Turnout and Voting Data Will cover elections from 2002 to 2010 to provide the State with adequate information to measure competitiveness and to provide information for a racial bloc voting analysis to gauge compliance with the Voting Rights Act Involves the keypunching or merger of election returns and precinct mapping for each election period to supplement the geographic database
Data Cube Considerations - Geography Census -- TIGER files Need 2000 geography also Political -- Precinct boundaries Need at least 3 election years worth 2006, 2008 and 2010 Can t have data unless know where it goes/came from Many arguments for putting in whole decade Shifts from Republican to Democratic this decade Will be an issue, not matter what side of aisle you're on. Racial voting analysis for court Other political boundaries Existing Congressional Districts Existing State Legislative Districts Cities -- as they have changed over decade will impact on your precinct boundaries Pull the place code layers or equivalencies out of different versions of TIGER over decade
Data Cube Considerations - Data Census Census 2010 PL data Census 2000 data ACS data 1, 3, & 5 year estimates of different demographic data Political 2006, 2008, 2010 Registration counts Turn-out counts Votes for all statewide offices Votes for Congressional & state legislative district offices Cluster information Communities of Interest Geocoding of Voter Registration data We now have statewide VR files, courtesy of HAVA Be able to put some political information into every census block registration rates, turnout rates, primary voting, Party regis (if in file)
Block changes from 2000
TIGER Migration Impact
New TIGER problems
Election Returns Issues Change in precinct configurations over decade Impact of voting equipment purchases on precinct configurations Dramatic reduction in number of precincts Will you have enough returns for area? Impact of vote centers on return data Don t make Colorado s mistake before they changed their law to require data reported by precinct.
Data Possibilities Availability of Statewide Voter Registration files Geo-code down to block. Accuracy, Everyone placed? Is state archiving a copy of file to correspond with election day?
Issues that will impact your redistricting data
The Election Process From a data prospective Total Population Voting Age Population Citizen Voting Age Population Registration Turnout Votes for Highest Office 293.6 Million 221.3 Million 204.3 Million 177.3 Million 121.8 Million 113.9 Million
Turn-out Still don t know total number of people who participated in 2004 general election. Definitions of turn-out, ballots cast, ballots counted. 903 Jurisdictions in 21 states have same number of people turning out, as that voted for President of the US
Thank you Kimball Brace President Election Data Services, Inc. 6171 Emerywood Court Manassas, VA 20112 (703-580-7267 or 202-789-2004) KBrace@electiondataservices.com or KBrace@aol.com www.electiondataservices.com