NEW YORK—Winners for a project to let the public join the redistricting process were announced on Tuesday at Fordham University, and will be formally presented to the state Legislature.
The 2012 New York Redistricting Project was created to add new perspectives to the redistricting process, one that is typically controlled by legislators.
“The public is often poorly informed about the redistricting process and not very involved,” said Costas Panagopoulos, director of the project and assistant professor of political science at Fordham.
District Builder is an open source platform the project introduced to get people more involved. Users design their own district maps based on 2010 census data.
As part of the project, a competition was launched last fall challenging student teams to design a map, choosing from New York congressional districts, state Senate districts, or state Assembly districts.
The Winners: Congressional Map
A University at Buffalo Law School team won the congressional map section.
The team became interested in the subject after seeing a presentation at their school. Members were familiar with different parts of the state, such as Andrew Dean (Central NY and Utica), Eric Tabache (downstate), and Jacob Drum (Albany and upstate).
