A History of Public Mapping

Abstract

This chapter discusses the history of public mapping. The earliest reform efforts in redistricting were made possible because districts were primarily drawn out of large geographic units such as counties, which greatly simplified the redistricting task. That task grew more complex in the early 1960s, when the Supreme Court ruled that districts had to be of roughly equal population: counties would now often have to be split between two or more districts. The increasing computational demands effectively shut the public out of redistricting, since redistricting could be performed only on extremely costly computer systems. The reemergence of public mapping began in the 1990s, when states began offering public access to computer terminals loaded with their redistricting software and data. Eventually, two technological innovations by 2010 made public mapping available to the general public. Organizations and individuals are now able to leverage high-speed internet and open-source software to disseminate easy-to-use redistricting systems through the Web.