Overview: After a national census is completed every 10 years, governments at all levels redraw their voting district boundaries to accommodate population changes. While most of the media attention focuses on Congressional redistricting – both for federal and statehouses, county level boundaries that define regions represented by Boards are also up for redistricting. Having previously collaborated with the county on its Equity Profile, Albemarle County’s Office of Equity and Inclusion shared data on their proposed boundaries with the Equity Center to see if our Equity Atlas could be used to help further evaluate the county’s proposed boundaries.
The OEI office shared data on the proposed boundaries with the Equity Atlas team, who set about building out a resource. On the Albemarle District Maps site, residents can overlay Albemarle County’s proposed magisterial boundaries on a set of social and demographic data at the census tract or block group level to better see the impacts across a range of metrics in addition to those provided by the Census Redistricting Program (which provides only population counts and race and ethnicity). Our team has created a visualization of the demographic summary information the county provided in hopes of making the information more accessible to those who are interested. You can find our Albemarle District Maps resource here.
The County seeks public engagement on the redistricting process and has made static versions of the proposed boundaries along with demographic summaries for each option available on their website (https://engage.albemarle.org/redistricting); the public comment period runs through March 4, 2022.
Citation: Michele Claibourn. “Visualizing Albemarle County Magisterial District Boundaries,” The Equity Center, A UVA Democracy Initiative Center for the Redress of Inequity through Community-Engaged Scholarship, 2022. https://virginiaequitycenter.shinyapps.io/albemarle_districts/