It’s just over two weeks until Oklahoma lawmakers return to the State Capitol for a special session to re-write the state’s legislative and congressional districts.
But the GOP-led Legislature has yet to unveil its proposed maps for the public to review, analyze and offer feedback.
States across the country are scrambling to complete the once-every-decade work since a delay in getting the data from the U.S. Census Bureau prevented most states, including Oklahoma, from finishing the work earlier this year.
A tally from FiveThirtyEight finds that Oklahoma is one of just 19 states that haven’t released their formal redistricting proposals, Lawmakers in charge of the redistricting work say the maps should be out soon as time is running out until the Nov. 15 special session begins.
But one of the things we have seen is the 10 public map submissions that the Legislature reviewed this past week. You can read my article on Oklahoma Watch about how many of these proposals could shift Oklahoma’s political dynamics, specifically in the 5th Congressional District, for the next decade.
In addition to the article, I created a couple of interactive data visualizations, using a free tool from Northwestern University’s Knight Lab that makes it easy to compare the current maps to the proposals.
I received good feedback from the two public map submissions that I used so I figured I would do this for all 10 of the public map submissions.
So for each link below, move the line to see the difference between Oklahoma’s current congressional district map and a proposal submitted to the state Legislature by a member of the public. Guide: Blue (1st District); Green (2nd District); Purple (3rd District); Red (4th District); Yellow (5th District).
- David Greene, submitted on Sept. 11.
- Andy Moore, People Not Politicians, submitted on Sept. 23.
- John Hughes, submitted on Sept. 25.
- J.D. Clark, submitted on Sept. 30.
- Dan Hough, submitted on Oct. 8.
- Pat McFerron, submitted on Oct. 8.
- Owen Underwood, submitted on Oct. 10.
- John Roberts, submitted on Oct. 10.
- Michael Ceasar, submitted on Oct. 10.
- Rachel Melot, Shawnee Forward, submitted on Oct. 10.