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Redistricting Toolkit

Redistricting Toolkit

Reapportionment as a result of the 2020 census has resulted in the loss of one Congressional seat for Illinois. How will congressional districts be redrawn by the Illinois General Assembly? How will state and local districts shift as well?

Redistricting is a teachable moment for civics classrooms and an opportunity for students to engage in current and societal issue discussions, simulations of democratic processes, and informed action through service learning per the middle and high school civics course requirements in Illinois.

This Redistricting Toolkit provides Illinois classrooms with free resources to address essential questions related to federalism, power, representation, justice, and equality.

 

Understanding How the Census Works
Understanding Reapportionment, Redistricting and Gerrymandering

 

Games and Simulations
  • Redistricting and Gerrymandering from Street Law has students learn how state legislatures and governors can manipulate the redistricting process to gain an advantage for their party in the U.S. House of Representatives and state legislatures. Students will learn what constitutes gerrymandering and the typical types of gerrymandering used. Students will role-play state legislators and collaborate to draw both gerrymandered and not gerrymandered districts. Students will consider the foundational redistricting case Baker v. Carr (1962) and classify arguments made in the case. In addition, students will evaluate the proper role of the Supreme Court in state redistricting cases.
  • GerryMander is a simple puzzle game from GameTheory.com designed to show how gerrymandering can be used to rig an election. In GerryMander, students draw voting districts to favor a party and win the election. Players can use real-world strategies like packing and cracking to beat each puzzle. With these strategies, players can see how Gerrymandering works while learning about how it happens in the real world.
  • M&M Redistricting Game shared by Hayley Lotspeich from Wheaton North High School has students manipulate candies in a gerrymandering exercise.
  • Representable is a free, open-source tool for creating maps for Communities of Interest (COI) — groups of individuals who share common social and economic interests, who are likely to have similar political concerns. Currently, over half of the states have legal requirements to respect COIs, but before Representable, no tools existed to get COIs to mapmakers.
  • Gerrymander Exercise by Peter Pappas has students use paper and pencil to gerrymander districts on a given map.
  • The Gerrymander Jigsaw Puzzle from Slate has participants but states back together again using congressional districts.
  • Districtr allows students to draw their own maps for Congressional and State Legislative seats with a recap of requirements for redistricting.
  • Students can play mini-golf with the Washington Post to see how politicians tilt elections using maps.