Gives me Hope: Different ways to map our voting population - from 2018 [View all]

I remembered these maps today and it helped me realize, again, how much Election Reform would help us become a stronger democracy.

My favorite is the "Blended America" map deeper in the article.

https://media.wired.com/photos/5b59ebdd38506225c8fd9f4d/master/w_1600,c_limit/Blended-America-w.jpg

"Rather than illustrating where the like-minded people live, Nelson wanted to create a map that would show where the vote was closest---where lots of people with different viewpoints live side-by-side. So he selected counties where the 2016 vote came down to plus or minus 5 percentage points. “I’ve heard these places called ‘battlegrounds,’ but I much prefer ‘blended,’” Nelson wrote in a blog post about the map.

To make the land masses look more like islands and less like box-shaped counties, he used the counties' Zip Code Tabulation Areas, which have more natural-looking borders, as a proxy. Zip Code Tabulation Areas are tools used by the Census Bureau to roughly approximate the land area associated with zip codes. Nelson labeled the big cities closest to these areas to orient viewers and called the map "The Blended America of 2016." It includes towns all across America, including Buffalo, Fresno, Grand Rapids, and Phoenix"