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Draft article, please do not quote.

DistrictBuilder is a computer software that enables users to divide a geographical region into electoral districts and determine the boundaries of the districts on the basis of district compactness, district contiguity and voter demographics, such as age, race, gender, income and education.

Overview
DistrictBuilder is an open-source mapping software for drawing maps of electoral districts, e.g. congressional and state senate districts in the U.S..

DistrictBuilder was created by the Philadelphia-based company Azavea and Micah Altman and Michael McDonald, a professor of political science at George Mason University, of the Public Mapping Project. The authors consider the application domain of the mapping software to be in demystifying and democratizing the traditionally byzantine redistricting process and breaking the mapmaking monopoly held by state lawmakers. These are beneficial outcomes even in the view that the maps created with the software will not be adopted by the government officials.

-- Epoch times --more info

The software has been used for mapping contests in various US states where the general public or student teams from different universities compete to create alternative redistricting plans using the same criteria as the officially appointed commissions and balance their competing objectives.

Awards
DistrictBuilder has been recognized by the O'Reilly Strata award for the novel use of data for social impact.