July 13, 2021
By Joan Twiggs, LWVCT Redistricting Champion
Now that redistricting is finalized, do you know which district(s) you are in?
Do you know how many and which districts are within your town’s borders?
Have other people asked you how to find out what their districts are?
Those of you who have read my past redistricting blogs know that last year, the year following the 2020 Census, was the occasion of the decennial redistricting process. Following the process outlined in the CT Constitution, a bipartisan group of legislators assessed the changes in Connecticut’s population and adjusted the boundaries of the state-level House and Senate districts, as well as the U.S. House districts, so that districts at each level had substantially the same number of residents. The reasons for that, as well as information about allowed deviations from population equality, were discussed in last year’s blog series.
The November 8, 2022 election will be the first election held using the new districts. Now is the time to check out the maps and see what if anything has changed for you. Here are some resources to help.
Maps published on the CT General Assembly Website
Published on the 2021 Redistricting Project Page are the final maps for the U.S. House (5 districts), the CT Senate (36 districts) and the CT House – aka “Assembly” (151 districts). There are map images of each district and images of each town. This allows you to visually assess the shape of districts and see what parts of a town are in what district. These maps are static PDF files.
House Maps | Senate Maps | Congressional Maps
Summary Tables describing CT voters, towns, and districts – Data Two Ways!
As part of the PPFM grant, LWVCT contracted with a Trinity College professor to develop an analysis of the new districts. These useful tables were a key part of that analysis. More results from the analysis will be forthcoming. These tables are available in two formats:
A) A PDF version of the tables is static, not interactive.
B) We also have an Excel version of the tables which means users can use the filters on the worksheets to isolate information of interest.
Local Voting Districts
Many towns are divided into voting districts with polling places associated with such districts. Redistricting can result in the need to redistrict these local voting districts. How that is accomplished and how it is reported are highly variable. Check your town’s website and the Registrars of Voters page to see if the information is posted. If not, contact the registrars or Town Clerk to ask for this information.
Of course, any voter in a town must be registered to vote in that town and so the best tool for an individual voter is the Voter Lookup created by the Secretary of State: Voter Registration Lookup (ct.gov). A registered voter inputs their town, name and date of birth and the requisite output reports their party (or unaffiliated) and polling location.
This tool does not, however, provide Voting District information. Additionally, the tool will not help the person who is not yet registered and who wants to know where they will vote based on their address – for example someone who is moving to a new town. Furthermore, this tool will not help the user interested in local Voting Districts as an analytic matter – for example to generate a list of Voting Districts for all 169 towns in Connecticut – if anyone is crazy enough to take on that task!
As always, if you want some Technical Assistance to help you better use one or more of these tools, let me know. You know where you can reach me: Redistricting [at] lwvct.org.
If you missed any of the previous posts, you can find them on the main redistricting page.
LWVCT PEOPLE POWERED FAIR MAPS
Joan Twiggs
