Get Started

Getting Started With Districts

On the Districtr homepage, click “Draw” in the top right corner. You will be redirected to an interactive map of the United States. Click the state for which you wish to redistrict. All states are available, as well as Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico.

Once you have selected a state, you will be directed to its landing page. The landing page contains all mapping options along with background information. Choose a locality (state, region, county, or city) and district type by clicking on a card. The available localities and districts vary by state. (Additional localities can be added upon request.)

You will now be redirected to your selected districting page.

Main Tools

Moving across the map

Select the hand icon on the toolbar at the top of the side panel, on the right of the map. Then click and drag to pan across the map.To zoom in and out, use the plus and minus buttons in the bottom right corner of the map. You can also use a mouse scroll wheel or trackpad.

Drawing the districts

To draw your first district, select the paintbrush icon on the toolbar at the top of the side panel. Click and drag on the map to add units to your district.

To draw another district, select a new color from the color bar that appears when you click the paint icon. Each color corresponds to a different district. For pages with large numbers of districts, only one color will show when you start. For these, use the dropdown menu to select a different color.

To change the size of the brush, drag the brush size slider directly above the color bar.

To paint whole counties at once, toggle the “County Brush” box next to the slider.

To inspect districts without altering them, or to avoid painting over already-drawn areas, toggle the lock icon next to the district number in the “District overview” panel.

To correct the boundaries of your districts, click the erase icon on the toolbar at the top of the side panel. Click and drag to remove units from that district. The size of the eraser can be adjusted by dragging the slider.

Click the “undo/redo” buttons to revert the boundaries of your district plan to a previous version.

Visual settings

Click the gear icon (“Visual settings”) at the top of the side panel to control what the map shows. From here, you can uncheck “Painted districts” to hide the districts from the map, toggle “County Boundaries” to show or remove county boundaries, and check “Highlight unassigned areas” to see which units you still need to color.

Data Panels

District overview

The “District overview” panel lists each drawn district — click a district number to select it and switch the brush to that district's color. It also shows the population of each district; to balance your population evenly between districts, make reference to the ideal population count and vertical bar provided in this panel. You may also add comments to each district by clicking the comment icon next to the district number.

Demographics

Under this panel, you can study the demographic make up of your districts:

Choose total population or voting age population as the statistic.
Under the “Map Layer” tab, view the demographic data as a choropleth on top of the map by selecting “Overlay” under “Display Modes”, or as sized circles by selecting “Sized Circles”.

Elections

In the elections panel you can view how your districts would have behaved under past election data. Just like the demographics panel, you can choose to view the election data as a choropleth on top of the map by selecting “Overlay” under “Display Modes”, or view it as sized circles by selecting “Sized Circles”.

Map Validation

Under the map validation panel, you can check whether your map is missing any geographic units.

You can also check whether your districts are contiguous.

Map Modes

The “Mode” switcher in the top bar lets you move between different ways of working with your map: Draw for building your plan, View for a clean read-only display of it, and Evaluate for a dashboard of statistics about it. (There’s also a Super Draw mode with extra drawing tools for more advanced users — more on that at the end of this guide.) Switching to View or Evaluate works from a shareable link to your map; if you haven’t shared your map yet, Districtr automatically creates that shareable version for you the first time you switch, so you never have to leave the editor to set it up.View mode shows your map without any of the editing tools. This is the view others see when you share a public link to your map.

Evaluate mode lists commonly used evaluation metrics for your plan. You can see whether your plan is complete, contiguous, and population-balanced, as well as how compact its districts are and how much it favors a party given past election data.

Saving, Sharing, Importing & Exporting

Edit map names and details

Your map automatically saves as you work, right in your browser's local storage — no account or login needed. Clicking the map title at the middle of the top bar allows you to edit the map name and any comments about the map. Optionally, you can toggle your map from a draft to “Ready to Share” if you are fully finished.

The “Catalog” from the main page stores all your maps, which allows you to switch between different maps you have worked on. These maps are stored in your browser's local storage — no account or login needed. They will be removed when you clear your browser data. You can go there at any time from the navigational menu of the “Districtr” icon.

Clicking the “Share” button saves the map you created and allows you to share a link to the map. You can either share a frozen link, which does not allow editing of the original map, or an editable link, which only allows people with a password to edit.

Importing Maps

Districtr allows users to import maps from CSV block assignment files. Click on the Districtr menu in the upper left corner and select “Create new map” and then “Upload block assignments”. From here, upload your assignment file.

Exporting Maps

Districtr provides the option to export a map in several formats. The most compatible format with other platforms is a CSV assignment file which maps Census blocks to districts. Click on the “Map Action” menu in the upper right corner of the map and select “Export assignments”, then “Block assignments”. Alternatively, you can also export your district shapes as a GeoJSON or a shapefile, or export evaluation metrics as a JSON file.

Super Draw

You now know everything you need to draw and share a plan — but if you want to go further, Super Draw mode unlocks additional tools for fine-tuning your districts. Switch into it from the same “Mode” menu described above.

If you need to use smaller units of geography to balance the population of your districts, click the break icon on the toolbar at the top of the side panel. Then click on a unit you want to “break”, allowing you to paint subsets of the original unit. You can see the population number of each broken piece by clicking the gear icon in the upper right corner of the map and selecting “Show total population labels on blocks”.

Super Draw allows you to change whether the population statistic is displayed by share or by count: click the gear icon to the right of “Summary Type” and choose “Population by Share” or “Population by Count”. The Super Draw mode also allows you to switch on a side-by-side demographic and elections choropleth instead of an overlay.