Blake Esselstyn
Blake Esselstyn (he/him) is a geographer, demographer, and redistricting consultant who first began studying GIS more than 25 years ago. In 2015 he founded Mapfigure Consulting. In recent years 15 U.S. government jurisdictions have adopted redistricting plans that Blake designed. He has served as an expert witness and consulting expert for multiple court cases and has presented widely on redistricting. His degrees are from Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania, and he holds professional certifications as both an urban planner (AICP) and GIS professional (GISP).
Sessions
The process of drawing new political boundaries in representative democracies has generally been done with closed source software. However, a number of open source products are changing the way governments draw their jurisdictions. The QGIS Redistricting Plugin has been used to redistrict communities in the United States, Canada, and Australia, and other open source software such as DistrictR has been used to redistrict the United States in their previous cycle, significantly cutting the cost needed to participate in this activity and allowing individuals to make better contributions. At its core, the software is simple but powerful: it allows users to change attributes in an attribute column using selection tools and displays aggregate statistics for other selected columns. Join John Holden, the plugin's developer, and Blake Esselstyn, a geographic and political consultant, for a plugin demonstration and a discussion of how governments and citizen groups have transitioned to using open source software in this important political area.