Interactive map of Arizona's current congressional districts
This past week, the U.S. Supreme Court
heard a case brought by the Republican-controlled Arizona state legislature that could result in the invalidation of Arizona's and California's congressional district maps. This is because those maps were implemented by independent redistricting commissions established via ballot initiative; Republicans contend that the constitution specifies that because the "legislature" shall decide the time, place, and manner of how elections are conducted, that
literally means the legislature itself, not merely those with the ability to pass laws, such as the people (at the ballot box).
In the event that these redistricting commissions are struck down, Republicans in Arizona will certainly pass a new congressional gerrymander aimed at winning more seats, and California Democrats could do the same. Here at Daily Kos Elections, community members including myself have a hobby of drawing our own congressional maps using the free Dave's Redistricting App, so we'd love to see the best gerrymanders you can draw for Arizona and California, whether realistic or pure fantasy. We've also created a display table template you can download that allows you to tidily present the demographic and election results that DRA spits out.
Arizona Republicans will probably aim for a map that will elect seven Republicans and just two Democrats, for a net gain of two seats. California, meanwhile, can be a very difficult state to redistrict for many users because of its size (it requires a fast processor and a lot of memory). You can mitigate this by bumping up DRA's quota to several hundred megabytes and loading the state without legislative districts, city lines, and the voting age population. Additionally, both states have multiple districts protected by the Voting Rights Act (so be careful if tinkering with them). To give you a benchmark, we've made a spreadsheet with the demographics and election statistics of the current districts for both states.
For some inspiration, Skaje has collected some relevant maps community members have posted in the past. So go ahead and show us what you can come up with now!