Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. Congress/Congressional districts

This article was a Collaboration of the Week for WikiProject U.S. Congress from Nov. 20-Dec. 31, 2006.

[edit] Suggestions

• "Military"? Since when does my congressional district have it's own military? :P
• "Evolution of geographic setting". The name of this heading is a bit awkward. What about "Historical boundaries" or "History of district boundaries"? Kaldari 23:26, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Fixed--G1076 02:32, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
• I think listing elections from latest to earliest would be more useful, especially if elections go back a long way. The most recent election is the most germane. Sprkee 00:48, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
  • "Germane" to what? Some researchers want early history, some want current events. Who's to say? —Markles 00:58, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
    • I am just imagining a district that stretches back to the 1700s, and my thought is that most readers would be more interested in more recent election results. The data is all there, in order, for everyone, but is organized in way that is most accessible. Also, since many districts may not provide results back to the very beginning, it may be more logical to start with one endpoint--the latest results--than to start at a random point where the editor decided to start, or was able to find results. Just my two cents. - Sprkee 01:06, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
      • Practically speaking, if editors are able to collect the election data back to the 1700s, then the page will be too big and the election results will have to be split out to a separate article. I would imagine that the the most recent elections would remain on the congressional district article page with a main article link to Foo's 1st congressional district election results article.--G1076 02:32, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
        • I agree. On the Tennessee's 5th congressional district article we specificly label the section "Recent election results" as I really wouldn't want to list all 32 elections. I could see a sub-article though if someone really felt like listing all of them. Kaldari 06:01, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
          • That sounds fine to me. Perhaps we want to title the boilerplate section Recent election results, as you have done in that article. Also, to my original point, that article lists the most recent election first, whereas this boilerplate suggests listing the oldest first. Is there a consensus on the order in which to list the elections? - Sprkee 19:54, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't mind changing the section title to Recent election results, but I do think that the order of elections should remain oldest to newest. It is consistent with the order of the list of representative that we have in the section above it and how we have generally been ordering tables throughout the project.--G1076 20:20, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

• Sounds reasonable. Thanks for the discussion. - Sprkee 20:25, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Georgia Congressional Districts

I've mentioned this on the Georgia WikiProject but this seems appropriate too. Georgia Congressional Districts needs to be updated badly. Maybe someone here can help. Akubhai 13:45, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

• The problem is that there is not a good source of information for the changes since the 2005 redistricting. Typically, http://www.NationalAtlas.gov has had maps, but it still isn't updated for the 110th Congress. Does anyone have such a source? —Markles 15:46, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Here are some [1] but they are copyrighted from what I can tell.

The department of education has some nice ones too: http://public.doe.k12.ga.us/images/sboe/map_district_01.gif (change the district number to see others). Akubhai 17:14, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 110th Congress District Data

It's true that NationalAtlas and other federal sources have not updated their maps to refect congressional boundaries for the 110th Congress. However, the U.S. Census Bureau has posted all of the underlying boundary information for all currenct congressional districts. The data is in the public domain and free for the public to use for any purpose. If anyone has a GIS mapping tool that can read shapefiles, they could use this information to create maps of each district. Only Texas and Georgia saw any congressional redistricting in 2005 and 2006 that are affected, so you wouldn't need to generate new maps for all districts. The 109th District Maps are still valid for all other congressioanl districts.

Mapping Data is available at this address. ASCII data is also available, which includes the raw latitude and longitude information that could be used to generate Google Maps.

Cartographic Boundary Files—Preceding unsigned comment added by Dcmacnut (talk • contribs)

[edit] Map of Georgia's 1st Congressional District

I have created a rough map of Georgia's 1st congressional district as it stands for the 110th Congress. I used the aforementioned Census Bureua data, GIS software, and Photoshop. It's a very rough approximation, but should serve its purpose until the federal government creates a higher quality public domain version. You can compare it to the version from the 109th Congress. It didn't take that long to create, so I could do the other 12 districts if nobody has a problem with this rough version. Crossreferences on the main project talk page. Dcmacnut 04:32, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Question about redistricting

Please see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Succession Box Standardization#Question about redistricting for a question I have about how to present geographic discontinuities due to redistricting in succession boxes. Thanks. older ≠ wiser 15:25, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Demographics

It would be nice to be able to provide demographic information about each district. More details on geography would also be useful. john k (talk) 20:36, 21 February 2008 (UTC)