Hey guys, Some of you old-timers may remember me; most of you probably haven't been around long enough to remember when I was a regular contributor on SF. I figured I'd come check the site out though, and I think it's really neat. I also figured that I should make some sort of amazing post to announce my return, but I'm too lazy. So I will settle for a nifty site instead. http://commoncensus.org/ is, if you haven't already heard about it, a project to redraw the map of the US along the lines of "spheres of influence". Currently, 37551 people have actually "voted". The maps seem to be updated every month or so, so we can hopefully expect a new update in a few days. As it stands right now, 25.3% of the cities in the database have between one and nine people from there who has voted. 2.4% of the cities have 10 to 100 people, and only 0.1% have 100 or more. This obviously excludes the scores of cities that aren't represented at all yet. Different "spheres of influence" are also drawn to wildly different accuracies. Philadelphia, for example, has had 1103 people claim they are within its "sphere of influence", whereas Phoenix, with a similar population, has had only 278 voters. Especially needed are votes from people who live outside of major urban areas. The votes of people living near the currently-drawn borders of the Salt Lake City or Denver "spheres of influence" will have a much bigger effect on the map than will the votes of people who live in SLC or Denver themselves. That's not to say that people in urban areas shouldn't vote, rather, that rural votes are more important than urban votes. And as noted in the FAQ, don't hesitate to select "other" if you feel that the appropriate answer for you is not one of the choices listed. This is the way that new "spheres of influence" are added to the map, and incorrect ones are removed. As the FAQ also notes, in the future (ie when many more people have voted), maps produced by the survey could be overlaid with maps of current congressional districts, showing the effects of gerrymandering crystal-clearly, and having a sobering effect on the people.
