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Redistricting Washington State: How the lines are drawn

This week, our team at the Washington State Wire brings you a series titled “Redistricting Washington State: How the lines are drawn.”

It’s a work compiled by four of our reporters and writers here at the Wire that is the result of months of research and conversations – both formal and informal.

Some of the work is straight fact reporting, elevating the nuances and the details of this now once-a-decade process (it wasn’t always so often). Some of it is analysis, discussing the implications of a system developed more than a generation ago. And, some is commentary, with thoughts on how best to modernize Washington State’s system

The series will unfold over this week and next. Here’s what you can expect from “Redistricting Washington State: How the lines are drawn.”

The history of redistricting in Washington State

Podcast: A conversation with former US Senator Slade Gorton

Reflecting on the legacy of Slade Gorton’s role in redistricting

Redistricting: Tracking state elections and legislative composition

Comparing 1965 with 2012: Lessons on redistricting

A word on benchmarking partisan performance

Five key takeaways from our series on redistricting

This is an ambitious project. It’s topic that is specific, technical and candidly not terribly engaging for a majority of Washingtonians.

It’s also fraught with political interest, implication, and consequence.

So, we enter into this topic with some humility.

For example, it’s possible we may be the only folks that care about the topic in 2019! Though that will change in just a few years.

But, it’s also possible that this work may help inform the few score folks that are thinking about the topic in a meaningful way, and hopefully help renew a process in 2021 that will have direct impact on 7.6m Washingtonians organized into our republican democracy.


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