2021 Redistricting Data

To Whom It May Concern:

Pursuant to the Florida Sunshine Law, I hereby request the following records:

Any raw data that the House Redistricting Committee has used or will use as part of the decennial redistricting process following the 2020 Census to draw draft and/or final district maps for the Florida House of Representatives, Florida State Senate, and U.S. Congressional districts, which could include any of the following:

-Primary, general, and special election results for any elections state legislative, US congressional, statewide candidate or ballot measure between 2011-2020
-Primary, general, and special election precinct boundaries for any elections between 2011-2020
-Voter registration and turnout data between 2011-2020
-Incarcerated population reallocation data
-Candidate and incumbent address data
-Population projections
-Voter file data

As well as any other data used by the Florida House of Representatives in preparing draft or final maps.

In addition to the raw data, which means the original data collected before it has been processed, transformed, or otherwise altered, I hereby request any documentation describing how the raw data was collected and processed for use in map drawing, as well as any internal communication among elected officials and/or government employees about data preparation, management, cleaning, formatting, or otherwise changing or manipulating the data, or about map drawing.

The requested documents will be made available to the general public, and this request is not being made for commercial purposes.

In the event that there are fees, I would be grateful if you would inform me of the total charges in advance of fulfilling my request. I would prefer the request filled electronically, by e-mail attachment if available or CD-ROM if not.

Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter. I look forward to receiving your response to this request within 10 business days.

Sincerely,

Andrew Drechsler

Dear Office of Open Government,

Thank you for your response. "Voter file data" refers to 2 types of information: 1. The information collected on the voter registration form at the time they sign up (typically collected by state government and often used by political campaigns and parties) that contains information such as the name, address, political party, and vote history for registered voters, and 2. The information added to individual voter records whenever they vote (i.e. whether they voted, when they voted, by what medium (in person, absentee, etc), etc. This data may consist of data on each individual voter, or aggregated to another geography such as Census block or precinct.

Voter file data is sometimes used in redistricting to measure the partisan lean of current or proposed districts, to look at past voter turnout, or for other uses.