Dave Bradlee was a software developer for Micro-soft for 20 years. He also has a fanatical interest in politics and maps. Not long ago, with the states’ once-a-decade task of redrawing political district lines approaching, there was a question Bradlee couldn’t get out of his head:

“Wouldn’t it be cool if people could actually draw districts themselves?”

On his own time, he built an online mapping tool he calls “Dave’s Redistricting App.” It’s free, and anyone can use it. You choose a state, decide how many districts to slice it into, and then click away, coloring the map into lots of tiny pieces. As you draw your own congressional or state legislative districts, the app spits out census data on each one’s population and racial composition. With a little persistence, anyone can produce a redistricting plan.

And Bradlee quickly discovered he wasn’t alone in his passions.

Since the app went live in 2009, hundreds of people have used it to draw political maps — the site is now live for every state but Alaska. Some of the user-created maps were jokes: One person striped the state of New York with districts that all stretched from Buffalo to the Big Apple. But Bradlee says most of the maps created with his app represent serious efforts by well-intentioned citizens to engage in the redistricting process in ways they’ve never been able to before.

Influencing the process

As states begin redistricting in the next few months, Web tools like Bradlee’s will provide a new way for the public to try to influence the outcome. Ten years ago, during the last round of redistricting, Google Maps didn’t exist, let alone all the interactive and social tools that are so ubiquitous online today, such as YouTube and Facebook.

This time, it will be different. In addition to Bradlee’s app, there are a number of other efforts under way to give citizens more mapping power. Some of them are officially sanctioned, such as a pair of online redistricting apps being developed by the Florida Legislature and another in Idaho. Others are coming from outside government, including one that promises to give citizens every bit as much data-drilling power as the systems state legislators and redistricting commissions will use.

In Oregon, both houses of the Legislature have redistricting committees, but if lawmakers can’t agree on a plan, the job falls to Secretary of State Kate Brown.

Already, reform-minded groups are planning on using these tools to create a shadow redistricting process, intended to provide alternatives to the political gerrymanders that partisan legislatures often produce. In Indiana, for example, Common Cause, the League of Women Voters and AARP have come together to sponsor a citizen redistricting commission. The commission, led by two former legislators — one Democrat and one Republican — will conduct hearings around the state and then formulate its own redistricting plan. If the Indiana Legislature draws maps that promote the interest of the majority Republicans, or that protect incumbents, the citizen commission will be ready to go to the public and the media with its alternative.

“The purpose of the commission,” says Julia Vaughn, policy director for the state chapter of Common Cause, “is to bird-dog the Indiana General Assembly.”

Maps drawn through a shadow redistricting process not only could be used or adapted by legislators themselves, but also could be considered by judges in states where the official maps ultimately wind up in court.

With the new technology, there’s no question that there’s more potential than ever for citizens to have a say in a process historically controlled by partisan and self-interested lawmakers. The question is whether the power of do-it-yourself redistricting will actually lead to maps that look any different than those from past decades.

New technology, again

Each new round of redistricting, it seems, ushers in a new technological leap. Kimball Brace, president of Election Data Services, a redistricting consulting firm, remembers how in 1981 in Illinois, paper maps were tacked to the wall in the House Speaker’s office, which had a conveniently high ceiling. “We could put the entire city of Chicago on one wall,” Brace says. The line drawers would spend all day drawing their map, then it would take a mainframe computer all night to analyze the demographics of what they had created.

By 1991, lawmakers had personal computers at their disposal. By 2001, those computers and the software on them were dramatically more powerful. Insiders could fiddle with new district lines relentlessly, allowing them to ponder thousands of possibilities that previously would have taken too much time to consider. As the technology progressed, some states set up computers in libraries or state offices where anyone could come and use the same software legislators were using. But relatively few people were willing to travel for miles and then sit down for hours to do it.

At the state level, the efforts in Idaho and Florida are exceptions, not the rule. Most states are making no further plans to engage the public in 2011 than they did a decade ago.

One reason is money. Mark Stratton, who works on redistricting for Indiana’s Legislative Services Agency, says that when he was talking with vendors about online redistricting last year, they told him it would cost the state $125,000 to $150,000. But Indiana’s redistricting budget — for hardware, software and staff — is only $250,000. While prices have dropped since then, Stratton says a big effort at online outreach simply wasn’t practical financially.

States have other concerns. Who should provide technical support to citizens who have trouble with these fairly sophisticated applications? How should publicly submitted plans be catalogued and presented to legislators? And will enough of those plans be valid to make the exercise worth it? Redistricting, after all, is a not just a political process but also a very technical one, requiring map makers to consider everything from a district’s compactness to the Supreme Court’s latest interpretation of the Voting Rights Act.

Ultimately, it may not matter whether the states are reluctant to give up control over redistricting. That’s because there are people like Dave Bradlee who have made it their mission to give the public tools to make the process more collaborative. Bradlee sees his app as much more than a toy for political and geographic junkies like himself.

“This is a tool that helps inform citizens to see what the process is like,” he says. “Ultimately, influencing the people who control the process is a goal.”

And even if citizen plans don’t prove popular with legislators, they could find a more receptive audience in court. If past decades are any guide, court is exactly where many states’ redistricting plans will end up.

On the Web

Do your own redistricting at www.gardow.com/davebradlee/redistricting/launchapp.html.