Lowell

Welcome to Districtr! This is a free community webtool for redistricting and community mapping provided by the MGGG Redistricting Lab at Tufts University. We welcome questions and inquiries about the tool and about our work in Lowell: contact@mggg.org

In 2019, all eyes are on Lowell, Massachusetts. The City of Lowell’s at-large electoral system has been challenged in a recent lawsuit (Huot et al. v. City of Lowell et al). Plaintiffs in the case argued that the current system dilutes the votes of Lowell's communities of color for the City Council and School Board. For more information about the lawsuit, read LCR's explainer [here].

Election Reform in Lowell

This November, Lowell residents will have a chance to vote on a new system! The choices for City Council are (a) a city-wide system electing 9 council members by ranked choice, or (b) 8 districts plus 3 at-large seats, raising the size of the council to 11 members.

Read our public report on the choice facing Lowell voters this November! We explain the options on the ballot and some general differences between systems of election. For more technical explanations of our modeling, refer to our detailed report.

Versions of the public report are also available in Spanish, Portuguese, and Cambodian Khmer.

Try Drawing Districts

We invite you to use Districtr to draw your own districts and think about some of the tradeoffs for yourself. You can build 3 City Council Districts, 7 City Council Districts, 8 City Council Districts, or 9 City Council Districts using census blocks as the basic building blocks.

(The 8-district option is one of the ones on the ballot this November.)

Build a plan from scratch

See randomly constructed sample plans

Click on any of the districting plans below to open it in Districtr. Then feel free to start modifying it yourself! Each of these plans was generated by randomized algorithms, while making sure that the Asian and Latino communities meet the statistical thresholds laid out in the legal requirements, where applicable.