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Earlier this month, after years of litigation, a federal judge in Alabama ordered a new state senate map. In a surprising decision, the map she chose wasn’t one drafted by a court-appointed special master and his expert cartographer, but rather one that had been submitted by an anonymous member of the public, known only by their initials, “DD”.
The decision stunned “DD” – an 18-year-old freshman at the University of Alabama named Daniel DiDonato – who learned his map had been selected as he was preparing to leave for his 9.30am introduction to political science class.
“I was absolutely surprised,” he said in an interview. “Now, nearly 300,000 Alabamians will be voting under new district lines that I drew up at two in the morning in a dorm, a cramped dorm study room.”
DiDonato’s success underscores how the wide availability of redistricting data and mapping software has transformed mapmaking from something once reserved for supercomputers and backrooms to an activity that anyone can participate in. It’s a transformation that has allowed for observers to immediately scrutinize maps for partisanship or signs of racial discrimination.
The widespread availability of political data tools has created an online community – Election Twitter – where political, data and mapmaking junkies will create and share maps and forecasts. DiDonato said he “definitely” considered himself a member.
“You have a whole bunch of these kids who are snippy and savvy and know about the Voting Rights Act, Section 2 of the VRA,” said Chaz Nuttycombe, 26, who developed an impressive record forecasting state legislative races while a student at Virginia Tech and has since founded State Navigate, a non-profit focused on state legislatures. “I’ve seen maps put together by special masters that I disagree with, and I’ve seen kids on Election Twitter put forward better maps for equivalent states and districts than those special masters.”
In August, US district judge Anna Manasco, a Trump appointee, had ruled the map Alabama Republicans adopted in 2021 diluted the influence of Black voters in the area around the state capital of Montgomery, which was a violation of the Voting Rights Act. After the Alabama legislature declined to implement a new map, she appointed a special master to come up with a new one. The special master invited members of the public to submit possible plans.
DiDonato, who grew up in Russell county along the border between Alabama and Georgia, was the only member of the public to do so. In early October, he spent a few days staying up late in his dorm drawing potential maps that could give Black voters a better chance of electing their preferred candidates.
He wound up submitting six plans on 10 October, identifying himself in court documents only as “DD” because he was a minor.
He used a free online software, Dave’s Redistricting App, to draw the lines. He had begun playing around with it about a year ago, amid a budding fascination with redistricting. As he drew the maps late into the night fueled by soda but no caffeine, he turned off racial and partisan data, seeking to ensure that the new districts he drew were equal in population and made as few changes as possible to the one Republicans had adopted.
“The federal court has a very limited mandate to impose remedial legislative districts,” he said, explaining why he wanted to avoid wholesale changes. Once he finished drawing, he turned on racial and partisan data to ensure that Black voters could elect their preferred candidate in an additional district, the remedy Manasco had requested.
Richard Allen, the special master overseeing the case, included one of DiDonato’s maps with two others he put forward to the court to choose from. But his motivation for including DiDonato’s plan appeared to be to point out that the other two plans the special master authored were superior. While DiDonato’s plan only changed two state senate districts, it “only weakly remedies the Section Two violation”, he wrote.
Both the state of Alabama and the plaintiffs objected to DiDonato’s plan. Alabama argued that he had racially gerrymandered the state, while conceding that it was “the least bad of several bad options”. Those who challenged the map also objected, saying that it did not provide a good enough opportunity for Black voters in one of the state senate districts. “Black voters could only rarely elect Black candidates and can only sometimes elect their preferred candidates if those candidates are White,” they wrote.
DiDonato said seeing those objections was “demoralizing” and made him think his map wouldn’t get picked. He described the state’s objection as “offensive and disingenuous”.
“To say that I gerrymandered a map while drawing the maps in a manner that was entirely blind to the racial and partisan configurations – I don’t find any basis to suggest that is the case,” he said. He acknowledged that the plaintiffs had a “valid criticism” about whether his plan offered a strong enough remedy, but noted that the court had ultimately decided that it did.
The state of Alabama is currently appealing Manasco’s decision to the US court of appeals for the 11th circuit.
DiDonato was invited to testify about his plan at a hearing on the case, but couldn’t attend because he didn’t have transportation. “I don’t drive,” he said, adding he “couldn’t think of any friends who would be willing to drive me at like 8am”. (He said that friends who have since found out about the map have said they would have been willing to drive him).
Ultimately, Manasco chose DiDonato’s plan because it only made changes to two districts instead of three while fixing the Voting Rights Act violation, and she said she was required to make as few changes as possible to the map.
“I just think it’s a bit funny I can say I’m better at my craft than a court-appointed special master,” he said. “They had a team of white-collar attorneys from Chicago all trying to come up with the best possible maps imaginable. And it appears that trying to use my map as a demonstrative may have backfired on the special master.” While the special master will be paid for his work, DiDonato will not.
“I don’t want payment. That would be nice, I guess,” he said. “They did professional work, I did not.”
DiDonato said the selection of his map had made a big difference on Election Twitter.
“Let’s just say the entire Election Twitter community has spent the last week rallying around the fact that one of their own got an actual map that’s in law,” he said. “Election Twitter is a space dominated by teenagers who care deeply about politics but lack a way to express it on a level seen like this. I think that this is a motivation that says one of our own did this really cool thing, I think I can do a cool thing too.”
He also recognized the significance of helping fix a Voting Rights Act violation in a state with an ugly legacy of voting discrimination.
“The Voting Rights Act has a long and storied history that dates back here to Alabama, here very locally, to the Montgomery region, and knowing that Black voters, are continuing the struggle for voting rights, and that I got to be a part of the history to fix that … it just feels, it feels like an honor, and it’s kind of humbling.”
