California Political Maps

A map of the 2013-14 Assembly Members and Districts (from capoliticalmaps.com)

For the true California politics enthusiast, it’s hard to imagine something more exciting that finding a useful new resource.

As someone who has spent many hours building a library of legislative district maps, I was very impressed by the new maps sold by the people over at California Political Maps. Although they could have been a little more creative with the naming of their business, they’ve done an excellent job producing a beautiful set of maps that present a lot of information.

The brightly colored maps depict county boundaries, district lines, and cities. The maps also include insets that detail the smaller districts in the more urban parts of the state.

Finally, the maps include pictures of the legislators (which is helpful with the huge number of new legislators in the new session) as well as the constitutional officers and Supreme Court justices.

A map of the 1891 State Senate Districts (from the 1895 California Blue Book)

It used to be easy to keep track of legislative district lines; the first bill to divide the state into legislative districts fit on a single page (it had grown to thirteen pages by the 1891 redistricting).

Prior to 1966 redistricting, counties were rarely divided between legislative districts, and good maps could be printed on a single 8.5″ x 11″ page. Following the court decision in Reynolds v. Sims, districts were required to be equal in population and the maps got much more complicated.

California Political Maps has created a solid product that communicates a massive amount information in a colorful and well-designed format.

You can check them out at capoliticalmaps.com.