Spawn of Gerrymander: Jennifer Daniel’s Texas 35th

“If you can read this, you’re in range,” is Jennifer Daniel’s suggested title for her visualization of Texas’ Thirty-Fifth Congressional District. “The judicial back-and-forth over Texas redistricting has been going on for over a decade,” she notes. “So, it should come as no surprise that Texas has redrawn district 35 after their favorite way to resolve disputes: with a gun.”

Like other districts in this series, Texas’ 35th comes up often in press reports on—and open mockery of the strange shapes that gerrymandering can produce. And lately, political mapmaking in Texas has received plenty of attention.

Jennifer Daniel is a visual journalist at The New York Times, where she designs, codes, illustrates, and writes about all kinds of things ranging from abortion to goth culture. She’s on Twitter and on Tumblr.

Spawn of Gerrymander is a series in which some of our favorite illustrators use their talents to help us see the true shape of poltical mapmaking in the twenty-first century: introductory essay here; browse the whole series here. This project has been made possible in large part by a grant from The Awesome Foundation‘s Awesome Without Borders chapter.