Student and Minority Student Communities of Interest for Shaping Voting Districts

In this paper, we analyze the legitimacy of Congressional and state district lines with a specific focus on communities of interest with a demographic population of college students and minority college students. Our methodology was to identify these communities using ACS data and overlay them with district lines. We then examined student and minority student communities of interest and found that many, particularly those with racial minorities, were divided by district lines that appear to have been intentionally located to dilute the impact of the student and minority student vote. This is consistent with other studies showing that when districts are controlled by a single party and, at least in recent decades, by conservative or Republicans, the location of the district lines are politically motivated.