Here is what some of our clients have to say about Maptitude for Redistricting:
A new report “When the People Draw the Lines,” finds that California's first citizen-led redistricting commission successfully democratized redistricting in the state. In fact, among the estimated 1/3 of the voters who were familiar with the work of the commission, over 66% of the public approved of the CRC district maps. “The redistricting software, Maptitude for Redistricting, facilitates the creation of districts with equal or nearly equal populations. The software allowed mappers to adjust district boundaries to meet the population equality requirement.”
League of Women Voters of California
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“I use Maptitude for Redistricting extensively in my small law practice. Its tools help me to analyze potential voting-rights cases and to prepare professional-quality maps for use in litigation. I find that having the software in house is much more effective than contracting out for similar services. The training and support is great, and you don't have to be a GIS expert to get a lot out of it.” Bryan L. Sells |
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“I have used Maptitude for Redistricting since the
1991-1992 round for state and local redistricting both
for public bodies and in the context of voting rights
cases. It has been a godsend. For my first round of
redistricting, I used a since defunct package combined
with SAS for reports. Though that cobbled together
solution did the trick, once Maptitude emerged, I was
blown away by the fact that they had picked exactly the
right bells and whistles. Compared to other
solutions, it has no peer. For a recent Amicus
brief, I compared the use of redistricting solutions
across the United States, state by state. Maptitude was
by far the market leader having been adopted by the most
states by far. Andrew A. Beveridge |
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“Maptitude for Redistricting was amazingly helpful for creating maps and putting together data on redistricting. It is user-friendly software, and it comes with lots of features that are necessary to create and validate fair maps. In addition, their support is outstanding: their staff know the ins and outs of their product, their trainings are comprehensive, and they are very responsive if you have questions or need help troubleshooting anything.” Thania Sanchez |
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“The program is the most detailed, precise and thorough redistricting software in the market. It does everything! Most impressive, the customer service is tremendous. David and Max were just great in walking me through any issues I encountered and helped ensure that everything proceeded exactly as planned. The results speak for themselves: a unanimous 7-0 in Clark County, Nevada -- a county of more than 2.265 million people. .” Dave Heller |
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“There are an increasingly large number of products on the market. I have used several of these with mixed results. Maptitude for Redistricting is not just a piece of software, it is access to a team of hard working, extremely knowledgable professionals. They will help you prepare your data and are highly responsive for any troubleshooting you may need. Although it has many tools for advanced data analysis, it is also a brilliantly simple "point and click" platform suitable for novice and professionals alike. Now, with the online tool, you can draw maps from any device with an internet connection! Maptitude for Redistricting is the all-in-one, easy to use, most accurate product available.” Jonathan Cervas |
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“Maptitude for Redistricting has a low learning curve and is perfect for creating districts strategically. The wide range of features is an added bonus. Tech support is superb.” Keiana Dunn |
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“I use the Caliper product Maptitude because it is easier. It's more user friendly. It uses some of the terminology that I use in a day-to-day basis.” Wesley Wilcox |
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“We started using Maptitude for Redistricting software early in our careers as applied demographers more than 20 years ago. The program has saved time and effort and made our work much easier. Caliper incorporates software updates and enhancements with each new regularly released version. Caliper’s tech support has always been excellent and timely. MTR is easy to use, given the complexity of GIS. A (non-GIS) staff member was able to draw complete plans after taking the two-day training course. We highly recommend this state-of-the-art software. It is flexible, reliable, intuitive, and economical. Thanks to the Caliper team for making our work more efficient and enjoyable!” Shelley Lapkoff |
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“The redistricting tools in Maptitude are significantly more advanced than Autobound, and Maptitude is much faster at key steps. In one state, we were sharing plans across a team of three GIS technicians and among about 3 public groups who had their own GIS capability. Our team and the two outside groups could create an equivalency file, put it on a disk to share, and get it open and fully working on another Maptitude computer in under 10 minutes. We would often provide and receive plans in the fifteen minutes before a Redistricting Commission meeting began, and then all of us could view and discuss the plans live on any computer for the hearing. The one poor guy using Autobound took between one and four HOURS to import an equivalency file, depending on the number of districts in the plan, so he typically had to look on with someone's Maptitude software during the meeting.” Douglas Johnson |
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“Easy to learn and use, good functionality. Built-in measures for redistricting plan evaluation. Tools are there, ready to go. Works easily with related applications and other GIS products.” James Gimpel |
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“Maptitude for Redistricting has immense capability -- it's done everything we've asked and more....The staff at Caliper has been responsive and helpful when we've had questions.” Becky Lennahan |
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“Easy to use. Great import/export formats. Fast and knowledgeable response times. Anyone interested engaged in a redistricting effort should strongly consider this product.” Shawn Carson |
“I find Maptitude reasonably intuitive to use. Some functions and fancy maps require a little more knowledge but it is all learnable. The actual plan making is very simple to use and the data may be presented in different formats. I have also found Caliper willing to make changes suggested by users. To me, this is a primary advantage. They constantly improve their product. I can't give you a point to point comparison because I am not familiar with the competing software. I can tell you that the political operatives used the other software last time and when they saw us use Maptitude, they thought it would have been better.”
Anonymous State Redistricting Office Director
“Our redistricting office purchased Maptitude for Redistricting in 2000, and it was an absolute wonderful buy!
The software is easy to use, and you do not have to be a super computer wizard to use it efficiently. We have a small
staff of about 5 during non-redistricting years, but ramp up in preparation for the coming Census, so it was important
that we have a product that could be learned easily in a short period of time by temporary staff.
Caliper and their staff have been very responsive. Howard Simkowitz and Tracy Horgan have just been a dream to work
with. The usual response time when we have had questions or problems has been within 24 hours.
There was plenty of research and time taken when the product was chosen. I am not saying that there were no problems,
because there were some kinks in the early product, but those were addressed quickly in updated versions. I think that
in comparison to other software that is out there, Maptitude really speaks to the needs of the Redistricting community.
When they were in the development stages, our office worked with them on what was needed and what the expectation would
be for a powerful software solution – in my opinion they delivered.”
Anonymous State Redistricting Office Director
“Maptitude for Redistricting has immense capability -- it's done everything we've asked and more. Plus, our web site, which uses Maptitude for the Web, will provide an easy way for the public to access the redistricting process. The staff at Caliper has been responsive and helpful when we've had questions.”
Anonymous State Redistricting Office Director
“So far I have found the product support from Caliper to be of high quality. Howard's staff are helpful when you have questions. In general, I am pleased with the output that Maptitude can produce, and I think it will provide us with a superior set of maps and reports for redistricting. Finally Maptitude was recommended to me by a panel of GIS staff who worked for our Universities Research Center. These staff persons had been my technical support staff for redistricting in the 2000's, and had served in this capacity for my predecessor in the 1990's. Their belief was that the Caliper Maptitude product was superior to all others and recommended that I purchase it for the 2010 round of redistricting.”
Anonymous State Redistricting Office Director
The Rose Institute at Claremont McKenna College conducts and publishes research primarily on California government and politics. Using computer technology, students and faculty in the Rose Institute advance knowledge about politics and help create services that make the political process more democratic. The Rose Institute uses Maptitude, Maptitude for Redistricting, Maptitude for Precinct and Election Management, and Political Maptitude. Here is what the Rose Institute has to say about Caliper Corporation in its 2005 report, "Restoring the Competitive Edge: California's Need for Redistricting Reform and the Likely Impact of Proposition 77":
“Their longstanding and generous support makes possible all of the Rose Institute's demographic, redistricting, and geographic information systems (GIS) research. Their outstanding, powerful and easy-to-use Maptitude software enables us to train our students up from GIS novices to expert users in only a few hours, and the software's extensive analytic capabilities provide the service and power needed for our work.”
Maptitude for Redistricting was featured in a December 2003 New Yorker Article, "The Great Election Grab," by Jeffrey Toobin. Here are a few excerpts:
I asked [assistant professor of law and political science Nathaniel]
Persily to give me a demonstration of how to draw district lines. He
moved his mouse to the border between two congressional districts. A
ledger on the top half of the screen showed that one of the districts,
as currently configured, had about forty thousand more people than the
other one. The Supreme Court has said that the requirement of one man,
one vote means that each district must have exactly the same
number of people, Persily explained. An early version of the
Pennsylvania plan was rejected by the courts because the districts were
just nineteen voters apart, in districts of about a half million people.
Requirements for that sort of precision virtually mandate the use of
computers for redistricting.
Persily zeroed in even more closely, and a little donkey popped up
inside one of the census blocks. That's where the local congressman
lives, a Democrat, he explained. We have little elephants for the
Republican incumbents. [Maptitude for Redistricting] seemed easy to use,
justifying the boast, on the software company's Web site, that you could
start building plans thirty minutes after opening the box. Persily
chuckled. At a certain point, you admire the video-game appeal of all
this.
Maptitude for Redistricting was featured in a April 24, 2001 Wall Street Journal Article, "Software Makes Redistricting Easier, Accessible," by Will Pinkston. Nearly everyone interviewed for the article uses Maptitude for Redistricting. Here are a few excerpts:
In New Jersey, when a committee of five Republicans
and five Democrats chosen by their parties couldn't agree on how to
redraw the state's legislative boundaries, the state supreme court
tapped Larry Bartels, a Princeton University professor, to break the impasse. After 10 days
locked away in a hotel with the two sides, the professor emerged with a
resolution: an entire state redistricting map drawn on a laptop
computer, using [Maptitude for Redistricting].
Cheaper software is letting independent consultants
in the game, too. George Meier,
former staff director of Florida's House reapportionment committee, had
to requisition $600,000 in computer software and equipment in 1991 to
draft new electoral district boundaries. This year, as a redistricting
expert freelancing for cities and counties in Florida [using Maptitude
for Redistricting], his overhead is considerably lower: He got
everything he needs loaded onto his Dell laptop for under $4,000. And
Baltimore civil-rights attorney Samuel L. Walters is using [Maptitude for Redistricting] to pitch his expertise to
minority groups and local governments. Mr. Walters, who worked for the
NAACP during 1991's redistricting, says he expects to quickly recoup his
costs.
[Caliper Corporation] actually came to market with
one of the first affordable programs just after the [1990] census. Since
then, Caliper has sold Maptitude to more than half of the country's
legislatures and dozens of interest groups.
Maptitude for Redistricting was featured in a May 8, 2001 Baltimore Sun Article, "Redistricting Options Grow with Technology," by Michael Dresser:
Governor Glendening, Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller and House Speaker Casper R. Taylor are using Maptitude for Redistricting to carve Maryland into eight congressional and 47 legislative districts. Karl Aro, director of the Department of Legislative Services, is impressed with the Maptitude program the state has bought from Caliper Corp. in Newton, Massachusetts. “It's light years ahead. The software can do so much more, so much more quickly,” he said. Aro expects his department, which serves legislators of both parties, to be drawing maps for a lot of members this year. The Maryland Republican Party has the Maptitude program, too. Political consultants around the country are also finding the software affordable.
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