I have never been in a redistricting fight that was lost because the law was unclear. I have been in plenty that were lost because the data was.

Personal post. Personal opinions.

In 2021, a coalition I was part of sat in a community meeting in Gainesville, Georgia. Folks knew the new map was bad. They could feel it. The lines split their neighborhood, ran past their church, and put their kids' school in a different district than their house.

The room had thirty people, two attorneys, and zero data analysts.

We lost that fight.

Not because the law was unclear. Because the room couldn't answer the questions a judge would ask. What's the racially polarized voting pattern in this precinct? What does the ballot rejection rate look like for absentee ballots from this address range? Where is the nearest precinct, before and after the new map, for a voter at this address?

Those are not abstract questions. They are calculations you do in a spreadsheet, on a Tuesday, between two other things.

The April 2026 ruling in Callais v. Landry made those questions harder (Supreme Court opinion). Now the analyst has to do all of that and show intent. The legal framework moved. The data work has to catch up.

Georgia just finished a special session where lawmakers chose not to redraw the congressional map yet (Newsweek, June 2026). That gives coalitions a window. Not a long one.

This is what the policy analysis course is built for.

Six 20-minute modules. Real Georgia voter files. The post-Callais analytic framework. Each module ends with one action that feeds your final Policy Data Brief.

Module 1 — pick your policy question. Module 2 — read the voter file fields. Module 3 — understand what changed after Callais. Module 4 — apply disparate impact analysis to a real precinct. Module 5 — turn a number into a defensible finding. Module 6 — write the brief.

You finish with a one-page artifact you can hand to your county commission, your state rep, your coalition partners, or your lawyer.

No code required. Comfort with a spreadsheet helps. That's it.

The course is free because coalitions in Georgia's 159 counties are not going to fund this on their own. Take it. If it helps, share it. If you want to support more like it, pay for one of our other courses or donate.

Start the course