This looks awesome: "Join us for the first ever Bellingham Subdued Saunter! A self-paced nearly 20 mile walk exploring Bellingham." givebutter.com/subduedsaunter #BellinghamWA

I just added one of these to #OpenStreetMap. Need to get these local tree experts involved in mapping! #BellinghamWA

Commentary from 25 county auditors in #WashingtonState: "Vote-at-home is the law in Washington — and it works" washingtonstatestandard.com/2025/09/16/v... #Elections #VoteByMail #uspol #USPolitics

Happy National Voter Registration Day to those who celebrate

gerrymandering in pre-warp cultures

#KPopDemonHunters #PopVsSoda

This is a big deal! #RankedChoiceVoting & #ProportionalRepresentation are in the top 5 issues that local voters care about. Voters are fed up with dysfunctional government, and they know electoral reform can fix our democracy. Now will our local elected officials pay attention to what voters want?

One of my customers had so much fun visiting the Map Center that he came back a few days later with a camera. He made this magnificent short documentary about my store, about me, and why I bother to do any of it at all. It's really lovely and I hope you watch it! youtu.be/Dj9uKpk3Idk?...

We managed to go 7 years since the last proposal to partition #California. I just updated #Wikipedia with a map of the latest Republican plan to split off inland California from the coastal counties. (And no, it's never going to happen). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partiti...

Map projections in the news! And we cartographers are all relieved that it's not the Gall-Peters Projection again. Via Reuters: "African Union urges adoption of world map showing continent's true size" www.reuters.com/world/africa... #CorrectTheMap

Hey #WhatcomCounty: fill out the poll for Cascadia Daily's "Citizens Agenda" and shape the questions they will ask of local candidates. In particular, I encourage you to pick #15 about Ranked Choice Voting and #36 about Gerrymandering, but there are a lot of other good topics too. #BellinghamWA

We finally wrote part 3 of Stamen's history of #OpenStreetMap (only four years after we wrote parts 1 and 2, lol). Enjoy a long read including many Stamen maps from over the past two decades, created by the amazing team of coworkers & alums I've had the pleasure of working with over the years.

Very much enjoying the #BlenderMaps in this scrollytelling piece from Reuters about the potential sale of public lands: www.reuters.com/graphics/USA... #cartography #maps #dataviz

Professional project work making it's debut!! You can now check out an interactive *generalized* zoning & land use map for almost all of Washington State. It has data up to the end of 2024. So recent municipal middle housing code updates are not captured. Still, a strong tool to check out!

Both parties are threatening to gerrymander their way to an advantage in Congress. The Fair Representation Act would end gerrymandering wars with: 🔢 #RankedChoiceVoting 👫 Multi-member districts ✍️ New redistricting rules Learn about the #FairRepAct ⬇️ fairvote.org/press/fair-r...

Shoutout to @beyer.house.gov and @raskin.house.gov for reintroducing this important bill! Learn more about #RankedChoiceVoting, and ask Congress to support the #FairRepAct ⬇️ fairvoteaction.quorum.us/campaign/Fai...

Our pick-one elections are the root of the problem: ➡️Voters feel forced to pick the “lesser of two evils” ➡️Politicians gerrymander district lines ➡️Tens of millions get no real representation ➡️Elected officials can’t work together That’s where the #FairRepAct comes in.

A new bill in Congress would stop gerrymandering, and give voters more choice & more voice with #RankedChoiceVoting in US House & Senate elections. Ask your members of Congress to support the Fair Representation Act at the link below, and read on to learn more. #FairRepAct 🧵

Just came across this adorable video that clearly explains how the new multi-winner #RankedChoiceVoting system works in Portland, Oregon. www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iZL...

Read our recap of presentations, inspiration, and upcoming projects from the 2025 @stateofthemapus.bsky.social conference last month in Boston on the blog: stamen.com/stamen-at-st....

Loving this youth-led effort to rename #WashingtonState and design a new state flag! #WashOutWashington

"With Ranked Choice Voting in NYC, Women Win" Before 2021, New York’s 51-member council had always been majority male. In 2021, with ranked choice voting (RCV), voters elected not only a women-majority council but nearly doubled the previous high, with 31 seats. thefulcrum.us/electoral-re...

New on the blog: we say goodbye to one of our oldest mapping tools... by creating a new map to visualize an archive of a half million user generated images! Read "Farewell, Map Stack" here: stamen.com/farewell-map... Join us at the @stateofthemapus.bsky.social conference this Friday to hear more.

A fascinating dynamic of #RankedChoiceVoting as seen in the NYC mayoral campaign: here is a candidate for mayor (who has maxed out his allowed campaign donations) raising money for another mayoral candidate, so that either of them has a better chance of defeating their most disliked opponent!

Reposting for #CascadiaDay: “The Cascadia Flag needs serious design help“ mappingmashups.medium.com/the-cascadia...

Proponents of ranked choice voting say giving voters the option to rank candidates makes elections more competitive, more representative and less susceptible to gerrymandering, while opponents say it can confuse voters and cloud the election process.

Good article in @cascadiadaily.com about the recent Whatcom County charter review meeting on #RankedChoiceVoting. It was really a fascinating meeting with four invited #RCV experts from around the country. Video of the meeting is linked at the end of the article www.cascadiadaily.com/2025/may/14/...

Very cool. Don't miss the interactive version citiesmoving.com/visualizatio...

Stamen has designed a lot of maps across the carto industry over the years. Read about how Stamen uses tooling to debug maps, as we explore how data, tiles, and stylesheets work together to make beautiful maps. Read now at stamen.com/debugging-10...

With CBC now having called all ridings it's time for the land-vs-people-vote animation.

WSDOT is asking for input on the Washington State Rail Plan. Fill out the quick survey here: engagekh.mysocialpinpoint.com/WAStateRailP... #CascadiaRail

A great article from @sightline.org about how Proportional Representation would benefit Whatcom County: www.sightline.org/2025/04/10/w... #BellinghamWA

Nice article in the Cascadia Daily about one of our favorite local artworks, the "Non Sign II" sculpture at the Blaine border crossing: www.cascadiadaily.com/2025/apr/08/... #BellinghamWA

Hey Washington State voters, we have one more day to get the Ranked-Choice Voting bill out of committee in the state legislature. Please call the Legislative Hotline at (800) 562-6000 and register your support for the Washington VOICES Act, HB 1448! Link to the bill: app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?...

It’s that time of year! Love it or hate it, #DaylightSavingTime is upon us, and we are listening to our podcast episode from a few years ago with cartographer @awoodruff.bsky.social about his Daylight Saving Time Gripe Assistant Tool. Give it a listen here: stamen.com/andy-woodruf...

I need to downsize my library & I'm getting ready to sell a ton of cartography #books. I'm looking at both Alibris & Biblio as options for selling online. Does anyone have experience w/ either platform? I'm also looking at AbeBooks but none of my stuff is that old or rare and their fees are higher.

This is a fantastic video showing how Proportional Representation via Ranked Choice Voting is actually used for elections in Ireland, demonstrated by 6th graders! www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDPl... 🇮🇪

We created a Starter Pack to help you connect with other state agencies here on Bluesky. Give them a follow. #wawx #seattle #pnw go.bsky.app/Fez8yDd

More #BellinghamWA content:

i remember hearing seattles top city planner tell a crowd of us that they didnt want “cookie cutter housing” at which point i interrupted amd said “but i like cookies. who else likes cookies?” everyone agreed “well it sounds like a cookie cutter is a tool youll need”. he actually came around i think

Great news, voters in Alaska voted to retain #RankedChoiceVoting! alaskapublic.org/2024/11/20/a...

It's time for the quadrennial update of Redraw the States! This tool allows users to change the borders of US states to see how those changes would affect election results kevinhayeswilson.com/redraw/

❗️The measure to repeal ranked-choice voting in Alaska is now trailing — by 192 votes statewide. The roughly 3.9K ballots counted today broke for the 'no' by 29%. (About as many more ballots remain, probably a little more.)

Nice coverage of the Whatcom County chapter of FairVote in the local university paper, The Western Front: "Post-election gathering sparks hope for democracy in Bellingham: FairVote WA provides a space for discussion on ranked-choice voting & electoral reform" www.thefrontonline.com/article/2024...

As I've seen some of the newer folks wonder how Bluesky is going to handle verification, let me drop this here: How to use your domain as your Bluesky handle. As you can see, I have done it, and no one else here has access to my domain, so you can tell it's really me. bsky.social/about/blog/4...

It's great to see another surge in Twitter migration, & yes this place is nice but I'm going to keep pushing you all to consider Mastodon. Haven't we learned the lesson that we can't trust our vital public discourse to a single platform providing a "free" service backed by VC capital? It can't last.

Rural areas in Alaska have very large Alaskan Native population, a community that mobilized to defend ranked-choice voting, as you may have missed but we reported here. That keeps RCV alive for now. boltsmag.org/alaska-ranke...

After the election, I saw a ton of hot-takes comparing the 2020 and 2024 popular vote totals. But are still millions of votes left to count, especially in places like California. So I made a chart comparing 2024 so far with the same point in 2020, so you can see how many more votes to expect: