Along the second-floor corridor of faculty offices in the William H. Neukom Building at Stanford Law School, one door stands out.

It is completely covered by red and blue. Upon closer inspection, you’ll see it’s papered with electoral maps of the United States showing results from the 2022 November general election broken down by county. There’s also a map detailing U.S. Senate and House election results, showing how each district voted.

The door and its colorful display belong to the office of Nate Persily, James B. McClatchy Professor of Law. And if you haven’t already guessed, elections are his thing.

As are election maps. In addition to being a prolific legal scholar in the law of democracy, he has also served as either a special master or court-appointed expert to craft congressional or legislative districting plans for Georgia, Maryland, Connecticut, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania.

The maps that are central to his work are also central to the decor of his office, which is lined with framed maps of the districts he’s helped redraw over the years.

“Each one of them has a story behind it,” says Persily, JD ’98, during a tour of his office, in which he reflected on the painstaking process of district planning.

For example, the New Hampshire map was one he says he agonized over.

“It’s only two districts, so it’s not terribly complicated, but I actually suffered over it because you had to move a few thousand people from one district to the other,” Persily says. But he was able to figure out a near perfect split by moving just five towns from one district to the other. “I hit the magic number perfectly—incredible, really.”

But not all maps offer such elegant solutions.

“In reality, it’s a bunch of trade-offs of values that are in tension with each other,” he says, explaining that factors such as race, competition, geography, and industry must all be weighed. For example, when redrawing Georgia’s election map, he had to carefully consider whether a town was in a pecan- or peanut-growing county. Above Persily’s desk is a map that resembles a mythical creature—turns out, it’s both.

It is a cartoon created in the early 19th century by Elkanah Tisdale criticizing election districts on the North Shore of Massachusetts that Governor Elbridge Gerry had redrawn to prevent the Federalist Party from gaining power.

Legend has it that at a meeting of reporters, someone remarked that the new voting blocs resembled a salamander.

To which someone replied, it’s a “Gerry-mander”—a turn of phrase that, thanks to Tisdale’s widely circulated illustration, has been used ever since to describe the practice of drawing district boundaries to lead to a desired outcome.

In one corner of Persily’s office hangs a particularly notable item: a framed Norman Rockwell painting, “Which One? (Undecided Voter; Man in Voting Booth)” that appeared on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post in 1944. That year, two New Yorkers ran against each other for the U.S. presidency: Roosevelt and Dewey—creating a conundrum for some voters with allegiances to the Empire State.

“You’ll notice he’s voting on a lever machine,” Persily says, pointing to a 100-year-old prototype from the company that manufactured those machines. The machine, which sits on a nearby shelf, is positioned directly in the eyeline of Rockwell’s undecided voter.

Alongside family photos there’s also a collection of sports memorabilia, including a soccer ball signed by David Beckham and a basketball signed by the 1985 Boston Celtics team.

While Persily is not affiliated with a political party, he’s a little more flexible when it comes to showing his allegiance to a sports team. Thanks to his two sons, he roots for the Golden State Warriors. SL