Jonathan Cervas, UCI political science Ph.D. ’20, has been chosen by a New York state court to serve as the special master for New York's congressional redistricting. In this role, Cervas will be reviewing proposed maps and potentially preparing a back-up map to make available to the court if the New York legislature fails to offer a new and constitutionally acceptable map. The original legislatively enacted congressional map was held to violate the New York State Constitution.

Cervas is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Carnegie Mellon University's Institute for Politics and Strategy. He previously served as the mapping consultant to the Pennsylvania Legislative Reapportionment Commission whose 2022 plans have recently been approved by the state's Supreme Court. Cervas has also worked as a mapping consultant to Bernard Grofman, UCI Distinguished Professor of political science, in redistricting cases in several states in which Grofman had been the special master in charge of remedial map-making.

Cervas is a specialist on elections, with published work on topics such as the Electoral College, partisan gerrymandering, and rank choice voting.