Will The Real Justin Levitt Please Stand Up

 On the tv show To Tell The Truth, there were three contestants who all said they were the same person and a panel of four asked them questions to determine which one was the real, in this case, Justin Levitt.  When the questions were done, the host would say, "Will the real [Justin Levitt] please stand up."

I discovered Justin Levitt ten years ago when I was blogging the Alaska Redistricting Board.  Levitt is a voting rights expert from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.  I've been following him on Twitter.  So I sent him a direct message when I found out who the Redistricting Board's Voting Rights Act consultant was.  Did he know him?  Was he a good choice?  I didn't get a response right away.  In the meantime I read the whole winning proposal and saw that Justin Levitt was one of the experts listed on the proposal.  So, I direct messaged Levitt again saying that I saw he was on the proposal and so I understood why he hadn't responded.  

Then he did respond. There were two Justin Levitts, and yes he was the one at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, and no, he wasn't part of the winning proposal.  

Justin Levitt - LMU and White House

Instead, it turns out, according to his university profile, 

"As of April 8, 2021, Professor Levitt is on leave from Loyola, serving as the White House Senior Policy Advisor for Democracy and Voting Rights."  

And he does have a website called All About Redistricting. 

Justin Levitt -National Demographics
Corporation

Meanwhile, there's another Justin Levitt who is also an expert on redistricting.  He's  the Vice President of the National Demographics Corporation and got his PhD in political science at  UC San Diego.  The dissertation is titled, "“Beyond the Circle: Geographic Constraints on Tradeoffs in Redistricting.”

This is the Justin Levitt who is listed on the winning Voting Rights Act proposal.

So, the Justin Levitt I'm familiar with and whose redistricting page I've visited and whom I follow on Twitter, is NOT the Justin Levitt who will be part of the Voting Rights Act consultant's team.  

But I couldn't help but recall the old tv show To Tell The Truth, so here's the episode of To Tell The Truth Bruce Adelson of Federal Voting Rights Consulting ... July 3, 1961 - 60 years ago this week.  One of the panelists is a very young Johnny Carson.  And the first guest was the fireworks director at the Los Angeles Coliseum. 

But in our case, there actually are two Justin Levitts who both work in the field of voting rights and redistricting.  The Levitt I contacted did say that they have met.  It's probably fairly common to have to people working in the same profession, but in this case the name is not too common and the field is pretty specialized.  

It seems to me To Tell The Truth could have up their game by having three contestants who all had the same name.