My name is William Pittman, and I'm a data journalist based in south Mississippi. Since 2020, my investigative data journalism has exposed systemic failures in Mississippi's election infrastructure, including a spatial analysis that revealed how polling place changes affecting 65,000 voters were unreported by state officials, with relocations disproportionately impacting Black and Hispanic communities.

My data investigations have been cited by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in congressional testimony and by them and other civil rights organizations in voting rights litigation. I've also drawn national attention and earned multiple journalism awards. My practice combines spatial analysis, investigative research, and interactive visualization to make complex civic systems legible to the public. I aim to use this space to publish methodologies, code, and datasets openly, contributing to the infrastructure of accountability journalism.

My work, much as I am, is deeply rooted in place and history. As a descendant of the first settler-colonizers on what is now the Mississippi Gulf Coast, it is incumbent upon me to acknowledge that the land I work on and hail from is unceded Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Biloxi territory as well as to recognize my own complicity in the continued severance of those peoples from their lands. As a descendant of generations of enslavers, I recognize that the descendants of those trafficked and enslaved are largely the same communities facing systemic and systematic disenfranchisement today. My personal connection to and understanding of these historical through-lines—from colonial violence to enslavement to Jim Crow to contemporary voter suppression—informs both the critical precision I bring to my work and my stubborn hope that we can produce a more equitable future.