Saturday, August 13, 2011

Busy week coming up for Redistricting Commission

After the end of the first round of public hearings on redistricting, the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission (AIRC), the five members of the Commission had a week off.

...OK, it was actually a week off from public meetings throughout the state.  Lots of work was still going on.

However, they are going to make up for the week "off" by holding two (perhaps three) public meetings this week.

Monday, they are scheduled to hold a meeting in Casa Grande.  The scheduled topic is to obtain, consider, and possibly take action on legal advice pertaining to Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne's "investigation" into the AIRC.

Wednesday, a meeting will be held in the Phoenix City Council chambers.  This one is a more general meeting and includes an address from retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

Finally, Steve at Arizona Egaltarian is reporting that a meeting is planned for Thursday in Casa Grande, where they will be officially unveiling and selecting grid maps.  These are maps of legislative and Congressional districts that are based only on the criteria of equal population and compactness.  The final maps will be very different after adjusting them for other criteria such as adherence to the Voting Rights Act and competitiveness.

To add a little perspective on this, consider the Congressional district grid map created during the 2000 redistricting cycle -





















...and compare it to the final map of Congressional districts -





















The 2000 legislative maps are similarly different (yes, I just wrote that sentence! :) ).

In other words, if you are in a grid map district that looks great to you, don't gloat, and if you are in one that looks horrible, don't panic.

Things will change greatly over the next couple of months.

When the schedule for the next round of hearings, aka "the second leg of the AIRC's traveling road show," is posted, I'll post it here.

Until then, and even after, keep up with the redistricting process at Arizona Egaltarian.

1 comment:

Tom said...

I'm glad the RC is doing as we asked and giving fits to the bullying bumpkins who want to stack the deck.