Following the Greensboro City Council redistricting fiasco, some question [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] has been raised about whether the Guilford County Commission is getting a free pass on this.
As a preliminary reporting step, I called Stephen Dew, the county's GIS manager, to find out if the 2010 Census has created a population variance between any of the commission's nine districts of 10 percent or more. If that's the case, the county would need to redistrict to meet a constitutional requirement of providing equal representation to the citizenry.
Dew said he was asked to investigate this very question by the city attorney earlier today. He'll likely have an answer in the next couple days.
Some might look at redistricting as an opportunity to right the wrongs of the past or to design districts that are more competitive. While those are both worth discussing, for me the primary consideration is whether it's necessary at all because redistricting disrupts existing relationships between constituents and their elected representatives.
1 comment:
if he rules no redistricting is needed i hope you or someone will look over his analysis with a fine tooth comb
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