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CRITERIA FOR USE IN 2010 REDISTRICTING PROCESS

• Where possible, easily identifiable geographic boundaries should be followed.
• Communities of interest should be maintained in a single district, where possible, and attempts should be made to avoid splitting neighborhoods.
• To the extent possible, districts should be composed of whole voting precincts. Where this is not possible or practicable, districts should be drawn in a way that permits the creation of practical voting precincts and that ensures that adequate facilities for polling places exist in each voting precinct.
• Although it is recognized that existing districts will have to be altered to reflect new population distribution, any districting plan should, to the extent possible, be based on existing districts.
• Districts must be configured so that they are relatively equal in total population according to the 2000 federal census and current population estimates from other reliable sources. In no event should the total deviation between the largest and the smallest district exceed ten percent (10%). A city should attempt to achieve a deviation that is less than ten percent (10%) according to the best available data.
• Districts should be configured in a manner that will accommodate the reasonably anticipated growth that will occur over the next six years. Toward that end, it will be acceptable for some newly-drawn districts to be purposefully under-populated in anticipation of immediate growth due to the rapid construction of new housing units.
• The districts should be compact and composed of contiguous territory. Compactness may contain a functional, as well as a geographical dimension.
• Consideration may be given to the preservation of incumbent-constituency relations by recognition of the residence of incumbents and their history in representing certain areas.
• The plan should be narrowly tailored to avoid retrogression in the position of racial minorities and language minorities as defined in the Voting Rights Act with respect to their effective exercise of the electoral franchise.
• The plan should not fragment a geographically compact minority community or pack minority voters in the presence of polarized voting so as to create liability under section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. § 1973.

This information is provided for educational purposes, only, and does not constitute legal advice.