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On redistricting City Council districts in 2011
09/20/2010 6:35 AM by John M
Fan of the Fan looks towards 2011 with a piece on next year’s City Council redistricting based on the 2010 census data.
TAGGED: census
There is some data to indicate that Richmond may no longer be a majority minority city. That will have interesting implications for drawing district lines. There are five majority minority districts under the current plan, three majority majority, and one swing district.
The council is already minority majority or I mean majority minority or… What were we talking about?
I would like to know how people south of the river in Gateway district feel they are represented. I rarely hear Ms. Robertson speaking of issues anywhere outside Battery Park/Northside. Why are they not part of 8th district?
Amy #3 I don’t know, or remember if I ever knew, why the 6th is shaped like that. I have some memory of folks laughing about the shape of it; it looks seriously gerrymandered. There WAS a reason for the shape, years ago, and I’d be interested in hearing from someone with the historical memory of why it’s shaped like it is.
Reva is a lot more of an advocate for her district which is immediately adjacent in southside. I met Reva at a Crusade for Voters debate a couple of years ago, and she had an 80 year old woman with her who had lived in the 8th for most of her life and the woman just adored Reva. Robertson has a different approach.
If the population is 204,000, as expected, each district will be about 22,666. The courts allow very little deviation. If a current district is greater than that number, some will be shaved off. If a district is well below that number, expect some voters to be shifted. For practical consequences, if the 8th District is well below 22,000, voters would be added from another district (think 5th or 6th). It gets complicated if both the 9th (Conner) and 8th (Trammel) are low. Then the shifting becomes complicated.
Anyone know when these districts were first drawn? Had to have been after 1970… but anyone really know?
Districts are redrawn every ten years, to account for census data changes.
David #7 – since you seem to have a sense of the political history of Richmond, I will pose this one to you, but am interested in anyone else’s answers, too. Didn’t we have a period of about eight or nine years (give or take) when we had no council elections, due to court action over the annexation of some areas of Chesterfield County? And wasn’t that in the ’70s?
Also, I don’t recall council districts being redrawn every ten years. State legislative districts, yes, but not council. But maybe the census data didn’t mandate redrawing the city council districts every ten years in the recent past…
I wasn’t in Richmond then. The districts are redrawn every ten years, but the changes may be minor. At one point, the Fourth District reached across the river. The it was redrawn to be exclusively south of the river (1990?) This time it may be more interesting. There is a wealth of printed material on redistricting, including a publication from the Virginia Division of Legislative Services, called “Drawing the Line.” Mostly about legislative redistricting, but some information about local governments. Read the section on “regression” if you want your brain to hurt. `