AZ REDISTRICTING? DO THE MATH

posted by Michael Chihak

Doing the math is most important when it comes to congressional and legislative redistricting in Arizona.

It depends on who is doing the math and for what purpose. Richard Gilman, journalist and chief contributor to thinkingarizona.com, demonstrared so in an opinion piece he wrote that appeared in Sunday's [Arizona Daily Star(http://azstarnet.com/news/opinion/article_6055df29-0b0d-52d3-9eb4-2cd63cb477fb.html).

Besides population equity, the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission must draw boundaries that comply with the U.S. Constitution and the Voting Rights Act. Additionally, the boundaries should:

-- Be geographically compact and contiguous.

-- Respect communities of interest.

-- Use geographic features, city, town and county boundaries.

-- Allow for politically competitive districts "where to do so would create no significant detriment to the other goals."

Those requirements make the math much more complicated, and as is being demonstrated in some early numbers crunching, mean that most maps would have trouble fulfilling even four of the six goals.

For Friday's Arizona Week, we will look at the numbers and talk to those who would influence the process.