“The Least Disruption To The Voters”
An interesting note today on Ian Donnis’ WRNI blog, where he referred back to an article of his from back in June. According to Cicilline spokeswoman Jessica Kershaw:
The redistricting process has not yet begun, but looking ahead, Congressman Cicilline has confidence that this process will be done fairly and in a way that causes the least disruption for voters.
So let’s get this right. Back in June, the concern was to cause the least disruption for the voters. Then recently, we saw a map that would displace more than 120,000 voters in order to balance the districts by 7,200. We hear of both the Doherty and Loughlin camps complaining about that map. We hear of Anthony Gemma complaining and most of all, we hear Congressman Jim Langevin complaining. But who do we not hear complaining about it? The person who wanted the least disruption for the voters. If the Cicilline camp still feels this way, I expect that they too will reject the map that shifts more than 120,000 voters between the districts.
If anyone wants a firm grounding “re-districting” there are a large number of Supreme Court cases on the subject, largely from the Civil Rights era. I can’t point to a site just now,but they must be freely available.
The one I remember best was from Georgia, or Alabama. One had a portion of a “Ditrict” unconnected to the “main body” by more than 30 miles.
One need only pull up a map of Norfolk County in Mass. You will see two towns in Norfolk County which have no connection whatsoever to the rest of Norfolk County.