Voting Age Population Contest Requirements

June 20th, 2011 • 1 Comment

Please note an error that we made in our contest definitions.

We indicated the exact percentage of voting age population Hispanic voters were in each of the Hispanic legislative districts in 2001, but we failed to give you the exact percentages that were in the congressional districts. Our apologies.

As we have mentioned previously, four our contest purposes, you need to do at least as well as the 2001 maps in creating voting age population density in order to be considered for the contest.

The revision is on the contest definitions page, as well as copied below:

In the last decade, Arizona created 7 voter protection districts in the legislature and 2 in our congressional delegation.

Redistrict Arizona will not allow you to draw fewer voter protection districts than were approved in 2001, but you can draw more.
Voter protection districts are defined by the number of voting age residents. While in the eyes of the Department of Justice, Arizona could allocate more voting age residents to a given legislative or congressional district, they cannot dilute that number from where it was in 2001.

To be more specific about what happened in 2001, please consider the following in regards to the congressional maps:

In 2001, we created district that had a 51.51% Hispanic voting age population (VAP) and one that had 44.47% Hispanic VAP. For our purposes, we will accept at least one district of at least 51.51% and one of at least 44.47% or two of at least 50% Hispanic VAP.

Please note that if you run your maps through the validation process on Redistrict Arizona it might not recognize two districts at 50%, but you can still submit your maps to the contest.

Please consider the following in regards to the legislative maps:

In 2001, there was at least 1 district be greater than 60% Native American VAP.

There were at least 3 districts be greater than 55% Hispanic VAP.

There were at least 4 districts be between 40% and 55% Hispanic VAP.

There were at least 2 districts be between 30% and 40% Hispanic VAP.*

*These 30-40% districts were specifically cited as being Hispanic influence districts by the commission in their submission to DOJ and were cited by DOJ in their objection as requiring greater Hispanic populations. So, while 30%-40% VAP is not a majority, it is recognized as a significant level.

We know from current census data that some of the districts that previously met this 30%-40% measure no longer do. At the same time, current data indicates that it may be possible to make as many as 4 30%-40% VAP districts. For the purposes of Redistrict Arizona, we will require that maps have at least two of these 30%-40% VAP districts (in addition to the other higher ones), knowing that you can make more if you’d like.

So when Redistrict Arizona indicates in the Scorecard that you are meeting the voting rights act, it is simply saying that you have met or exceeded the benchmarks that were met in 2001. We cannot tell whether the Department of Justice would actually adopt your plan. But we can tell you whether you meet the benchmark accepted in the past.

See the original 2001 mapping results here.

One Response

Contest Deadline Extended says:

July 5, 2011 at 12:07 pm

[...] VRA requirements, some did not but were very close. To learn more about those requirements, see this blog post and the Contest [...]

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