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PLEASE NOTE, IF YOU ARE NEW TO THIS SITE. THE CONTEST IS OVER. WE ENCOURAGE YOU TO STAY INVOLVED USING THE ARIZONA INDEPENDENT REDISTRICTING COMMISSION’S INTERACTIVE MAPPING TOOL TO SCRUTINIZE ALL MAPS THAT COME FROM OR ARE SUBMITTED TO THE COMMISSION. VISIT THEIR SITE AT WWW.AZREDISTRICTING.ORG.
THANK YOU.
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Redistrict Arizona has several assumptions built in to it. Please see the following to learn more.
In Arizona, that will be Native American and Latino (the census uses the term “Hispanic). There are not sufficient numbers of African American residents in the current sensus data to make a dedicated legislative or congressional district.
The Department of Justice ultimately decides whether the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission has created a sufficient number of voter protection districts, otherwise known as minority/majority districts.
However, for the purposes of Redistrict Arizona, we assume that the Department of Justice will require at least as many voter protection districts for both the legislature and congress, as they did in 2001.
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 map:
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 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.
You should be able to refine population as closely as the Independent Redistricting Commission will, as both Redistrict Arizona and the mapping tool used by the Independent Redistricting Commission will use census blocks as the smallest building block.
The Scorecard and the Plan Statistics Table will show you in percentages and raw numbers how close you are to equal population. Check the key in the lower right hand corner of your map to see that colors represent how close or far away you are from your target. Because we don’t know exactly how much of a variance the IRC will allow in defining equal population, we consider equal population to be within +/- 1% of exact equal population.
Most methods compare the shape of the district to a circle, and that is what Redistrict Arizona uses. When you see a score of 86% compact, that means 46% of the district fits inside a perfect circle.
Convoluted and amoeba-like district shapes would have a much lower score, like 24%. Please remember that the shape alone does not give you an accurate sense of the district’s compactness.
What is a community of interest?
This measure was originally conceived to prevent districts being drawn in which the elected representatives had little in common with those he or she represented. For instance, would a community made up predominantly of farmers be fairly represented by an urban city dweller that has never set foot on a farm?
However, the criterion is much more flexible in urban and sub-urban areas. Who is to say that a district would look less like its representative if it did or did not include one small neighborhood in the middle of a city? An elected representative in any urban or suburban area is likely to reflect his or her district, so long as the district is predominantly urban or suburban, regardless of the contents of that district.
To put it another way, does the movement of a district boundary a half-mile one way or another in an urban area really change the character of a district and who represents it?
If this is such a loosely defined criterion, how do we decide what a community of interest is?
The answer is a function of public participation. Those who organize themselves most effectively to communicate to the Independent Redistricting Commission about their identity as a community are more likely affect the maps in their favor.
However, the very participatory nature of this criterion also leaves it up to misuse.
The most notable misuse in 2001 was the following: an elected official or candidates organized surrogates to ask the Independent Redistricting Commission to create a community of interest, which just happened to give that elected official or candidate a safe, noncompetitive electoral district.
For the purposes of Redistrict Arizona, we will not score this criterion. We encourage you to organize stakeholders who could reasonably argue for a well-defined community of interest around an agreed-upon map.
After all, in the pre-clearance process, the Department of Justice will look to see if districts were drawn with the support of broad stakeholder groups.
Redistrict America Judges will consider any annotated information provided with a map submission in regard to communities of interest.
NOTE: “Communities of interest” is not defined by ethnic grouping. That is left to redistricting criteria number 1.
Similarly, a city might have been split down the middle between two districts when such a move could have been avoided.
While there might be some cases where the residents might want this to happen and might communicate that desire as a community of interest, the general rule here is to respect geographic features and city or town boundaries.
While not as open to interpretation as “Communities of Interest”, “Respect for Geographic Boundaries” would be difficult for Redistrict Arizona to score.
As such, our judges will rank this portion of the contest and consider any annotated information provided with a map submission in regard to the boundary changes. While the other criteria will be presented to the judges as straight rankings, we will present contest entries to the judges, which will include geographic features and district boundaries. The judges will consider and rank each entry.
We will present these entries in such a way as to maintain a high degree of confidence that judges are not purposefully or unintentionally favoring any sitting elected officials.
Redistrict Arizona will show you in the scorecard how many competitive districts you have made.
There are supporters and detractors for both methods. We hope to present both and we will be watching the IRC to see what method they intend to use and we will try to match that.
It is crucial to point out that competition is as important at communities of interest, compactness and geographic boundaries.
In the Supreme Court decision of 2009, (Arizona Minority Coalition for Fair Redistricting v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission) the justices ruled against the plaintiffs’ effort to argue that competition should have been given greater weight than it was in the 2001 redistricting. However, the justices made it clear that competition could be weighted higher if the commission chose to do so:
“The direction that competitiveness should be favored unless one of two conditions occurs does not, contrary to the Commission’s assertion, mean that the competitiveness goal is less mandatory than the other goals, can be ignored, or should be relegated to a secondary role.”
– Arizona Minority Coalition for Fair Redistricting v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission, Paragraph 35 on Page 24.
