Meeting for nearly nine hours today, the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission tentatively approved Congressional and legislative district maps -- subject to analyses for compliance with the Voting Rights Act. In a process that began when citizen volunteers submitted applications to become commission members, more than a year ago, a major milestone was reached today on a pair of 3-2 votes.
The first vote, on Congressional maps, had the expected nay votes from Freeman and Stertz. However, this evening, after deadlocking 2-2-1 (Mathis/McNulty - Y, Stertz/Freeman - N, Herrera abstained) on the first try at adopting the legislative map, Mathis, McNulty and Stertz voted Aye, Freeman and Herrera voted Nay and the deed was done.
The Arizona Republic's Mary Jo Pitzl and Capitol Media Services' Howie Fischer covered the meeting, so look for their write ups. In the meantime, I will write more tomorrow. The maps as adopted will also be posted and available for review by tomorrow afternoon along with demographic and voter registration data for each set (to calculate how competitive each map is).
UPDATE
The maps, entitled "Tentative Final Maps" can now be found on the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission's website. The maps can be viewed in Google Earth (KMZ files) or on PDF or JPG files. Several related reports are also available in Excel spreadsheet or PDF format and several data files for use with Maptitude or other mapping/GIS tools.
Steve,
ReplyDeleteI used to be a practicing attorney doing family law, and had cases like these with child custody fights - post divorce. Visitation issues were often acrimonious, so at one point I set up a Drop off program at a neutral spot for divorced parents to leave their kids.