Commission Works On Drawing New Legislative Districts
Montana’s political eyes continue to be glued on the districting commission as work continues to divide the state into two U.S. House district and for legislative districts.
The Districting and Apportionment Commission will meet again on Tuesday, Aug. 17.
During a meeting in July, the commission adopted its goals and criteria for both the new U.S. House district as well as state legislative districts.
After results by the U.S. Census proved that Montana was in line for another U.S. House seat, candidates already have announced their candidacy for the positions. Those candidates include Democrats Laurie Bishop of Livingston and Monica Tranel of Missoula along with Republicans former Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke and former state senator Al Olszewski of Kalispell.
Mandatory criteria that the commission adopted during the July meeting for the U.S. House districts included:
•Districts must be as equal in population as is practicable
•No plan is acceptable if a racial or language minority group has less opportunity than other members of the electorate to participate in the process.
•Each district must be contiguous and shall consist of compact territory.
Goal criteria adopted included:
•No plan may be drawn to unduly favor a political party.
•The commission shall attempt to minimize dividing cities, towns, counties and federal reservations between districts when possible.
•The commission may consider keeping communities of interest intact. Communities of interest can be based on Indian reservations, urban interests, suburban interests, rural interests, tribal interests, neighborhoods, trade areas, geographic locations, demographics, communication and transportation networks, social, cultural, historic and economic interests and connections or occupations and lifestyles.
•The commission may consider competitiveness of districts when drawing plans.
Mandatory criteria for state legislative districts include:
•Legislative districts must be as equal in population as is practicable. The maximum average deviation of all House districts shall be no more than plus or minus 1 percent deviations.
•No plan is acceptable if a racial or language minority group has less opportunity than other members of the electorate to participate in the process.
•Each district should consist of compact territory and be contiguous.
Goal criteria for legislative districts include:
•No plan may be drawn to unduly favor a political party.
•The commission shall attempt to minimize dividing cities, towns, counties and federal reservations between districts when possible.
•The commission may consider keeping communities of interest intact. Communities of interest can be based on Indian reservations, urban interests, suburban interests, rural interests, tribal interests, neighborhoods, trade areas, geographic locations, demographics, communication and transportation networks, social, cultural, historic and economic interests and connections or occupations and lifestyles.
•The commission may consider competitiveness of districts when drawing plans.
•The commission shall consider assigning holdover senators to the Senate District which contains the greatest number of residents of the district from which they were previously elected when possible.
