Fairness and transparency complaints about the 2002 redistricting process and map are fueling a review of how Minneapolis draws electoral boundaries.
By STEVE BRANDT, Star Tribune
Momentum is building at Minneapolis City Hall for devising a fairer process for drawing the ward and other election boundaries that govern for whom voters may vote.
The effort is being led by Cam Gordon, new chair of the City Council’s Election Committee, supported by Elizabeth Glidden, that panel’s chair for the last four years.
They’ve asked the Charter Commission to devise a fairer, more transparent process for drawing election lines that could be presented to voters as a charter amendment next fall. The commission agreed last week to establish a subgroup to work on a timeline for doing so. The next redistricting happens in 2012.
“I strongly believe this process could be improved,” Gordon told the commission.
Some of the momentum for changing how political lines are drawn comes from a legal challenge by Green Party candidates and others to the boundaries drawn in 2002 by the city’s last redistricting commission. That lawsuit alleged that the redistricting group lacked enough minority group or Green members to be representative, and that it treated minority voters unfairly.
A federal judge found the 2002 plan met legal standards. Nevertheless, Charter Commission member Andrea Rubenstein said, the lawsuit raised issues that deserve examination.
Gordon was a Green Party official and plaintiff in the legal challenge. Greens felt particularly aggrieved by the last redistricting because it put both of the party’s council incumbents into wards where they were forced to run against DFL incumbents. Both lost.
