Oregon Legislators Release Proposed Redistricting Maps
Oregon’s legislative redistricting committees released proposed district maps for public opinion Friday morning, starting the process of gaining public feedback before the Sept. 27 deadline to pass redistricting legislation.
The joint meeting of the State Senate and House Committees on Redistricting took place virtually due to rising COVD-19 cases in Oregon.
During the meeting, Senate committee chair Sen. Kathleen Taylor spoke about the new maps submitted for the congressional, Senate and House districts, while the House co-chairs submitted two maps for the Senate and House districts.
Republican Rep. Shelly Boshart Davis, co-chair of the House Committee on Redistricting, disparaged the 2011 redistricting process and Democrats plans to use the existing maps as a model.
“The current districts we are living with are based on partisan gerrymandering maps, drawn to benefit the political party and politicians in power at the expense of Oregonians,” Boshart Davis said. “It’s well known that our current maps were drawn for the purpose of benefiting one political party and its incumbents. Oregonians deserve to have non-partisan maps as the law and Oregon Constitution require.”
Voting records on the Oregon Legislature website show the 2011 congressional redistricting bill passed with 36 of 44 Republican legislators voting for the bill.
Rep. Andrea Salinas, the Democratic co-chair of the committee, engaged Boshart Davis’s claims of gerrymandering head on.
“With all due respect to my co-chair, repeating the false claim of gerrymandering doesn’t make it true. The maps we’re basing our current maps on passed in 2011 and they were passed with overwhelming bipartisan support, where the House was evenly split between the two parties 30–30. There was no litigation, no complaints, and the committees worked collaboratively to come up with fair maps. Full stop,” said Salinas.
Salinas also stated that House Republicans were unwilling to engage at all with the maps Democrats drew, forcing each party to submit separate maps.
The House co-chairs did not share their proposed maps during the meeting.
Initial census data released on April 26 showed Oregon’s population increasing from about 3.83 million in 2010 to about 4.23 million in 2020, a 10.6% increase, gaining the state a sixth congressional seat. Oregon’s five congressional seats have been stable for the past 40 years.
Oregon was one of five states to gain a seat in the House, including Colorado, North Carolina, Florida and Montana, with Texas gaining two seats. California, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia all lost a seat.
Oregon law states that new district lines must be drawn by July 1 the year after a census. Due to delays at the U.S. Census Bureau, legislators in Salem did not receive the redistricting data from the census until August 12, making the usual deadline impossible to meet.
Legislators won a court battle in early April allowing the deadlines to draw the new district maps to be pushed back until the appropriate census data was available to use.
Taylor made sure to note that under Oregon law, certain criteria must be followed as closely as is practical. Each district must be contiguous, be of equal population, utilize existing geographical or political boundaries, not divide communities of common interest, and be connected by transportation links.
Each congressional district will have two virtual public hearings for citizens to provide feedback on the proposed redistricting maps, with dates and times for each district listed on the redistricting website. Initially, the statewide redistricting hearings were to be in-person, but with rises in COVID-19 cases throughout Oregon forced the move to virtual meetings.
Legislators will then take the received public input into account to decide on final redistricting maps before the deadline.
Legislators encouraged the public to submit maps of their own, the deadline for which has been extended to Wednesday, Sept. 8 at 5 p.m. Citizens can submit their maps here.
