Stratford redistricting: Room for improvement
Election districts are revisited every decade after each census to ensure they remain balanced. Unfortunately, redistricting is too often an excuse to improve voting outcomes for the party in power by distorting the influence of the local electorate. Stratford is yet to finalize their municipal redistricting plan from the 2020 census. Our local redistricting efforts present and past leave a lot to be desired when it comes to timeliness, transparency, and fairness.
On timeliness and transparency: out of 169 towns in Connecticut, Stratford will be one of the very last to submit its redistricting plan. There is no centralized public reporting on when towns in Connecticut submit their plans (something that would provide useful transparency that could be created by the secretary of the state), however many towns, along with the statewide districts, were finalized last year. Locally, Shelton finalized their plan in February and Bridgeport finished theirs last year. Bridgeport’s plan is being contested, but such disagreements are not unheard of and provide even more reason why the initial process should be conducted in a timely manner.
Stratford’s plan will likely not be finished until May at the earliest for an election in November. Any primaries (which would be in September) or any disputes or further delays could create an incredibly crowded timeline. The redistricting commission was appointed on Feb. 14 and, per the town charter, they have three months to finalize their plan. The commission first met on March 16 to establish ground rules. At the end of the meeting they suggested meeting again within two weeks. As I write this on April 2, we are now past that window with no new meeting scheduled.
Our citizens deserve to understand what potential changes, if any, are being suggested and they should be given an opportunity to provide feedback. To ensure this, the plans need to be presented in a timely and public manner. As it stands, these delays will create a preventable rush that will limit discourse as we run up against the 3 month restriction while also keeping the public and any potential future candidates who may be impacted by this redistricting in the dark with only months until the election.
When it comes to fairness: redrawing should make minimal but necessary adjustments to maintain balanced voter influence in the town. It should not be used as an opportunity to push partisan strategies. Unfortunately, Stratford has a notable history of unneeded redistricting adjustments with clear impacts on expanding or diminishing the influence of certain groups in town and with the intention of including or excluding individual potential candidates from districts. We attracted the attention of the NY Times in 2003 and Jim Simon wrote a nice summary of the town’s continued redistricting gambits in 2021 in the CT Mirror.
No individual should be intentionally moved due to their willingness to run for office. Shelton did just redistrict Matt McGee out of his district after he ran competitively for Alderman a few times, however, they at least committed to never redistricting a currently elected official out of their own district.
There is good reason to avoid this: such shifts are a huge disservice to those elected officers and a slap in the face to their constituents. Stratford should make the same commitment: no one currently in office eligible to run again should be made ineligible through the shifting of district lines.
The Stratford Town Charter section 7.1.5 makes it clear that redistricting should only happen “where necessary.” There is a reasonable case to be made that the current districts are within the thresholds intended by the Charter. This would make any redistricting unnecessary and mean that none should occur. If the commission interprets things differently, I hope they make reasonable and justifiable changes that minimize the impact on our voters and currently elected officials.
Considering the delays in this process, the intense amount of work required to implement early voting for the first time this year for primaries and the general election, Stratford’s history of partisanship in redistricting, and of issues with ensuring error-free elections, the best plan for ensuring the fairest and smoothest election possible is to leave things as is.