Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Maps tweaked, OK’d for legislative districts
The GOP-controlled Arkansas Board of Apportionment on Monday gave final approval to state House and Senate districts for the next decade, resolving complaints about some areas while leaving Democrats and votingrights advocates with concerns about others.
The three-member board, consisting of the state’s governor, attorney general and secretary of state, unveiled draft maps at the end of last month and posted them for a 30- day public comment period. The board is responsible for drawing new legislative maps based on data from the U.S. census every 10 years.
The final maps factor in some of the public’s feedback as well as technical corrections. Gov. Asa Hutchinson said board staff members redrew the Fort Smith district boundaries to keep communities of interest together in the north side of the city and to draw north Jonesboro into a district with the rest of the city. The initial version of the House map had drawn numerous public comments about those areas from residents concerned they would dilute minority influence.
Board staff members also redrew House Districts 4 and 5 so that the city of Mountain Home is not split and added precincts surrounding the city of Hermitage to House
District 94, Hutchinson said.
On the Senate side, the final maps keep whole the cities of Fort Smith and Hot Springs Village as well as Stone and Searcy counties.
The new maps maintain the same number of majority-minority districts in the state Senate — four — and on the House side, keep the same number of majority-Black districts and add a new majority-Hispanic district in Northwest Arkansas, officials said. That district, House District 9 in Springdale, is majority- Hispanic based on voting-age population, which Hutchinson said was not the case when the board first unveiled plans for the majority-Hispanic district last month.
“We heard you. We made some adjustments based upon the public comment. We couldn’t accommodate every public comment because there’s a broad statewide picture that we’ve got to develop with the changes that have been made,” the governor said.
MINORITY REPRESENTATION
But Democratic Party of Arkansas Chairman Grant Tennille said the maps intentionally cheat voters in the state and amount to racial gerrymandering by “cracking” minority populations and weakening Black incumbents in the Delta region while “packing” minority populations elsewhere.
“These newly drawn maps are illegal. The people who drew them know it, and they know they’ll be headed to court,” Tennille said in a statement Monday. “This process was a missed opportunity to start doing things right in Arkansas, to have fairly drawn maps that respect voters and their communities.”
He added that the changes the board made took into account requests from white voters and communities, while other comments, such as from people in Magnolia asking for the south Arkansas city to be made whole, were ignored.
A news release from the party listed three House members who now represent majority-minority districts — Rep. David Fielding, D-Magnolia; Rep. David Tollett, R-Lexa; and Rep. Mark McElroy, R-Tillar — and said the new districts drawn to represent those areas will not be majority-minority districts. Those are the new House District 94, House District 95 and House District 98 in south Arkansas.
The party also said that the overall share of Democratic voters in Arkansas, based on recent elections is about 35%, but the newly drawn legislative districts account for only about 20% Democratic representation.
Hutchinson said in a written statement that the majority-minority districts in the maps the board approved Monday reflect all voting-age populations of a particular racial or language minority that exceed 50% voting-age populations in the district.
“In the last meeting of the board, reference was made to an increase in majority minority districts and it was pointed out that voting age majority should be the criteria. Thus, the voting age populations were increased in some of the minority districts,” Hutchinson said.
Betty Dickey, the state’s redistricting coordinator, said at the time the initial proposal was unveiled a month ago that the maps increased the total number of majority-minority House districts from 11 to 13.
Hutchinson added that in the new House District 34, racial and language minorities exceed 50% voting-age population overall, but no single demographic reaches 50% on its own, making it a “coalition district.”
“This district was described as a majority minority district, but it would be better described as a coalition district,” he said.
Loriee Evans, an organizer with voting-rights group Indivisible Little Rock and Central Arkansas, said public comments expressing concerns about minority vote dilution in Fort Smith made a difference, but there are still other areas of concern.
Evans said the organization was concerned about the southern parts of Forrest City and West Memphis in eastern Arkansas being drawn together, packing minority voters into a single district; the city of Magnolia being split; and the packing together of Black voters in eastern Pulaski County while dividing the city of Jacksonville between three House districts.
Other groups complained about the maps last week, including the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas, the Arkansas Public Policy Panel and Arkansas Citizens First Congress.
HISPANIC DISTRICT
The majority- Hispanic House District 9 in Northwest Arkansas covers eastern Springdale but does not include Rep. Megan Godfrey, D-Springdale, who now represents that area and said on social media shortly after the board’s vote Monday that she would not run for reelection.
Godfrey, a fluent Spanish speaker who sponsored legislation on bilingual education and expanding professional licenses to recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, said her representation has focused on the diversity of Springdale. Representing the district she was drawn into, which includes rural Benton County, “feels like a completely different job,” she said by phone.
“Springdale’s my hometown. The community here really means a lot to me,” she said, adding that she hoped the Hispanic and Marshallese people in the district would get good representation that would continue her pattern of advocacy.
Hutchinson said the largest share of Springdale’s Hispanic population resides in the eastern portion of the city and while consideration was given to placing Godfrey in that district, doing so would have resulted in the Hispanic voting-age population falling below 50%.
“As a result of public comment, several options were considered including adjusting District 9 to have it include the residence of Rep. Godfrey. Those proposals were not adopted by the Board. The priority was placed on creating the Latino majority district,” Hutchinson said in a written statement.
House Democratic leader Tippi McCullough said that while the district has a majority-Hispanic voting-age population, some were concerned about whether the citizen voting-age population was high enough to ensure minority representation.
“It doesn’t matter what the population is if they can’t vote,” McCullough said.
Barring any legal barriers, new maps will become law Dec. 30. The new districts will apply to lawmakers elected in 2022; the 100 House members and 35 senators take office in January 2023.
To view searchable versions of the final maps, go to arkansasredistricting.org/maps-2/.