Proposed legislative boundaries for Fort Smith, Springdale criticized most

Proposals take heat as divisive

Betty Dickey looks over at the redistricting maps during the Arkansas Board of Apportionment meeting Friday, Oct. 29, 2021, at the state Capitol in Little Rock.  (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/Staci Vandagriff)
Betty Dickey looks over at the redistricting maps during the Arkansas Board of Apportionment meeting Friday, Oct. 29, 2021, at the state Capitol in Little Rock. (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/Staci Vandagriff)

Springdale drew more complaints about proposed new legislative district lines there than any other city in Arkansas, the state Board of Apportionment's website shows.

Complaints from Springdale and those from Fort Smith are related, comments from both cities show.

"You claim to be so proud of the new majority-Latino district in Springdale, but then split the parts of Fort Smith with substantial minority-Latino populations," wrote Joshua Sol of Springdale. "The consistency is just not there, and these districts dilute the voice of Fort Smith's minority populations."

Creating the state's first House district with a Hispanic majority was a goal, the apportionment board announced Oct. 29. But the board's proposed House District 9 in Springdale fails to do that, the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas claimed Wednesday.

And the split of downtown Springdale in the attempt sparked more complaints than in any other part of the state, the public comments show.

The "proposed district is not an effective majority-Hispanic district in any sense, nor is it at all likely to allow Hispanic voters to elect their preferred candidates," the ACLU's letter to the board says.

The apportionment board meets at 10:30 a.m. Monday for a scheduled final vote on the maps. The board redraws districts after each U.S. census to equalize population between them. A U.S. census takes place every 10 years. The board consists of the sitting governor, attorney general and secretary of state. There are 100 state House districts and 35 Senate districts.

Monday's meeting comes at the end of a 30-day public comment period that began Oct. 29, the day the board revealed its draft maps. The new maps factor in population growth in Northwest Arkansas and Central Arkansas by adding seats to those regions while geographically expanding districts in the southern and eastern parts of the state.

The board operates under both state and federal legal requirements. U.S. Supreme Court decisions hold that districts within each chamber of the legislature must be substantially equal in population to comply with the equal protection provisions of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The lines must also be drawn without committing discrimination against a racial or ethnic group, the court has ruled.

The federal Voting Rights Act of 1965 "prohibits any practice or procedure that has a discriminatory effect on racial or language minorities," according to the apportionment board's website. "A common example of a discriminatory practice or procedure would be districts that are drawn, intentionally or not, so that minorities do not have an equal opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice."

Other guidelines cited by the apportionment board's website include drawing districts to be "geographically compact."

"The more bizarre the district shape, the less likely it is to be approved by the courts," the board's website says. "When possible, it is better to keep whole counties, cities or towns, wards and so forth intact" and to maintain "communities of interest" such as economic, social or cultural ties, it says.

DIVIDED DOWNTOWNS

The board's lines drew 51 complaints specific to dividing downtown Springdale between proposed House Districts 9 and 11. Another 23 specific comments mentioning the Districts 9 and 11 split supported the decision.

An additional 23 complaints objected to the lines drawn for proposed House District 18, which includes portions of Springdale, Elm Springs and Tontitown. No specific comments about proposed District 18's boundaries favored the lines, saying the boundaries divided communities and needed squaring-up.

In all, those 97 comments about proposed districts 9, 11 and 18 made up 18.3% of the 530 comments posted from throughout the state as of Friday.

Fort Smith led the comments on the board's other public forum: interactive maps of the proposed districts on the board's website. The downtown Springdale split was second.

Twelve comments on the House districts interactive map addressed proposed District 49 in Fort Smith, all opposing the boundaries as proposed. Another comment on proposed House District 48 also addressed the splitting of downtown Fort Smith between that district and 49. All 13 comments from Fort Smith on the House interactive map opposed the boundaries as drawn.

In Springdale, all 10 of the comments on either House District 9 or 11 opposed the split. In proposed House District 18, seven of the eight comments on the map object to the proposed borders.

None of the proposed boundary lines on the state's 35 Senate districts drew more than 10 comments on the board's website.

"The redistricting maps are not final at this time and staff will continue to review public comments until final maps are adopted on Monday," according to a statement by the governor's office Wednesday. "We are happy to answer all questions regarding redistricting on Monday following the Board of Apportionment's adoption of the maps."

MINORITY MATTERS

The downtown portion left out of proposed District 9 includes the residence of Rep. Megan Godfrey, D-Springdale and a fluent Spanish speaker. Godfrey's neighborhood will include much of Benton County in proposed District 11 if the board approves the map.

Godfrey represents House District 89, a district that had to shrink, census figures show. House District 89 holds a population of 33,704. The target for equal population in House districts is 30,115, making District 89 too large by 11.9% or 3,589 people.

The House District 78 seat in northwest Fort Smith is held by Rep. Jay Richardson, D-Fort Smith. This district's population is smaller than the target size but is also proposed to be split, census figures posted by the Board of Apportionment show. House District 78 is 1,748 people below the target size with 28,372 residents, a 5.8% shortfall.

The proposed division of House District 78 would put northernmost Fort Smith in the same House district as Van Buren across the Arkansas River.

Democrats Godfrey and Richardson are two of the House's 22 remaining Democrats. The Board of Apportionment's members are all Republican.

"I implore the board to reevaluate the decision to split downtown Springdale into districts 9 and 11," wrote Donald Person of Springdale in the public comments. "I have looked at this decision closely to determine if there is a plausible reason to split Emma Street in half, ironically by the railroad tracks. I found none."

Springdale resident Nancy Bunch agreed in her comment to the board.

"I am very displeased with the proposed redistributing in Springdale. Dividing the town literally down the middle of its main business district is absurd," she wrote.

Fort Smith residents raised similar objections.

"Cutting of parts of north Fort Smith into the proposed District 48 with Van Buren dilutes the voices of the most urban and diverse area of the city," commented Miles Epperson, who described himself as "a lifelong resident of Fort Smith."

"All of north Fort Smith should be included in one district as it has been for the last decade to preserve the voices of the area's substantial minority population," Epperson says in his statement.

Democratic state House candidate Diane Osborne of Fort Smith agreed.

"North Fort Smith is divided into three districts, diluting the diverse racial population between the three," she wrote. She proposed a map with a unified district in the city's north. She does not live in the northernmost portion of Fort Smith, but in a more central part of the city, according to a locator map of her address.

SPLITSVILLE

The public comment period does not end until the Board of Apportionment makes its decision Monday, according to the board. Arkansas United, a Springdale-based immigrants' rights group, and the Indivisible Project, a voter rights group, are hosting a three-hour bilingual "Stop Diluting My Voice" online event from noon to 3 p.m. Sunday to put comments directly onto the board's website.

The Arkansas Public Policy Panel and the Arkansas Citizens First Congress, both Little Rock-based nonprofits, released an in-depth critique of the proposed maps Friday. Among other statements, the group also found proposed House District 9 is not majority Hispanic. The planned split of downtown Springdale between House Districts 9 and 11 has the opposite effect, the group's study concluded.

"These districts split the City of Springdale in a manner that appears to intentionally dilute the minority vote in that city," according to the panel's study.

The panel's study also says the board's plan would divide Fort Smith into four House districts when three would be more appropriate.

"These four districts split the City of Fort Smith," the study says. "There are several precincts within these districts that appear to have been intentionally split in a manner that reduces the nonwhite voting population electoral influence."

House Democratic Leader Tippi McCullough of Little Rock said earlier this month that some members have seen the minority populations of their districts change.

"Even though we gained some minority districts, we have folks that lost minority populations in their districts, we have folks that gained a large amount of minority population that didn't before, in their districts," she said.

PULASKI COUNTY

Pulaski County will gain a majority-minority district, though some of the county's proposed majority-minority districts will have a lower proportion of minority voters than the current majority-minority districts before, a Democrat-Gazette data analysis showed.

The new majority-minority district would include parts of Jacksonville as well as McAlmont, a majority-Black community -- pulling from districts currently represented by Rep. Mark Perry, D-Jacksonville, and Rep. Jamie Scott, D-North Little Rock -- directly east of North Little Rock and stretch down to the southeast corner of Pulaski County.

The district would be bordered to the west by the Arkansas River and to the south and east by the Pulaski County line.

Perry is drawn into the northeast corner of the new House District 66, which would have a 59% voting-age minority population.

Meanwhile, proposed House districts covering downtown and southwest Little Rock and the portion of North Little Rock adjacent to the Arkansas River would have slightly lower voting-age minority populations than the current districts covering those areas.

Michael Li, a redistricting expert with the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University's law school, said that change wouldn't necessarily negatively impact minority representation if the lines are drawn the right way. He said the ultimate test is election outcomes and whether minorities are still able to elect a candidate of their choice.

Other factors, including the voter turnout and engagement of minority populations, play a role in that, he said.

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