What Happens to Austin's City Council Districts If Evenwel Wins?



I have previously posted on the issue involved in Evenwel v. Abbott. But what if the US Supreme Court decides that voting age population (VAP) must be used in redistricting? What will be the effect on Austin’s city council districts.

When the districts were created in 2013, total population was used to determine whether the districts were approximately equal in population. The results are shown below for each of the ten city council districts.

District
Population
Difference
Deviation
1
76,711
-3,072
-3.85%
2
79,587
-196
-0.25%
3
79,536
-247
-0.31%
4
79,360
-423
-0.53%
5
81,111
1,328
1.66%
6
82,747
2,964
3.72%
7
80,924
1,141
1.43%
8
77,399
-2,384
-2.99%
9
79,299
-484
-0.61%
10
81,152
1,369
1.72%
Total
797,826

7.57%

The ideal district population was 79,783; the difference from the ideal for each district is shown in the middle column, and the deviation from the ideal for each district is shown in the right column. The deviation between the smallest and largest district was 7.57 percent, well within the requirement that the deviation be less than ten percent.

If voting age population is used, these are the results:
District
VAP
Difference
Deviation
1
56,198
-5,872
-9.46%
2
54,835
-7,236
-11.66%
3
62,237
166
0.27%
4
56,552
-5,519
-8.89%
5
65,611
3,540
5.70%
6
63,136
1,065
1.72%
7
66,244
4,173
6.72%
8
57,647
-4,424
-7.13%
9
73,098
11,027
17.76%
10
65,149
3,078
4.96%
Total
620,707

29.42%

The ideal district population is now 62, 071. The difference from the ideal is shown in the middle column, and the difference from the ideal for each district is shown in the right column. The difference between the smallest and largest district is 18,263, which represents a deviation of 29.42 percent. This deviation is nearly three times the allowable deviation.

In addition, the smallest district in voting age population is also the district with the largest Hispanic voting age population (62.8 percent). Consequently, adding voting age adults would probably diminish the ability of Hispanics to elect a representative of their ethnicity in the district. The second smallest district in voting age population, District 4, is also heavily Hispanic (59.2 percent of the voting age population).

On the other hand, the largest district is District 9, which is heavily Anglo. Voting age adults would need to be distributed to districts with fewer adult voter age residents, reducing the percentage of Hispanic voting age population in those districts.


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