The Oklahoma State Senate released their proposed redistricting plan this evening. Bloggers Peter Rudy of Oklahoma Watchdog and Paul Monies of the Oklahoman's Politics and DataWatch blogs both posted maps (I borrowed Monies' map for this post). The official Senate press release is here. Michael Bates of BatesLine has also posted on the topic.
I would expect this plan to be challenged in court, as portions appear to be gerrymandered (perhaps the by-product of using one of the state's top political consultants to run their redistricting program).
For more details on the urban areas, click here for Rudy's post, and here for Monies' post. Rudy's maps have more detail of the urban areas, while Monies' maps have outlines of the current districts, in addition to the new proposals.
With a few exceptions, the map seems to be less gerrymandered in the rural areas, but more so in metro Tulsa and OKC.
ReplyDeleteThat said, a gerrymander for political reasons won't be overturned by the courts. For that you'd need severe numerical inequality or an attempt to deprive racial minorities of representation.