Eastland County Redistricting Begins
Monday, Eastland County Commissioners met to discuss redistricting county political boundaries. If a county has disproportionate precincts with a 10% deviation in population it is required by law to redistrict those precincts. According to the 2010 census, Eastland County’s population increased by 286 people from 18,297 to 18,583. The ideal population in each precinct would be 4,646. The following is a break down of the population of each precinct and how many people each precinct needs to gain/lose to attain the ideal 4,646.
| Precinct 1 (includes Eastland) | 5,260 | need to lose 614 |
| Precinct 2 | 4,382 | need to add 264 |
| Precinct 3 | 3,810 | need to add 836 |
| Precinct 4 (includes Cisco) | 5,131 | need to lose 485 |
Vanessa Gonzales from the law firm Allison, Bass & Assoc. was at the meeting and will be working with the county to redraw the precinct lines. Once the county has drawn up some plans for the best way to redistribute the population, a public hearing must be held sometime before August 1, 2010. After a plan is made, it will be sent to the Attorney General’s office for approval. The new precinct lines will be used for the November, 2011 election.
Moving precinct lines to take in more population for Precinct 2 didn’t pose much of a problem, however trying to take in the population precinct 3 was needing became a little more complicated. Commissioners discovered that it was difficult to move precinct lines far enough to bring in enough population without taking in part of either the city of Cisco or Eastland. Gonzales suggested that most counties that have densely populated areas like Eastland and Cisco has, they break that area up into more than one precinct. The commissioners felt the citizens wouldn’t want that done and with little luck, went back to trying to take in enough population by taking in more area for Precinct 3.
The meeting ended with Gonzales suggesting that the commissioners take the information she had brought and information she would send to work on some redistricting plans.
