Guilford County Commissioners Should Take Notes from Mecklenburg County on Redistricting Commission

The redistricting process for the Guilford County Commissioners started at the last meeting where we saw the chairman designate his fellow commissioners to form a committee to get with the Guilford County school board to see how they would like to draw the districts.

Our major metropolitan county commissioners from the south in Mecklenburg County have a redistricting advisory committee and this is from their web site:

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Redistricting Advisory Committee Meets
3/21/2011
The Board-appointed Redistricting Advisory Committee met March 22 to work on a process for redrawing County district lines.
The Mecklenburg County Redistricting Advisory Committee met March 22 to begin the process of developing a plan for redrawing the County’s six district lines. Redistricting traditionally happens in conjunction with the US Census. Each member of the Board of County Commissioners appointed one person to the committee. At its planning retreat, the Board made several decisions to guide the committee: Create two majority-minority districts (Current Districts 2 and 3 are majority-minority) Draw districts so that the current balance of three Democratic and three Republican districts result from the redistricting Don’t split precincts or County Towns within districts At its March 22 meeting, the committee agreed to: Use total population to allocate districts and to keep the district numbers within 10% of one another. Use voting-age population to determine majority-minority districts and that the minority population be at least 53% - 55% in those districts (exact amount will be determined later). Continue a discussion about the method to determine the partisan make-up of the districts.The Committee has tentatively scheduled its next meeting for April 5. Committee members eventually will access an online system to draw lines for each district and then as a committee negotiate final lines. The Committee will make recommendations to the Board in August and the Board will approve the new district lines in September. Then we also find out that Mecklenburg County is also offering citizens the opportunity to come up with their own maps to have the opportunity to be a part of the process, here is a report from WCNC in Charlotte CLICKHERE Here is a link to the Mecklenburg County Redistricting Tool  CLICKHERE here is a youtube demostration for the citizens to go by. Will we see our own Guilford County Commissioners have this tool available to the citizens?