2002_0325_packet - Laserfiche WebLink

Home

We considered other four-four options, but concluded that at least one or two districts in any such plan would have a significant mix of rural and suburban populations. As a result, we have drawn a plan with three predominantly rural districts, recognizing three distinct rural areas in southern western, and northeastern Minnesota. Under any five-three plan, having one district that crossed Minnesota from border to border was inevitable. Given the location of the metropolitan area in the central and eastern part of the state, we had three choices: (1) create a district extending from the North Dakota to Wisconsin borders along the northern border of the state; (2) create a district extending from Canada to Iowa along the western border of the state; or (3) create a district extending from South Dakota to Wisconsin along the southern border of the state. We chose the last option for a number of reasons. First, the first congressional district contains the community of interest that naturally arises along a highway such as Interstate 90 and tends to run in an east-to-west direction in southern Minnesota. Marshall Hearing supra,at 6, 18;Hearing Before Minn.S.,Redistricting Working Group 21 (Sept. 13, 2001). Second, Minn. Const. art. IV, § 3 states that all districts must be composed of"convenient contiguous territory." In part, "convenient" means that a district must be "`[w]ithin easy reach; easily accessible."' LaComb v. Growe, 541 F. Supp. 145, 150 (D. Mim. 1982) (quoting The Compact Edition of the oxford English Dictionary (Oxford University Press 1971)),of"d sub nom. Orwoll v. LaComb, 456 U.S. 966 (1982). Of course, convenience is at times limited in Minnesota, as it is in other states, by the state's shape, the availability of accessible roads in Greater Minnesota, and the need for rural districts to grow in area as their populations.shrink. Minnesota's western and northern borders may have roads that transverse them, but we have heard any number of objections to the inconvenience of using these roads and the difficulty a congressional representative would have in representing such districts.