1992 Precinct Boundary Change Information

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~ ~~ March 26, 1992 TO: City Council FROM: steve Sarkozy SUBJECT: VOTING PRECINCT BOUNDARIES Items D-1 (Voting Precinct Boundaries) and D-2 (Appointment of Election Judges and Alternates) were pulled from the Monday, March 23," City Council meeting in order to provide additional informa- 'tion for City council review. The issue of legislative redistricting has been highly contentious with both the state and Federal plan receiving considerable recent publicity. The state plan, adopted January 30, 1992, was modified by a Federal plan offered February 19, 1992. On March 11, the U.s. Supreme Court gave preliminary support to the state plan. The state plan is outlined in your packet of information attached. The full Supreme Court will reconsider the redistricting plans possibly as early as Friday, March 27. At the time of this writing, no change is anticipated; however, we may see some new developments on this in the media over the weekend (more on that later). The only reliable information that we have at this point is that the State redistricting plan is in force and effect. State imple- menting statute Section 204B.14, Subdivision 3 requires that precinct boundary changes must be adopted sixty days from the passage of the redistricting proposal. since the state took action effective January 30, precincts must be established by municipalities on or before March 30, 1992. Hence, the need for the special meeting to reconsider this issue. The new precinct boundaries will be needed by the County to estab- lish the new County Commission districts. We will be using our old precincts format for the upcoming Presidential Primary in April. In the meantime, should the Supreme Court reconsider the redis- tricting plan, it seems unlikely that any change in the districts would be forthcoming before 1993. Therefore, it is possible that even with Supreme Court reconsideration of the redistricting plan, the upcoming Fall legislative election would occur under the state plan, and any changes in legislative districts made by the Supreme Court would be effective for the legislative election in 1994.