Committee gives nod to redistricting plan

A successful step for Senator Ogden Driskill in his efforts to keep Crook and Weston counties whole: his updated plan for redistricting this portion of the state was officially adopted by the committee working on the process last week.

“They took my plan and adopted it,” he says of the December 28 meeting of the Corporations Committee. “That’s not to say it’s going to stay, but it’s adopted.”

Driskill’s aim since the process began has been to preserve both counties as the basis of their own voting districts – something Weston County has not had since the last redistricting took place a decade ago. His original proposal for Region 6 met a hiccup when the counties to the south (the area that makes up Region 7 in the redistricting process) hosted a meeting without him.

“The committee had asked for Regions 6 and 7 to get together and come up with a plan, but the person who was putting it on asked me not to attend the meeting,” Driskill said at the time.

“They then presented a new plan that was totally from Region 7’s standpoint without any input from Crook or Weston County.”

The Region 7 plan impacted what Driskill hoped would happen to Region 6, which meant he was forced to go back to the drawing board. His hope was to present a new version of the redistricting map that would be palatable to both sides and would gain the approval of the committee, which he says is exactly what happened.

Driskill’s plan keeps Crook County’s entire population as the basis of voting district one, along with a small portion of eastern Campbell County.

Meanwhile, Weston County would form the basis of voting district two and would be paired with Niobrara County, as well as a portion of Goshen County.

“For now, Weston County is whole,” Driskill says.

Voting district three would meanwhile be comprised of the northern two thirds of Converse County, as well as the southeastern quarter of Campbell County.

Redistricting occurs once per decade to address geographical changes across Wyoming. It works on the “one man, one vote” principle as decreed by the U.S. Supreme Court.

In other words, every person’s vote should have exactly the same weight and importance, which means every legislator needs to represent the same number of people. The perfect situation would see every House district contain 9614 people, which would divide Wyoming into 60 equal portions.

Unfortunately, it’s virtually impossible to be that accurate, so the aim of the redistricting process is to achieve district sizes within 10% of that number.

Driskill’s new plan may have met with approval within the committee, but he warns that the process is not over yet.

“We’ll have a couple more meetings yet, so I’m sure there will be attempts to change it,” he says. “We’ll just watch what happens from here on out.”