SNOW HILL – Concern about the county’s redistricting timeline highlighted a public hearing this week.
On Tuesday, the Worcester County Commissioners hosted a public hearing regarding proposed redistricting of the county’s election boundaries. Election Director Patti Jackson, the only commenter, brought up the fact that there was a candidate filing deadline in February.
“We’re going to have to have new districts in place by then,” she said.
For the past several months, county staff have been working to review Census data and formulate updated election district maps. Jennifer Keener, director of development review and permitting, presented the various map options prior to Tuesday’s public hearing. She said the districts had to be modified because of population changes throughout the county. According to the 2020 Census, the population of Worcester County grew by 1,059 residents. Keener said district boundaries needed to be adjusted so that each district had a nearly equal population of 7,515 but in a way that the minimal deviation between the highest and lowest population was less than 10%. In addition, District 2 has to be maintained as a majority minority district.
“Meeting all this criteria is a complex task,” she said, adding that staff had used software to come up with the options for each district.
Why didn’t they complete this before the last election like Wicomico County did? Wicomico County finished their Redistricting because they were told they were required to finish it. Why wasn’t Worcester County told they had to complete their Redistricting maps?
What a JOKE!