Board of Apportionment gives final approval to new state House, Senate districts

FILE - People crowd the new state legislative redistricting maps to get pictures after the Arkansas Board of Apportionment voted to accept them Friday, Oct. 29, 2021, at the state Capitol. (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/Staci Vandagriff)
FILE - People crowd the new state legislative redistricting maps to get pictures after the Arkansas Board of Apportionment voted to accept them Friday, Oct. 29, 2021, at the state Capitol. (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/Staci Vandagriff)

The Arkansas Board of Apportionment gave its final approval to new state House and Senate districts on Monday, resolving complaints about some areas while leaving voting-rights advocates with concerns about others.

The board, which includes Republicans Gov. Asa Hutchinson, Attorney General Leslie Rutledge and Secretary of State John Thurston, unveiled draft maps at the end of last month based on the 2020 U.S. Census data. The board is responsible for drawing new legislative maps based on population changes each decade.

The maps the board approved today make a number of technical changes and factor in comments members of the public have submitted over the last 30 days.

Hutchinson highlighted differences between the draft maps and the final maps that include putting communities of interest together in north Fort Smith, placing northern Jonesboro in the same district as the rest of the city and keeping the city of Mountain Home whole.

“We heard you. We made some adjustments based upon the public comment. We couldn’t accommodate every public comment because there’s a broad statewide picture that we’ve got to develop with the changes that have been made,” Hutchinson said.

The new maps maintain the same number of majority-minority districts in the state Senate -- four -- and on the House side, keep the same number of majority-Black districts and add a new majority-Hispanic district in Northwest Arkansas. That district does not include Rep. Megan Godfrey, D-Springdale, who currently represents that area and said on social media Monday that she would not run for reelection.

"There's some real disappointments," House Democratic leader Tippi McCullough of Little Rock said after the board's vote. 

She added that while the governor noted the new majority-Hispanic district has a majority-Hispanic voting age population, she and others are concerned that citizen voting age population wasn't used. She said the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas is looking at that issue and others.

The maps can be viewed at arkansasredistricting.org.

Read Tuesday’s Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for the full story.

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