IRC Meeting Update: This week the IRC's legal counsel, which consists of teams from two law firms, announced that each firm has hired a U.S. Voting Rights Act (VRA) consultant. The maps' compliance with the VRA is required under both federal law and the Arizona constitution. The consultant working with the Ballard Spahr team will be Stephen Ansolabehere, a professor at Harvard University. Snell & Wilmer's consultant is Sean Trende, Senior Elections Analyst for RealClearPolitics.
The IRC staff also announced the Commission's new social media profiles. You can now follow the IRC on:The IRC is scheduled to meet this Tuesday, August 31st. They will not be meeting the following week, but are scheduled to reconvene to review and approve the grid maps on September 14th. The grid maps are drawn using only two criteria (population data and compactness), and serve as the starting point for the mapping process. [IRC Public Meetings] |