Boston City Council members said they plan to take a second look at their redistricting plan and develop better options after Boston Mayor Thomas Menino vetoed it on the basis of unequal opportunity on Thursday.
The plan originally passed the city council in August with a narrow 7–6 margin.
“My central objection is my concern that the plan concentrates our many citizens of color into too few districts,” he said in his letter. “In doing so, [it] may limit their equal opportunity to elect candidates of their own choice.”
City Councilor Michael Ross, of Mission Hill, said he voted against the plan after listening to a coalition of groups that spoke against it.
“I felt it limited communities’ interests,” Ross said. “In the end, it didn’t make sense to pass a plan that we knew was going to invite litigation as a result.”
Several organizations part of the Coalition of Communities of Color, such as the Massachusetts civic education initiative Oiste and the Boston branch of the National Association of the Advancement of Colored People, said they planned to sue the city if the plan were approved.
Sean Daughtry, political action chair for the Boston branch of the NAACP, said in an email that the council map proposed by City Councilor Bill Linehan, of South Boston, had “an adverse effect on minority voting strength.”
“If the mayor had signed the ordinance, it would promote the status quo and minority voting strength would be diminished,” Daughtry said. “Councilor Linehan’s proposal makes District 2 the least diverse district in the city.”
Boston University political science professor Doug Kriner said that before the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965 political leaders used two strategies to their advantage.
One included “cracking,” or the spreading of minorities “into as many districts as possible to minimize their potential influence on election outcomes,” he said.
The other strategy, he said, was “packing,” which put “as many minorities into a single district as possible,” limiting “that group’s ability to influence races in other districts.”
Although Kriner said “packing” is seen in a different form today, Daughtry said the city council is trying to pack District 4.
He said District 4 would be 95 percent people of color — a “clear example of packing, especially in a city that is 53 percent people of color.”
Daughtry said the Coalition’s mantra has been “Do not crack District 2” and “Do not pack District 4.”
Oiste’s executive director Alejandra St. Guillen said she and other organization leaders met with Menino the day before he made his decision on the plan and felt that their efforts paid off.
“It’s about voting strengths,” she said. “If you’re such a small number, what are the chances that your issues are going to be addressed at the same level as a district on a higher voting block?”
Guillen said she and others were confident Menino would veto the plan, but had a problem with the process of the redistricting.
Redistricting chairman Linehan, she said, refused to meet with them about their concerns.
“Hopefully the chairman of the redistricting committee will be more open to hearing what we and other minorities have to say,” Guillen said.
Ross said that while the plan was “well intentioned,” Menino’s veto would give the redistricting committee time to develop a better plan suited for Boston’s citizens.
“We now have the opportunity to get it right,” he said. “In the end, nothing is more important than getting people’s right to vote and [be] represented in equal districts.”
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