When Democracy Rolls Downhill: Charting West Virginian Local Redistricting Efforts in The Age of Public Health Crisis

Keywords: redistricting, census, voting
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Sunday
Session Start / End Time: 2/27/2022 02:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/27/2022 03:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 3

Abstract

In the United States, voting, perhaps the most crucial manifestation of democracy, is fundamentally governed by a decennial census. The apportionment of national representation is a well understood and documented process. However, less well understood are the impacts this national effort has on the local level of distribution of voting. The ongoing public health crisis had significant negative impacts on the 2020 US Census efforts and timing, impacts which have rippled down to state and local efforts to adjust their own representation. West Virginia counties and cities were forced to dramatically compress their redistricting efforts from the normal nine to twelve-month timeline to a mere three. These efforts were further complicated by a major politically charged change in state level representation, ultimately requiring nearly every county to draw new voting precincts and magisterial boundaries. Furthermore, existing complications such as ambiguous legislative direction, a near complete loss of existing institutional knowledge, and significant technological divide between localities have further exasperated these efforts. This paper seeks to discuss the local redistricting efforts of one third of West Virginia counties and how those efforts were complicated by these forces. In particular, this paper will present arguments for the important of local/state/national information interoperability which has hampered redistricting efforts at the local level.