One of 5 proposed legislative districts covering Peoria/City of Peoria
By Wyatt Myskow | Arizona Republic
Peoria released a report showing that Hispanic voters in the city tend to vote similarly, but they are so spread out across the northwest Phoenix suburb that creating a minority-majority City Council district isn’t possible, according to the city’s analysis.
The map approved by the City Council on Dec. 14 shows the highest density of voting-age Hispanic residents are in the two southern districts: 30.2% in the Pine District and 30.7% in the Acacia District.
The other four districts range from nearly 9% to 16% Hispanics of voting age.
The redistricting process, whether at the local, state or federal level, requires that redrawing the boundaries for representation doesn’t discriminate against minority voters. The maps are adjusted every 10 years to account for population growth.
Peoria’s new boundaries create little change in the percentage of voting-age Hispanic residents in each district. The biggest shift was in Acacia, which lost an estimated 4.25% of voting-age Hispanic residents under the new boundaries, while Pine gained 1.5%.
Councilmember Denette Dunn and some residents had pushed for the city to release the full analysis of voter behavior before the council decided on a new map, but the city posted the review by Haystaq Analytics on its website Dec. 15, a day after the vote.
More:Peoria selects new redistricting map for 2022 elections following gerrymandering concerns
“At the state level, we posted everything, and we posted everything as soon as the products were final,” said Bruce Adelson, a former attorney for the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Team overseeing Arizona and a consultant to Research Advisory Services, the company Peoria hired for its redistricting efforts.
City officials have said releasing the report was irrelevant to its redistricting process because council races are nonpartisan, and after reviewing the report, they questioned some of its findings. However, city officials said they did not follow up with Haystaq regarding their concerns.
What the report found
