A map of legislative districts in southwest Washington. The brown districts likely will need to add more residents in the redistricting process and the blue districts will need to lose residents.
Residents of areas divided between multiple legislators in Districts 3 and 6 pushed for unity as Washington begins the process of redrawing its political districts.
The second public comment meeting for the two legislative districts was held Monday night by the Washington State Redistricting Commission. Dozens of residents of legislative Districts 3 and 6 joined the Zoom panels to speak to the redistricting committee members about what they hoped to see from the process.
The boundaries created by the redistricting committee will determine the boundaries of the state’s 10 House of Representatives seats and 49 legislative districts. Redistricting efforts is intended to create similar-sized regions for Washington’s representatives while also splitting apart cities, counties and related communities as little as possible.
The majority of comments from the public Monday were about locations that had been divided between multiple legislative districts in District 6. Resident of Tacoma, Bremerton and the Yakima Nation asked for their communities to be brought into a single legislative district to give them more significant representation.
Within District 3, the largest adjustments will be made to balance the last decade’s growth in the small, densely-populated districts near Vancouver and Portland and the larger, rural districts. Legislative Districts 14, 19 and 20 likely will need to gain residents from the more populated districts they border to reach proper size.
