This is an open letter to the Delaware General Assembly regarding Sussex County’s redistricting.
As part of my public comments regarding Sussex County’s redistricting, I asked the following question to the county:
Q: Per Delaware Title 9, Ch 70, § 7002, (v)(1), Sussex County is supposed to have five redistricting commissioners. When will the commissioners be appointed and what will be their tasks?
The answer from the county’s administrator was as follows:
A: To your question, the county attorney has received the same question before. Here is our response:
The first sentence provides the requirement that involves the reduction of representative districts from six to five. If the representative districts are reduced from six to five, then the rest of the section applies. In the latest census, the representative districts were not reduced from six to five, so therefore, Section (v) does not apply.
And thus, the county will not appoint five qualified voters of the county to serve as redistricting commissioners.
The answer above finally prompted me to take my longtime head-scratchers to the General Assembly.
To me, the first sentence of the (v)(1) is outdated and the sentences that follow make my mind spin with the question, “Why are all these sentences put together under (v)(1)?”
First, based on (w)(2)-(3), I assume that the code was written 50 years ago, when Sussex County had only six House representatives and had a chance of shrinking to five House reps. Sussex now has 10 reps, and the chance of the county shrinking to five reps is almost nil. The intention seems to have been to align the five council districts with the five House rep districts and alleviate the burden of the redistricting process from the county.
Now, Sussex County happens to have five senators. Shouldn’t the code have been amended to align the council districts with the five senatorial districts?
Secondly, the first sentence and the following sentences of (v)(1) do not seem to have any correlations with each other. If the condition in the first sentence is met, there is no need for the county’s own redistricting process. So why does the code specify the requirement of a redistricting commission when no redistricting is needed, while there is no mention of any procedures for the times when the redistricting is actually necessary?
Therefore, I consider (v)(1) as two unrelated items that need to be separated.
There is another big problem derived from (w) Election of county government officials.
Based on (w)(1)-(3), all Sussex councilpersons are elected for four-year terms — unlike the state senators, all of whom have to be elected after redistricting every 10 years.
Why is this a problem?
Sussex County’s districts 1, 2 and 3 had elections in 2020. Districts 4 and 5 are to have their elections in 2022. However, districts 3, 4 and 5 will become geographically smaller due to the faster population growth, which will result in some voters in current districts 4 and 5 being reassigned to other districts. This means:
Isn’t this called voter disenfranchisement?
So I ask the General Assembly to amend the code to clarify the redistricting process and to mandate election in all districts of Sussex County after decennial redistricting.
Eul Lee
Lewes
