Washington State court interprets compactness requirement
The [Washington] state Supreme Court on Thursday upheld Franklin County's new county commissioner districts, rejecting a challenge that argued the votes of city dwellers, Hispanics and Democrats are diluted.
The unanimous opinion upholds a plan drawn by a local redistricting commission and adopted by county commissioners after the last census. The plan made few changes in the old districts, leaving a small urban district centered in Pasco and two large, rural-dominated districts in the rest of the county.
The local Democratic Party chairman, Charles Kilbury, and Hispanic voters had persuaded a Franklin County Superior Court judge in 2002 that the plan failed the state legal requirement for compact districts. That decision was appealed.
An alternative plan would have created two small districts dominated by Pasco and a large rural district taking in the rest of the population. ...
"No district in the adopted plan has a grotesque, absurd, tortured or strangely elongated shape," the court said. -- High court upholds new Franklin County districts (AP via Seattle Post-Intelligencer)