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By Charles Doud

Madera continues to make progress establishing voting for city council members by districts.

A consultant hired by the city to work with city staff and citizens on establishing district boundaries presented four sets of districting plans, illustrated with maps, to the council Wednesday night. Additionally, a Madera High School class taught by Brad Krause submitted 37 separate plans that were accompanied by maps.

The maps show various ways in which voting districts in the city could be drawn.

The criteria for all must be the same:

• All districts must be of equal population within very narrow limits.
• All districts must conform to the federal Voting Rights Act, which emphasizes representation of minority populations and prohibits "packing" and "cracking." Packingwould be the forced inclusion of large numbers of minorities or majorities in any districts in order to gerrymander or manipulate the boundaries to favor one party or class of resident. Cracking would be artificially manipulating district boundaries to dilute the influence of a particular class of resident...

Charles Doud Charles "Chuck" Doud is the Editor and Publisher for the Madera Tribune. You can contact Chuck at 674.8431 or e-mail him (cdoud) at maderatribune.net The Madera Tribune online subscription To subscribe or log on, CLICK HERE. For more information first, CLICK HERE.