Clash Over Alabama Voting Districts Continues

Lawmakers have a plan to fix the voting districts in the state, but not everyone is on board.

This comes after the U.S. Supreme Court says they relied too much on race last time they drew up the districts.

If they can’t reach a compromise, the federal courts will have to step in and redraw districts across Alabama.

Putting people into voting districts is tricky business.

Republican lawmakers have been working for weeks, walls covered in maps, to get the right people into districts.

Sen. Gerald Dial is in charge of the reapportionment committee, and he says they’re adding even more districts to the original 12 cited by the courts.

“We expanded our ruling instead of 3 and 9 to 25 senate seats, and about 60 house seats. The idea is to put them back together as much as we would and not split precincts and to not split counties, there was the opportunity to put them back together,” said Sen. Dial.

Dial says they have 100% addressed the issue of using race to draw the lines, but Rep. John Knight doesn’t agree at all.

He says they’re trying to control certain areas of the state, like Jefferson County.

“That’s the problem, because they have certain targets they’re trying to reach for political reasons and they’re not going by traditional districting rules and policies established by the U.S. Supreme Court in several decisions. So unless they do that then they’re going to end up right back in federal court, spending tax payer’s dollars,” said Rep. Knight.

Lawmakers were ordered to have this fixed by the end of this session so they can be ready for the 2018 election cycle.

Political analyst Steve Flowers says federal courts might have to step in and fix the problem themselves.

“This has got to be done. This and the budgets have to be done. So I would suspect they focus on this more than they have in the past two or three months. Republican leadership has taken a cavalier approach to reapportionment,” said Flowers.