MapWatch 2.70 MapWatch News, views, and information on Census 2000, reapportionment, and redistricting of federal and state legislative districts. 2000 Democrats say it is racist.
Republicans say it is just common sense.
Every 10 years there are pitched battles over legislative reapportionment and congressional redistricting, which must be done once a decade based on new census figures. Assembly Republicans are pushing a bill that would require New Jersey's legislative and congressional redistricting commissions to use the actual head count and ignore the statistical sampling. The bill, approved last week by the Assembly along partisan lines and now in the Senate, has been attacked by Democrats and minority leaders as mean-spirited, unconstitutional, and even racist, because the census traditionally undercounts people in urban areas. Similar bills have been introduced in GOP-controlled legislatures in Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Kansas, and Virginia. They all spring from last year's U.S. Supreme Court decision, which declared that statistical sampling cannot be used to determine how many representatives each state sends to Congress, but can be used when redrawing congressional and legislative districts and doling out federal aid.