The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1894-02-24
REDISTRICTING THE CITY.
The Committee in Charge Of it Has
No SinaCur c.

The Districts Must Be Made to Con-
tain an Average Number of Voters.
To Be Laid Off East and West.
Yamacraw and the Old Fort Will
Have to Come to Bull Street to
Vote-Apportioning the Districts
By No Means an Easy Task.
The committee appointed by Mayor
McDonough to divide the city into cleo
tion precincts, according to the terms of
the Osborne bill, held it's first
meeting at the De Soto last night. The
committee consists of Aldermen Wells,
Myers, Mcmillan, Bohan and Folliard.
This committee will continue it's meet
ings until its work is finished, which,
according to the terms of the act, must
not be later than March IL. q
A member of the committee said to a
MORNING News reporter yesterday that
the districts would undoubtedly be run
the districts would branch off from Bull
street on either side or would
run entirely across the city he
was uncertain, but the result, he said,
would be that all or nearly all, the voting
places will be located on Bull street.
TO BE STRUNG ACROSS THE CITY.
There will be no mapping out of COM
pact districts, but instead the dis
tricts will be strung across
the city. Yamacraw and the
old Fort will have to come to Bull street
to vote.
What is worrying the committee is how
to cut up the map of the city into districts,
of which no district shall contain less than
$50 nor more than 800 voters. The members
of the city council are supposed to be
familiar with the voting population, but
the members of the committee confess
their ignorance of the numerical density
of the voters on the various streets.
Some streets are much more thickly
settled than others, so it would not do to
simply mark out fifteen districts across
the map with blue pencil.
The only guide the committee has to go
by, besides their own knowledge
of the relative density of the
population in the different sections
of the city, is the city directory, and Mr..
A. E. Sholes, the proprietor of the direc-
tory, will probably be called upon to assist
the committee in it's deliberations. Mr..
Sholes is probably more familiar with the
varying density Of population in the
different portions of the city than any
other resident.
MIGHT USE CENSUS REPORTS.
1t has been suggested to the committee
that they secure the reports of the United
States census supervisor of this district,
which would show the number of
voters residing on each street in
the city. There are Two objections
to this. One is that the census was taken
in 1890, and there has been considerable
changing about since, so that the census
reports would hardly be as reliable as
the city directory. The other is that
the resorts are filed away in Washington,
and before they could be gotten
here, after the usual government red tape
had been gone through with, it would be
too late to secure the data before the ex-
piration of the time allowed by the act
Another suggestion is that a census be
taken by the police in order to ascertain
the number of voters in each block. This
appears to be the only means of attaining
any degree of accuracy in apportioning
the districts according to the voting pop
ulation.
This, however, would require some
time and the committee only has eighteen
days in which to complete its work
If the committee wish ready solution
of the difficulty, however, they might call
in some Of the politicians who, no doubt,
could tell them to a nicely the number of
voters on each street in the city.