Opinion ID: 1435299
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: report of the special master

Text: As required by Article III, Section 5, of the Maryland Constitution, after public hearings, Governor Parris N. Glendening submitted a plan for redistricting the State to reflect the growth and shifting of population in Maryland based upon the results of the 2000 decennial census of the United States. See Md. Const., art. III, § 5. In further compliance with said Section 5 of Article III, the Governor presented the plan to the President of the Senate and Speaker of the House of Delegates, who in turn introduced it as Senate Joint Resolution 3 and House Joint Resolution 3 on the first day of the 2002 session of the General Assembly, January 9, 2002. Id. Since the General Assembly did not enact a plan of its own by the 45th day of the opening of the Session, February 22, 2002, the Governor's plan became this State's plan for setting forth the boundaries of the legislative districts. Id. Fourteen petitions have been filed challenging the validity of the State's plan. After a hearing on April 11, 2002, the Court referred the petitions and the responses thereto to the undersigned as Special Master for the taking of further evidence and the making of a report to the Court by May 24, 2002. Pursuant to that order, hearings took place on April 25, 26 and 29, 2002. A. The Petitions In Misc. No. 20, Petitioner Wayne K. Curry, the County Executive of Prince George's County is joined by other African American residents of that county. Their amended petition asserts that the State's plan violates their Fourteenth Amendment guarantee of equal protection of the law under the United States Constitution and that it is invalid under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, as amended, 42 U.S.C. § 1973. They also claim that the plan conflicts with Articles 2, 7 and 24 of the Declaration of Rights of the Constitution of Maryland. In Misc. No. 22, Petitioner Eugene E. Golden, et al., are registered voters in what were heretofore designated as the 7th and 31st legislative districts. Petitioners Jacob J. Mohorovic and John R. Leopold are members of the House of Delegates. They complain that District 44 of the State's plan is neither compact nor contiguous and fails to indicate that due regard was given to natural boundaries and the boundaries of political subdivisions as required by Article III, Section 4 of the Maryland Constitution. [1] They level the same complaint at District 31 as drawn in the State's plan. In Misc. No. 23, Petitioner Barry Steven Asbury, a registered voter in Baltimore County makes general claims of invalidity of the State's plan. In Misc. No. 24, Petitioner J. Lowell Stoltzfus is a registered voter in Somerset County, as is Petitioner John W. Tawes. They are joined by Lewis R. Riley, a registered voter in Wicomico County. Mr. Stoltzfus is a member of the Maryland Senate. They assert that the State's plan violates Article III, Section 4 of the Maryland Constitution because it configures Districts 37 and 38 so that they are (1) not compact in form, and (2) in derogation of the constitutional mandate to afford due regard to boundaries of political subdivisions. In Misc. No. 25, Petitioners Norman R. Stone, Jr., a member of the Maryland Senate, John S. Arnick, a member of the House of Delegates, and Joseph J. Minnick, another member of the House of Delegates, join with other registered voters in Baltimore County in challenging the creation of Districts 7, 34, 44 and 46 under the State's plan. They claim that the State has ignored Article III, Section 4 of the Maryland Constitution because these districts are not compact and contiguous and that due regard was not given to natural boundaries and boundaries of political subdivisions. In Misc. No. 26, Petitioner Gail M. Wallace, a registered voter in Calvert County, complains that the State's plan in creating District 27A has ignored the requirements of Article III of the Maryland Constitution that legislative districts be compact and that due regard be given to boundaries of political subdivisions. She claims that by being included in District 27A, along with residents of Prince George's County, Southern Anne Arundel County and Northern Charles County, the residents of that portion of Calvert County, who will comprise less than 9% of the voters in District 27A, will be denied effective representation. In Misc. No. 27, Petitioner Stephen A. Brayman and other residents of the incorporated municipality of College Park, as registered voters in Prince George's County, complain that the division of the City between District 21 and District 22 under the State's plan violates the constitutional mandate that in planning legislative districts due regard be given to the boundaries of political subdivisions. In Misc. No. 28, Petitioners Gabriele Gandel and Dee Schofield complain that under the State's plan their neighborhood in Montgomery County, where they are registered voters, has been included in District 20 although that neighborhood under prior redistricting was included within District 18. They allege that the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, Article 7 of the Maryland Declaration of Rights and Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. § 1973 have been violated by this redistricting. In Misc. No. 29, Petitioner Michael S. Steele is a registered voter in Prince George's County. He is an African American and is Chairman of the Maryland Republican party. He challenges the State's plan on various grounds, alleging that the State's plan: 1. Dilutes minority voting rights in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. § 1973; 2. Is a racial gerrymander that discriminates against minority voters in violation of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments; 3. Creates legislative districts which are not compact or contiguous and does not give due regard to natural boundaries and boundaries of political subdivisions in violation of Article III, Section 4 of the Maryland Constitution; 4. Violates the one person, one vote guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment; 5. Is a partisan gerrymander that discriminates against Republican voters in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment; and 6. Penalizes Republican voters in violation of the First Amendment. In Misc. No. 30, Petitioner Dana Lee Dembrow is a registered voter in Montgomery County and is also a member of the House of Delegates. He claims the State's plan is invalid because its legislative districts are not compact, as required by Section 4 of Article III of the Maryland Constitution. Furthermore, he alleges that the State's plan was implemented without due process, and, finally asserts that the State's plan undermines the right of opportunity of minority representation. In Misc. No. 31, Petitioners Katharina Eva DeHaas, et al., are registered voters in Anne Arundel County who complain that District 23A fails to give due regard to boundaries of political subdivisions because it has placed that portion of Anne Arundel County in which they reside in a district whose registered voters are principally from Prince George's County. In Misc. No. 32, Petitioners Rayburn Smallwood, et al., are registered voters in Anne Arundel County. They challenge the State's plan because it places a small portion of Anne Arundel County in which they reside in District 13, which is principally located in Howard County. In doing so, they say the State's plan fails to give due regard to the boundaries of political subdivisions as required by Article III, Section 4 of the Maryland Constitution. In Misc. No. 33, Petitioners John W. Cole, Franklin W. Prettyman and John S. Lagater are the County Commissioners of Caroline County and are registered voters in that county. They assert that the State's plan is invalid because: 1. It creates legislative districts which are not compact, contiguous and lack due regard for natural boundaries or boundaries of political subdivisions; 2. It violates the concept of proportionality of representation embodied in Article 7 of the Declaration of Rights; 3. It limits the counties on the Eastern Shore to three senators and 11 delegates in the House of Delegates; and 4. It creates Subdistrict 38A as a majority minority district in violation of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In Misc. No. 34, Petitioner Joseph M. Getty, is a member of the House of Delegates from Carroll County and a registered voter in that county. He challenges the entire State's plan on the ground that certain counties, including Carroll, have populations that exceed the number of an ideal legislative district (112,691 persons) but failed to receive a district within their boundaries. In addition, he asserts that the State's plan fails to observe the requirements of Article III, Section 4 that each legislative district be compact and that due regard be given to the boundaries of political subdivisions. B. Population Equality The Petitioners in Misc. Nos. 20, 23, 28, 29 and 34 assert that the State's plan violates the one-man, one vote principle guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution and by Article III, Section 4 of the Maryland Constitution. The Supreme Court of the United States and this Court have held that substantial equality of population is the primary goal of redistricting. Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533, 567, 84 S.Ct. 1362, 12 L.Ed.2d 506 (1964) ([T]he basic principle of representative government remains, and must remain, unchangedthe weight of a citizen's vote cannot be made to depend on where he lives. Population is, of necessity, the starting point for consideration and the controlling criterion for judgment in legislative apportionment controversies. (footnote omitted)); (The one person, one vote principle, we noted in 1982, `is the sine qua non of fair representation, assuring that the vote of any citizen is approximately equal in weight to that of any other citizen in the State.'). Legislative Redistricting Cases, 331 Md. 574, 592-93, 629 A.2d 646 (1993) (quoting In re Legislative Districting, 299 Md. 658, 672, 475 A.2d 428 (1984)). The Supreme Court, however, in applying the one person-one vote rule has held that minor deviations from mathematical equality among state legislative districts are insufficient to make a prima facie case of invidious discrimination under the Fourteenth Amendment so as to require justification by the state. (Our decisions have established, as a general matter, that an apportionment plan with a maximum population deviation under 10% falls within this category of minor deviations.). Voinovich v. Quilter, 507 U.S. 146, 161, 113 S.Ct. 1149, 122 L.Ed.2d 500 (1993), (quoting Brown v. Thomson, 462 U.S. 835, 842-43, 103 S.Ct. 2690, 77 L.Ed.2d 214 (1983); see also Gaffney v. Cummings, 412 U.S. 735, 745-47, 93 S.Ct. 2321, 37 L.Ed.2d 298 (1973)). This Court has applied this 10% rule to the requirement of Article III, Section 4 of the Maryland Constitution that all legislative districts be of substantially equal population. Legislative Redistricting Cases, 331 Md. at 600-01, 629 A.2d 646. The evidence offered at the hearing showed that the 2000 census determined that Maryland had a population of 5,296,486 persons. [2] See State's Exhibit 16. Sections 2 and 3 of Article III of the Maryland Constitution require that there be 47 legislative districts and that one senator and three delegates be elected from each. Moreover, the delegates may be elected at large throughout the district or from single or multiple subdistricts. Therefore, ideal legislative districts would each contain 112,691 persons; each single member subdistrict would contain 37,563 persons; and each two member subdistrict would contain 75,126 residents. Under the State's plan the legislative districts range in population size from 107,065 to 118,242, a disparity of 11,177. This constitutes a deviation range from -4.99 to +4.92 or a total of 9.91%. See State's Exhibit 26. Single member subdistricts range in population size from 35,716 to 39,432, a disparity of 3,716. This results in a deviation range of -4.92% to +4.97% or a total of 9.89%. Two member subdistricts, with an ideal population of 75,126, range in size from 73,512 to 78,867, a disparity of 5,355 persons. This constitutes a deviation range from -2.15% to +4.97% or a total of 7.12%. Since all legislative districts and subdistricts under the State's plan fall within a range of ± 5%, the population disparities are sufficiently minor so as not to require justification by the State under the Fourteenth Amendment, Legislative Redistricting Cases, 331 Md. at 594, 629 A.2d 646, or under Article III, Section 4 of the Maryland Constitution. Id. at 600-01, 629 A.2d 646. Finally, this Court pointed out in that case: Possibly, there may be room under Reynolds and its progeny for a plaintiff to overcome the 10% rule, if the plaintiff can present compelling evidence that the drafters of the plan ignored all the legitimate reasons for population disparities and created the deviations solely to benefit certain regions at the expense of others. Id. at 597, 629 A.2d 646 (footnote omitted). The evidence presented to me does not establish any basis for such a finding. For these reasons, I recommend that the Court reject the contentions that the State's plan runs afoul of the population equality mandates of the Fourteenth Amendment and the Maryland Constitution. C. Voting Rights Act In Legislative Redistricting Cases, this Court explained that § 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 as amended in 1982, prohibits any practice by a state or political subdivision which results in a denial or abridgement of minority voting rights, and ... that a minority need only show, in the totality of the circumstances, that it has less opportunity for electoral participation and success in order to establish a Voting Rights Act violation. 331 Md. at 604, 629 A.2d 646. The Supreme Court in Thornburg v. Gingles held that the important question in Voting Rights actions is whether as a result of the challenged practice or structure plaintiffs do not have an equal opportunity to participate in the political processes and to elect candidates of their choice. 478 U.S. 30, 44, 106 S.Ct. 2752, 92 L.Ed.2d 25 (1986). The Gingles court directed that to answer that question, courts must weigh objective factors such as: 1. the extent of any history of official discrimination in the state or political subdivision that touched the right of the members of the minority group to register, to vote, or otherwise to participate in the democratic process; 2. the extent to which voting in the elections of the state or political subdivision is racially polarized; 3. the extent to which the state or political subdivision has used unusually large election districts, majority vote requirements, anti-single shot provisions, or other voting practices or procedures that may enhance the opportunity for discrimination against the majority group; 4. if there is a candidate slating process, whether the members of the minority group have been denied access to that process; 5. the extent to which members of the minority group in the state or political subdivision bear the effects of discrimination in such areas as education, employment and health, which hinder their ability to participate effectively in the political process; 6. whether political campaigns have been characterized by overt or subtle racial appeals; 7. the extent to which members of the minority group have been elected to public office in the jurisdiction. Additional factors that in some cases have had a probative value as part of plaintiffs' evidence to establish a violation are: whether there is a significant lack of responsiveness on the part of elected officials to the particularized needs of the members of the minority group. whether the policy underlying the state or political subdivision's use of such voting qualification, prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice or procedure is tenuous. Id. at 36-37, 106 S.Ct. 2752. The Gingles court, however, noted three limits on the effect of these factors: First, electoral devices, such as at-large elections, may not be considered per se violative of § 2.... Second, the conjunction of an allegedly dilutive electoral mechanism and the lack of proportional representation alone does not establish a violation. Ibid. Third, the results test does not assume the existence of racial bloc voting; plaintiffs must prove it. Id. at 46, 106 S.Ct. 2752. Finally, in Gingles, the Supreme Court emphasized that the creation of multi-member districts, generally will not impede the ability of minority voters to elect representatives of their choice unless: First, the minority group must be able to demonstrate that it is sufficiently large and geographically compact to constitute a majority in a single-member district.... Second, the minority group must be able to show that it is politically cohesive.... Third, the minority must be able to demonstrate that the white majority votes sufficiently as a bloc to enable it ... usually to defeat the minority's preferred candidate. Id. at 50-51, 106 S.Ct. 2752. In Misc. 20 (Curry) and Misc. 29 (Steele), the State's plan as a whole is alleged to violate § 2 of the Act. These challenges fail since the petitioners cannot satisfy the threshold conditions mandated by Gingles that require the plaintiffs in the instant case to identify a geographically compact minority and a pattern of polarized voting by that minority as well as the surrounding white community. The evidence offered before me showed that more than 60% of Maryland's African American population is concentrated in two political subdivisions, Baltimore City and Prince George's County. Thus, the contention that African Americans have suffered vote dilution clearly is not based upon a specific geographically compact minority population. Likewise, these statewide challenges are not supported by evidence of racially polarized voting by both the minority population and the surrounding white population. It is not enough to show a general pattern of racial polarization to require that district lines be drawn to maximize the number of majority black districts, at least up to a number constituting the same proportion that African Americans constitute of the total state population. Marylanders for Fair Representation, Inc. v. Schaefer, 849 F.Supp. 1022, 1048 (D.Md. 1994). As this Court stated in Legislative Redistricting Cases: The Voting Rights Act simply does not require a state to create every conceivable minority district. Turner v. State of Ark., 784 F.Supp. 553, 573 (E.D.Ark. 1991), aff'd, [504] U.S. [952], 112 S.Ct. 2296, 119 L.Ed.2d 220 (1992) (§ 2 is not an affirmative action statute, and a state need not enact a districting plan that maximizes black political power or influence). 331 Md. at 609, 629 A.2d 646. Furthermore, Steele failed to offer any evidence from expert or lay witnesses sufficient to demonstrate that the black population in Maryland, or in the Capital Region ( i.e., Montgomery and Prince George's County), is sufficiently compact to create additional majority minority districts. Also, Steele did not meet his burden of proof that the black population statewide, or in the Capital Region, is politically cohesive or that white voters in the State or Capital Region vote sufficiently in a bloc to enable them to defeat the minority's preferred candidate. Consequently, Steele's claim that the Voting Rights Act requires the creation of single member subdistricts throughout the State cannot be maintained. Nevertheless, had he met his burden of proving the Gingles threshold conditions, he introduced no evidence that the totality of the circumstances surrounding the opportunities of minorities to take part in the electoral process would have rendered his complaint without merit. Lastly, his claims that the drafters of the State's plan engaged in invidious racial discrimination in the districting proceedings and engaged in partisan gerrymandering in redistricting the State, are completely unsupported by the evidence. For these reasons, I recommend that the Court hold that Petitioner Steele's contentions under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, and the Voting Rights Act are without merit. The Petitioners in Misc. No. 20 (Curry) challenge the State's plan under the Voting Rights Act on three grounds. First, they allege that under their alternative Curry Plan, a majority Hispanic delegate district, which would be a single member district that is designated 20B, should be created. That district would cross the boundary line between Montgomery and Prince George's Counties, which according to their expert, Dr. Richard H. Engstrom, would have a 50.7% Hispanic voting age population. See Engstrom report, p. 23. Dr. Engstrom, however, did not analyze any elections between or among Hispanic and non-Hispanic candidates. Consequently, he found no election results that could provide him with sufficient data to conduct any analysis of the Gingles factors. Moreover, Dr. Engstrom testified that he did not know if Hispanic voters are a cohesive voting bloc, nor could he know whether whites would vote to defeat candidates preferred by Hispanics. Dr. Allen J. Lichtman, the State's expert, pointed out in his testimony that Dr. Engstrom could not show political cohesion, the second Gingles threshold prong, or its third prong, voting records of non-Hispanic voters in elections where a candidate preferred by Hispanic voters is involved. Furthermore, Dr. Lichtman, in his report, as well as on the witness stand, demonstrated that in the Hispanic majority subdistrict proposed in the Curry Plan, 20B, registration and voter turnout in the Montgomery and Prince George's County precincts that make up the proposed Hispanic majority subdistrict are so low that the Curry Plan will not improve the ability of Hispanic voters to elect candidates of their choice. Those districts under the current districting are Montgomery (3-41), Prince George's (17-4), and Prince George's (17-10), where the average turnout of the voting age population is 2.9%. Therefore, I find that the Curry Petitioners have failed to establish the threshold conditions to a Voting Rights Act claim based on the absence of a Hispanic majority district, i.e., that the minority population is cohesive and votes in a bloc. Second, the Curry Petitioners attempted to prove that in the black opportunity Senate and House districts under the State's plan, the cohesive minority electorate would be unable to elect its candidate of choice. To do so, they depended upon Dr. Engstrom's analysis of the Gingles preconditions as they apply to African American voting opportunities in eight elections in Prince George's County where African American and non-African American candidates ran. Six of the eight elections failed to show polarized voting along racial lines. In the three general elections Dr. Engstrom analyzed, African American and non-African American voters shared the same candidate preferences. See Curry exhibits 31, 32 and 33. In the 1998 primary election in District 27, the white candidate was the choice of both African Americans and non-African Americans. See Curry Ex. 26. In the 1994 Democratic primary election in District 26, African Americans and non-African American voters preferred the same two of the top three candidates, both of whom were African American. In that election, a majority of both African Americans and non-African Americans voted for African American candidates. In the 1998 Democratic primary election in District 26, two of the top three African American choices were also the choices of non-African Americans. In this election, a majority of both African Americans and non-African Americans voted for African American candidates. I find that the analysis by Dr. Engstrom fails to demonstrate that voting is racially polarized in Prince George's County, either in the current districts or in the State's plan. Furthermore, even if Dr. Engstrom had proven the existence of racially polarized voting, there is no evidence from his analysis to support the other Gingles preconditions i.e., a cohesive minority electorate that is usually unable to elect its candidates of choice as a result of whites voting sufficiently as a bloc to usually defeat the minority's preferred candidates. Therefore, I conclude that the Curry petitioners have not met their burden of proof on the Gingles preconditions to a Voting Rights action. Third, the Curry Petitioners urge the creation of more majority minority districts in Prince George's County, in the Capital Region and statewide. I am not persuaded to that view by the evidence received at the hearing. The State's plan includes five districts in Prince George's County in which the State contends that African Americans have a fair opportunity to elect candidates of their choice, i.e., Districts 22, 24, 25, 26 and 27. District 22 is the only one of these which does not have a majority African American voting age population; rather, in District 22 the African American voting age population is only 42% of the total voting age population in the district. Nevertheless, African Americans turnout to vote in Democratic primaries in District 22 at a much higher rate than non-African Americans, and constitute about 59% of primary voters in this district. See Lichtman report, p. 13. Neither the Curry Plan nor any other plan has suggested or presented evidence that African Americans, or any other minority, constitute a sufficiently numerous and compact group anywhere in the State other than Baltimore City and Prince George's County, and the federal-court created district on the Eastern Shore, to create a minority opportunity district. I, therefore, find that the State has demonstrated that the number of majority minority districts in the State is proportionate to the number of African Americans and other minorities in areas where the minority is sufficiently compact and numerous to create a minority opportunity district. There is no requirement that the State must create every conceivable minority district. Legislative Redistricting Cases, 331 Md. at 609, 629 A.2d 646. Indeed, § 2 of the Voting Rights Act expressly provides that nothing in this section established a right to have members of a protected class elected in numbers equal to their proportion in the population. The Curry petitioners have not met their burden of proof that the State's plan insufficiently provides for minority opportunity districts. The Petitioners in Misc. No. 37 (Cole) claim that by creating Subdistrict 38A in order to make a majority minority district, the State has the burden under the Voting Rights Act to establish the Gingles factors. The Petitioner's reliance on Shaw v. Reno, 509 U.S. 630, 113 S.Ct. 2816, 125 L.Ed.2d 511 (1993) for that contention is misplaced. The Supreme Court has held that a plaintiff in an alleged vote dilution claim under the Voting Rights Act has the burden of proving the existence of the Gingles factors. Thornburg, 478 U.S. at 46, 106 S.Ct. 2752; Voinovich, 507 U.S. at 155, 113 S.Ct. 1149. Subdistrict 38A under the State's plan is substantially similar to Subdistrict 37A under the current plan. Current Subdistrict 37A was created as a result of a decision of the United States District Court for the District of Maryland which found a Voting Rights Act violation in the State's 1992 plan. See Marylanders for Fair Representation, Inc. v. Schaefer, 849 F.Supp. 1022 (D.Md.1994). I recommend that the Cole petition be found to be without merit insofar as it alleges a violation of the Voting Rights Act. D. State Law Contentions With few exceptions, each Petitioner takes issue with the legislative districts drawn in the State's plan as the districts affect their individual interests. They claim that the districts which they challenge were not drawn in compliance with the mandate of Section 4, Article III of the Maryland Constitution. That provision mandates: Each legislative district shall consist of adjoining territory, be compact in form, and of substantially equal population. Due regard shall be given to natural boundaries and boundaries of political subdivisions. 1. Adjoining Territory This phrase adjoining territory in Section 4 was adopted from the Proposed Constitution of 1968. Consequently, the floor debate at the constitutional convention that drafted that document is an aid to the interpretation of adjoining territory. During the floor debate on December 1, 1967, an amendment was proposed to substitute the term adjoining land area for adjoining territory. After that proposed amendment failed, the Chairman of the Committee on the Legislative Branch concluded that we can't use a prohibition about crossing a body of water.. Id. at 6315-16, 6332-35. Later, another amendment was offered to prohibit the creation of a district that crosses the center of the Chesapeake Bay. Id. at 6525-31, 6439-42. When it appeared, however, that the proposed amendment might also prevent the creation of a district which crossed the Susquehanna River, the Committee Chairman expressed his concern that if we start adding tributaries, estuaries, and other bodies of water ... we won't know where we stand. Id. The Chairman stated that he would support the amendment only if it was limited to the Bay. Id. at 6529-31. As a result, the proposed amendment was withdrawn. Id. at 6541-42. Subsequently, the Committee of the Whole of the Convention placed on the record a statement that it was our intention that under the interpretation of the words adjoining and compact ... a redistricting commission or the General Assembly could not form a district, either a Senate district or a Delegate district by crossing the Chesapeake Bay. Id. at 6574-75. In other contexts, this Court has interpreted the term adjoining territory so that separation of two areas by water does not render them non-contiguous. See Anne Arundel County v. City of Annapolis, 352 Md. 117, 721 A.2d 217 (1998) (under municipal annexation statute, areas of land separated by water does not render them non-contiguous). For these reasons I recommend that the Court deny the petitions challenging districts 31, 44, 34A, 38A and 37B which allege that because two parts of the district are separated by a river, the district's territory is not contiguous. 2. Compactness and due regard for natural boundaries and boundaries of political subdivisions In Legislative Redistricting Cases, 331 Md. at 590-92, 629 A.2d 646, this Court revisited the compactness requirement which the Court had examined in detail in In re Legislative Districting, 299 Md. at 674-81, 475 A.2d 428. We pondered the meaning of the compactness requirement in some detail in the 1982 redistricting case, which involved a number of compactness challenges. After surveying the views of other jurisdictions, we found that the ideal of compactness, in geometric terms, is a circle, with the perimeter of a district equidistant from the center. In Re Legislative Districting, supra, 299 Md. at 676, 475 A.2d 428. However, we recognized that the compactness requirement must be applied in light of, and in harmony with, the other legitimate constraints which interact with and operate upon the constitutional mandate that districts be compact in form. Thus, it cannot ordinarily be determined by a mere visual examination of an electoral map whether the compactness requirement has been violated.... Id. at 680, 475 A.2d 428. We concluded that it is not the province of the judiciary to strike down a district as being noncompact simply because a more geometrically compact district might have been drawn.... [T]he function of the courts is limited to assessing whether the principles underlying the compactness and other constitutional requirements have been fairly considered and applied in view of all relevant considerations. Id. at 688, 475 A.2d 428. 331 Md. at 590-91, 629 A.2d 646. Also in In re Legislative Districting, 299 Md. at 681, 475 A.2d 428, this Court observed: the state constitutional requirements of § 4 work in combination with one another to ensure the fairness of legislative representation. That they tend to conflict in their practical application is, however, a plain fact, viz, population could be apportioned with mathematical exactness if not for the territorial requirements, and compactness could be achieved more easily if substantially equal population apportionment and due regard for boundaries were not required. The factors relevant to the districts alleged to be in violation of the State Constitutional requirements of compactness, and due regard for natural boundaries and boundaries of political subdivisions will be addressed separately.