Opinion ID: 1278769
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: gerrymandering

Text: Evidence (unrefuted) was presented of gerrymandering in three counties involving approximately one-third of the state's legislative districts. The division of Ada County (Idaho's most populous county) is as set forth on the map attached hereto as Appendix A. The shape of District 15 was described by plaintiffs' counsel as a fish or a sports car heading out of town. The corridor connecting the north and south portions of District 14 is less than 1/8 mile wide. The affidavit of Susan Stacy (Director of Planning and Community Development for the City of Boise) compares the division of Ada County under Plan 14-B and H.B. 746 and provides some of the factual basis of the gerrymandering charge. It is noteworthy that either by pure chance or by design the scheme of H.B. 746 does not put one incumbent legislator against another in either Ada, Canyon or Twin Falls counties, the three counties as to which evidence of gerrymandering was presented. The Stacy affidavit states: The H.B. 746 plan shows the typical characteristics of political gerrymandering: shoe string connections, odd-shaped long narrow districts, dispersion of urban populations into larger rural areas, and the unnecessary splitting of established neighborhoods. Thus H.B. 746 is further tainted by its failure to provide coherent districts by the use of geographic and other obvious borders to the end that neighborhood and urban and rural populations will not be unnecessarily divided. Its stretched districts suggest the effects of an indiscriminate districting, without any regard for political subdivisions or natural or historical boundary lines which the United States Supreme Court saw as an open invitation to partisan gerrymandering. Reynolds v. Sims, supra, 377 U.S. at 578, 84 S.Ct. at 1390.