Who is Responsible for Drawing District Lines in Howard County?

The professional land surveyor and property line surveyor provide a complex and highly technical service. Depending on the need, they can offer a full service or be part of a professional team composed of the surveyor, lawyer, title or mortgage company, engineer or architect.

Persily

, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School who specializes in voting rights, has testified before the Judiciary Committee of the United States House of Representatives and the Subcommittee on Constitution regarding legal and political issues raised by the State Voting Systems Choice Act. He is currently acting as an expert consultant in a federal court in New York in connection with a case related to the Voting Rights Act.

Karl Aro

is the director of the Maryland Department of Legislative Services.

The consultants prepared draft plans under the guidance and direction of the Court. They were instructed to create a plan that would comply with federal law, including the Voting Rights Act, and meet Maryland's constitutional requirements for substantial population equality, compactness, and contiguity. To ensure political considerations were not taken into account, the Court disabled the part of the redistricting software program that identified the location of sitting state legislators. Governor Hogan and legislative Republicans are pushing for reform to how congressional and legislative districts are drawn in Maryland. Hogan has made nonpartisan congressional redistricting one of his top priorities.

He has proposed a bill that would place legislative and congressional mapmaking in the hands of a non-partisan commission, taking it away from partisan politicians. However, this effort has been met with resistance from Democrats. The State argued that the Special Master's decision to keep Somerset County together with Worcester and Wicomico counties was not based on compactness or due consideration, but rather an acceptance of regionalism which was rejected by the Court in previous redistricting cases. With the 44th African-American majority District, African-American majority districts in Baltimore City and Baltimore County are proportional to the African-American population. The DeHaas petitioners alleged that when creating the 2002 state plan, due consideration was not given to natural boundaries and boundaries of political subdivisions when placing Anne Arundel County in a 23A district shared with Prince George's County. Districts 10 and 12A absorbed District 47B in 1992, while District 10 was moved entirely into Baltimore County. Frederick County and Carroll County have always shared legislative districts with neighboring counties since 1960s, with Frederick County never having its own district completely within its county limits.

Under the Brayman petitioners' plan, District 21 would cross into Howard County.

James Lawrence Knighton

drafted both the original Steele plan and Steele II plan which sought to maximize Republican profits. The Curry petitioners tried to show that under the state plan, cohesive minority electorate would not be able to choose their preferred candidate in black districts of Senate and House of Representatives. The State's plan was based on appropriate criteria such as preserving core districts in Anne Arundel County, recognizing demographic restrictions presented by District 22, and not diluting African-American population in District 13. Prior to Legislative Plan, Stoltzfus district included Somerset County, Worcester County, and parts of Wicomico County. The Supreme Court has indicated that approximate proportionality does not automatically protect state from liability under Article 2 nor does it require state to maximize possible number of majority minority districts. Under 2002 plan, Wicomico County was less divided with 61,827 people in District 38 (71.93%) and 22,817 people in District 37 (18.07%).