CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The House Select Committee on Redistricting meets for the first time Thursday. The Senate’s committee has already held one meeting. This will be the first discussion Delegates have had about redrawing political boundaries in the state. House Speaker Roger Hanshaw said however, the issues and the feelings of the people should be abundantly clear.
“All over the state over the past two months, we’ve had 12 in-person hearings, we’ve had three virtual hearings, and we’ve had citizens send us proposals in writing,” Hanshaw said on MetroNews Talkline Wednesday.
Hanshaw said out of all of those discussions there is consensus from many of wanting to minimize separation of counties. He said while that was clearly the desire, because of population dynamics county specific districts aren’t always possible.
“Each delegate district will represent a little over 17,000 West Virginians. There are counties that don’t have 17,000 people,” Hanshaw explained.
The redistricting committee will meet this week to draw the lines for districting in West Virginia. @SpeakerHanshaw describes to @DaveWilsonMN about the upcoming meetings. WATCH: https://t.co/yCFQ3nDJuy pic.twitter.com/AC5Fm11kNC
— MetroNews (@WVMetroNews) September 29, 2021
But, he said lawmakers have gotten the message of wanting to keep representation within certain boundaries of influence. Things like school districts, municipalities, and places naturally divided by geography should be kept intact as much as possible.
“People were fairly consistent in their statements that they wanted us to try our best to preserve those guiding principles,” the Speaker said.
But the biggest lift facing lawmakers as they redraw boundaries is anything but clear. West Virginia will lose a Congressional seat and will have to reduce the state’s Congressional map from three districts to two. Hanshaw said they will essentially have to cut the state in half–but whether that should be between east and west, north and south, or some other creative way of carving out half of the West Virginia population is still up in the air. Hanshaw noted West Virginia is an extremely diverse state and while they will take all of the concerns into consideration–they can’t use it as the lon guiding principle to draw the new lines.
“Our only option is to cut the state in half, by necessity that means people from one end of whatever the district looks like will be a long way from people on the other end,” he explained. “Harpers Ferry could not be less like Point Pleasant and Chester could not be less like Welch.”