State legislators postpone Florence 1 resdistricting

Members of the state legislature from Florence County will wait to approve maps redistricting Florence County School District 1 Board of Trustee seats until they can more clearly see the issue -- literally.

Delegation members gathered Thursday with the express purpose to make a decision on a new map outlining FSD1 districts but gave up because the maps on hand for them to study were simply too small to make out specific details. All agreed a larger version would be needed to properly examine the proposed changes.

“We had received a very tiny map that’s not particularly legible, even with younger eyes with enhanced glasses added,” Rep. Kris Crawford (R-Florence) said.

The delegation is scheduled to meet again on Feb. 23 in Columbia to vote on the map.

Once the delegation approves the plan, it will go to the U.S. Department of Justice, which will make sure the new lines meet requirements set by the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The maps must be approved and implemented by August so Florence County election officials can notify voters which in which district they live in time for the November elections.

The map under consideration is a version recommended to the delegation by the Florence 1 board of trustees. That group voted 5-3 last month to approve a new plan for the district’s nine seats. Several plans produced by the NAACP were rejected.

Crawford and other members of the delegation recognized the redistricting problems the district has had in the past and said they want to avoid another debacle.

In 2005-06, a series of communication errors led to two maps being submitted to state legislators, causing confusion over which plan should be implemented and that resulted in a controversial election in 2010.

That’s why legislators agreed Thursday they wanted the district to provide a larger scale version of the approved map, or at least communicate the appropriate map to the Office of Research and Statistics (ORS) so the delegation can be sure to obtain the correct version.

Rep. Philip Lowe (R-Florence) said the fewer maps the delegation deals with, the better.

“When I did my own redistricting plan, I probably saw 20 different maps of my own district,” Lowe said. “So it is very easy to confuse one. I think it is critical that we get the one that is endorsed by the school board and take a vote on that one.”

Although some Florence 1 board members view the matter differently, most involved said communication was largely to blame for the issues that led to the 2010 election debacle.

During the school board’s last redistricting in 2005-06, an alternative map drawn by school board Trustee Willard Dorriety, Jr. was presented to members of the state delegation. The delegation voted to approve the school board plan, but Dorriety’s plan was attached to legislation and approved by the entire general assembly.