Nevada lawmakers to unveil proposed voting district maps

In the first move of what promises to be a contentious reapportionment tug-of-war, legislators later this week are unveiling their proposals for redrawing 63 Nevada Senate and Assembly districts.

All members of the Senate and Assembly will meet Thursday evening in two separate Committees of the Whole, where members can look at proposed maps and ask questions, according to Assembly Speaker John Oceguera, D-Las Vegas.

"Everyone ought to be involved," said Oceguera of the unusual large-group format.

The maps must be completed by the end of the legislative session, and promise to be a major bargaining chip in coming weeks. Voting districts are re-drawn every 10 years to reflect updated Census data, and can give one party a decade-long advantage depending on which geographic areas and voting blocs they include.

After Nevada's rapid growth over the past decade, the population balances in some of the state Senate and Assembly districts are grossly out of whack.

Freshman Republican Sen. Elizabeth Halseth's Las Vegas district exceeds the so-called "ideal population" target by 225,000, or 175 percent.

In the Assembly, the districts held by Scott Hammond, R-Las Vegas, and Lynn Stewart, R-Henderson, are the most out of balance, by 298 percent and 246 percent respectively.

While Democratic leadership is initiating the redistricting meeting, Assembly Minority Leader Pete Goicoechea, R-Eureka, said Republicans a few weeks ago took an initial stab at drawing their own maps and will likely bring those versions to the meeting.

Oceguera said he would like to meet with Republican leadership before Thursday's meeting to compare maps.

With 72 percent of the state's population residing in southern Nevada's Clark County, the reapportionment will shift more seats from the rural north unless lawmakers decide to expand the size of the Legislature that now has 42 Assembly and 21 Senate seats.

The redistricting debate with perhaps the highest stakes - a fourth seat in the U.S. House of Representatives - will come later in the session, which is scheduled to end June 6 but might be extended because of unfinished work.

Creating the fourth congressional district will come from carving up Nevada's other three. Of those, Census figures show District 3, held by newly elected Republican Rep. Joe Heck, is the most unbalanced, with nearly 370,000 more people than the target level.

In a presentation to lawmakers last month, Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School, said each of Nevada's four congressional districts should have roughly 675,000 people.

In state districts, he said lawmakers should aim for 64,300 per Assembly district and 128,600 per Senate district.

Committees were briefed earlier in the session on federal law and the Voting Rights Act, which is in part meant to protect ethnic groups from being marginalized in the redistricting process.ꆱ