Charter schools and re-precincting, oh my

By adamg on Thu, 07/23/2009 - 2:52pm

Over at the Dorchester Reporter, Mike Deehan and Gin Dumcius have started a podcast on this fall's elections. In their first 'cast they talk about the mayoral candidates' differing approaches to charter schools and take a look at "reprecincting" - turns out that some precinct lines haven't been redrawn in 50 years, so some precincts are humongous while others are minuscule. Podcast feed.

Obligatory disclosure: I do Web stuff for the Reporter folks.

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Comments

50 Years???

By SwirlyGrrl on Thu, 07/23/2009 - 5:11pm.

Wow.

50 years.

You would think they would tie them to census tracts or census block groups - units with a pretty stable population in them. The census grows and shrinks these as population grows and shrinks.

I suspect that my city ties precinct boundaries to census units, because we are on a boundary and where we vote and what precinct we are can change with each census.

Yeah, it's amazing how they do redistricting every 10 years

By adamg on Thu, 07/23/2009 - 5:26pm.

Just ask Tom Finneran, formerly, D-Mattapan.

But I guess reprecincting is more an issue of making sure some voting places don't get overwhelmed with voters while others have tumbleweeds roll through them.

Depends what precincts are used for

By Ron Newman on Thu, 07/23/2009 - 5:47pm.

Here in Somerville, each of our seven wards has three precincts, and each ward elects one School Committee person and one Alderman. So it's important that each ward, and probably each precinct, have roughly equal population. After the 2010 census, I expect the city to move some boundaries in order to ensure this.

Disclosure

By Michael Pahre on Thu, 07/23/2009 - 8:49pm.

Adam, I don't believe that you need to disclose that you do some work for the Dorchester Reporter when you provide a plain, ordinary link to their new content.

If you start to link only to their work, or to theirs over other, better work (should it exist), or state judgments about their work (the best reporters in town!), then I think you would need to make the disclosure.

keep disclosing

By Deehan on Fri, 07/24/2009 - 3:21pm.

The disclosures make me feel better when I solicit the link to begin with.
Also: Anyone like the theme music?