Thread by @IAmNickReynolds

Good morning everyone! Here this morning at Casper College, where we're talking the nuts and bolts of our redistricting process for the first time.

The census released county-level counts last week, allowing us to see what places grew and which contracted.

Watch this space!

If you'll recall from last week, the state's rural counties largely contracted in population over the last decade, while urban counties grew.

Laramie County (the capital and the current locus of power in the Legislature) grew the most.

In redistricting, the Legislature needs to do its best to keep "like" communities together, allocating a prescribed average of residents to each district.

We can move off that number by up to 10% in trickier communities, but that's no guarantee the district will be approved.

To make things easier or to match communities better, the Legislature is able to alter the number of seats we have.

We've been sitting at a 60/30 split since the 1990 census, but have gone below that before.

There have been ideas floated about reducing the number of members (benefitting rural counties) but previous court rulings likely pin us in somewhere around 25 or more, the LSO's Matt Obrecht told me a few weeks ago. wyofile.com/wyoming-gop-we…

However, you could always go to court.

What will be interesting this time... Michael Swank, a fiscal analyst for the LSO, said that this census evaluated about 55,000 census tracts to redistrict with.

That's about 25,000 fewer than we had in the last census, which could play a factor in how the maps are drawn.

(By the way, you can watch here.)

The state's longest-serving rep, Charlie Scott, has been through four redistricting processes. (This is his fifth.)

He distributed his own set of possible guidelines ahead of the meeting based on the current 60 Reps, 30 Sens model.

If you really want to get into the technical details, I highly recommend this memo written by LSO staff. It's very detailed on why we do things the way we do in Wyoming. wyoleg.gov/InterimCommitt…

Want something simpler? Look no more: wyofile.com/redistricting-…

The key to how these districts will take shape lie with the deviation numbers.

As you can see, some counties will get substantially more leeway in how they draw their maps. As you can see, you can surpass that 10% deviation if you have a good case for it.

As you expand the size of the plan regions (basically, creating a scenario where districts can span even more counties than before) that deviation changes.

But there will be other factors involved... the best indication of what that might look like comes from state fiscal analyst Wenlin Liu.

Wyoming's population got more diverse, so that could play a factor. (The question is where.) The Casper suburbs exploded also.

How do we dig into that?

Lots of public meetings and feedback from local communities digging all the way down to the precinct level.

A memo from the Wyoming County Clerks' Association illustrates why here: wyoleg.gov/InterimCommitt…

Carbon County and Sheridan County GOP have reps here to lobby for their redistricting plan, which seeks to allocate one senator per county, in what they say is in alignment with the U.S. Constitution.

The U.S. Supreme Court has argued states cannot do that, Case said.

"Why do you waste our time with this? Why do you waste our time? Just stop," Case said.

Bryan Miller, chair of Sheridan, now arguing SCOTUS does not set policy, that we could challenge with statute and put it to the people.

Interesting meeting. Lobbying the Legislature to challenge the principle of "one man-one vote," which lawmakers keep saying has been upheld over and over.

"As long as I'm Chairman this committee, we're not going to ignore the U.S. Constitution," Chair Zwonitzer responded.