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HUBBARD -- League of Women Voters representatives emphasized the importance of transparency and reaching a state of equal representation in their presentation about redistricting to Hubbard residents Monday night.
City officials heard from Lisa Kohler and Trevor Martin of the League of Women Voters, a nonpartisan, grassroots organization founded in 1920 by leaders of the women's suffrage movement to empower all citizens to participate in democracy.
Kohler said they were there to speak with residents and officials to talk about malapportionment and redrawing wards so Hubbard's residents could have equal representation.
Martin said the organization has been working with cities like Cleveland, Nelsonville and Warren, as well as Struthers in similar efforts, and they were there to see how they could help Hubbard with the redistricting process.
Martin said officials were given handouts showing where each of the city's four wards stand in terms of population, explaining that the city has 7,636 residents and each ward should have an average of 1,909.
"As you see, some of our wards here are much higher than that; Ward Two has a total of 2,385 residents, whereas Ward One is well below 1,648," said Martin, according to the 2020 U.S. Census.
Ward Three has a population of 1,785, and Ward Four has a population of 1,818, resulting in a total deviation of 39% from the target number, according to the data given to officials.
Hubbard has not been redistricted since 1961, when it changed from a village to a statutory city, incorporating the year prior.
Martin said precincts and district maps are built from census blocks, and the blocks are constructed until the target number is reached in each area.
"We don't want to cause any disruption -- it doesn't take a lot; we don't have to come in and draw complete new maps and flip the table and change everyone's constituency," Martin said. "Sometimes it's just a matter of moving a block or two, because a block could range from zero to a thousand residents."
In terms of how they achieve that balance, Martin said the organization opens things up to public participation and transparency, adding that they co-hosted a dozen public meetings throughout Warren, which featured a presentation explaining why redistricting is important.
Martin said they also did live mapping sessions during the meetings, using Dave's Redistricting, an open-source program.
"There's also other programs, paid programs like ArcGIS and Maptitude, but more than half of our states and a great majority of localities do use Dave's Redistricting because it is free, it is accessible," Martin said.
Kohler said the organization is transparent and "very cognizant" of keeping similar neighborhoods together, adding that they don't want to make changes in a map that might have a neighborhood watch program or a population with a cohesive neighborhood.
"The whole idea is not to make huge changes, but rather get to the one person, one vote, equal representation -- and doing so with the minimal changes to the established neighborhoods," Kohler said.
Martin said they also didn't want to disrupt people's voting patterns, using examples of people who might be familiar with a single voting area for 34 years, and they also don't want to draw council members out of their districts.
"We understand a lot of constituents have important relationships with their council members, so we don't want to purposely or intentionally protect incumbents," Martin said. "But we also want to respect the current incumbency and constituency as well."
Council President Mike Mogg questioned how changing the wards would affect the same number of votes per year.
Martin said the change would move the citizen voting-age population, adding that voters would be moved around, too. Martin said that, in order for mapping to take place, they need to be passed by ordinance 150 days prior to the next municipal primary election in May 2027 -- meaning Hubbard's deadline would be Dec. 5.