The newly formed congressional districts came into effect when the legislation was signed on November 23. There are few drastic changes to the boundaries. The state will continue to have the same number of existing congressional districts.
The advocates for the redistricting legislation believe that it will prevent incumbent lawmakers from running against each other. They also believe that the bill will prevent combining wealthy suburbs with lower-income cities, which does a great injustice in regards to political representation of the communities.
Redistricting legislation hopes to achieve a similar balance of population in each congressional district. Ten years ago, the state of Massachusetts had to decrease its number of congressional districts from ten to nine due to a decreasing population. Now that the state’s population has increased to just over seven million, the state is able to sustain all nine congressional districts. Advocates hope that each new district will be home to the same number of people, approximately 781,100 each.
Advocates also hope that the redistricting legislation will increase the number of districts with a majority of minority residents from 20 to 33, which they believe will help strengthen the political representation of minority voters.
One such advocate of the redistricting legislation is Rep. James Arciero of Westford, who was a strong supporter of the redistricting plans and voted in favor of the legislation before it made its way to Baker’s office.
Along with Arciero, other state representatives who voted in favor of the legislation included Kimberly Ferguson, Colleen Garry, Thomas Golden, Kenneth Gordon, Sheila Harrington, Natalie Higgins, Vanna Howard, Meghan Kilcoyne, Michael Kushmerek, Marc Lombardo, Rady Mom, Tram Nguyen, David Robertson, Dan Sena and Jonathan Zlotnik.
Senators Michael Barret, John Cronin, Barry Finegold, Cindy Friedman, Anne Gobi and Edward Kennedy were also amongst the lawmakers who voted in favor of the legislation, while the only lawmakers who opposed it were senators James Eldridge and Bruce Tarr.
Lawmakers who favored the new legislation told the State House News Service last week that the process “has been the most open, inclusive and transparent redistricting process in the history of the state,” and that the redistricting measures “will have an impact on our democracy for at least the next decade to come.”
