Minneapolis voters on Tuesday gave the job of drawing new ward and other political boundaries in the city over to the judicially appointed Charter Commission.
The charter proposal passed with 55.7 percent of the vote. The DFL endorsed it, but there were no organized campaigns for or against it.
Commission Chairman Barry Clegg said that the switch means that voters rejected the "partisan decisions, bickering and lack of transparency" that he said characterized a redistricting commission dominated in 2002 by representatives of three political parties and council appointees.
Supporters said the charter amendment will make redistricting less partisan. They noted that St. Paul's charter commission handles redistricting. The new system also will be used for drawing voting districts for the Park and Recreation Board and possibly the school board. Redistricting happens every 10 years to offset population shifts.
The proposal arose from dissatisfaction with a party-dominated redistricting panel. A legal challenge erupted over its last redistricting plan in 2002, although courts upheld it. That plan pitted council incumbents against each other in two wards. The DFLer beat the Green incumbent in each case in the following election.
The current system gave two redistricting seats to each major party in statewide elections. That gave more seats to the Independence Party, with no elected city representatives, than to the Green Party, which now has two.
A proposal by City Council Members Cam Gordon and Elizabeth Glidden to address that and encourage transparency morphed into 10 council members asking the Charter Commission to take on redistricting. The proposal also includes an ad hoc advisory group of nine citizens. Glidden called voter approval a "positive direction" and said residents need to be made aware of their chances to participate.
The City Council handled redistricting from 1946 until voter approval of a 1980 charter proposal gave the job to what was described then as a politically appointed partisan commission.
