AUBURN — A group rewriting the rules of Androscoggin County government backed away from plans to draw lines for seven new voting districts because of worries that the lines might be erased.
On Thursday, the nine-member Charter Commission voted to scrap weeks of work and to remove detailed districting plans from its proposed charter, scheduled to go to Androscoggin County voters in November.
Instead, the group voted to write a memo that will be attached to the document, requesting that the broad strokes of their plan be followed.
The reason for the change was a phone call received in June from Julie Flynn, the deputy secretary of state who runs Maine’s Bureau of Corporations, Elections and Commissions. Flynn described a 2011 change in the Maine Constitution that broadened Maine’s authority to create voting districts. Currently, the state draws the lines for state Senate and House seats.
Beginning in 2021 — following the 2020 census — a state commission will also determine the lines of Maine’s congressional and county commission districts.
“Deputy Secretary of State Julie Flynn warned us that (the charter proposal) might not be valid,” said Chip Morrison of Auburn, a member of the Charter Commission. “She’s been running elections in Maine for 20 years. It’s smart to take her advice.”
In January, members of the Charter Commission sent a draft of the new charter to Flynn’s office for an informal review. Flynn’s response came five months later.
“That’s very frustrating,” commission Vice Chairman Richard Grandmaison said. “We’ve put a lot of effort into this thing.”
Though they could have created a charter that ignored the potentially thorny politics of creating districts in the county, they felt it was the responsible thing to do, Grandmaison said.
If the charter is approved this fall by voters, it would expand the County Commission from three members to seven. Therefore, seven districts will be needed.
The commission tried to draw the lines to prevent the cities — Lewiston and Auburn — from dominating the county’s 14 communities and still preserve the cities’ needed representation, said Grandmaison, who lives in Lewiston.
“I tried to put myself in voters’ shoes,” he said. “I think the voters deserved at least a try at that.”
Morrison said he, too, was frustrated by the delay in a response from the Secretary of State’s Office.
“It would have been nice if we’d heard sooner,” he said. “I’m not a whiner, but it would have chopped off four meetings.”
However, he said, the districting issue should not overshadow the need for a bigger, broader County Commission.
“The major issue is how many districts there are, not where they are,” he said.
The districting issue will fall to the state, if the proposed charter is approved by voters.
The Charter Commission’s memo will request that districts be created along town boundaries as much as possible and that towns are bunched as contiguous groups, rather than being split apart.
The charter group is scheduled to present its proposal to the County Commission on Aug. 15.
dhartill@sunjournal.com
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