“The commission believes the new Summit County Council district boundaries are fair, adhere with the principles of the county charter, and abide by state and federal laws. With that in mind, we set out to keep communities together as much as possible as well as increase opportunities to elect diverse candidates from under-represented and minority communities. We believe the new County Council district map accomplishes these goals, and the commission is proud to submit the new district lines to the Summit County Board of Elections.”
The county charter outlines the following principles for creating Council districts:
- All districts shall be of substantially equal population, compact and composed of contiguous territory and formed by combining existing areas of governmental units, giving preference, in the order named, to townships, municipalities and city wards and precincts.
- All portions of a district must be contiguous. When a political subdivision has a noncontiguous portion, it shall be considered contiguous to the remainder of the political subdivision for the purposes of redistricting.
- Precincts shall not be divided for the purpose of creating Council districts; however, political subdivisions may be divided between more than one Council district with no limitation upon the division of a political subdivision among districts.
- To the degree allowable by federal and state law, consideration will be given to district boundaries that broaden the opportunities for historically under-represented and minority communities to elect representatives to the Council.
The map adopted by the Commission is available at https://co.summitoh.net/files-generic/18438/file/summit-council-adopted-map.pdf
