The commission meets every 10 years to redraw the state’s congressional and legislative district boundaries. While the commission’s primary task is to rebalance districts so they’re equal in population, the process also determines which party has an advantage and whether communities of color are divided between districts, diluting their voting power.
But last year, Washington’s bipartisan commission didn’t approve a new set of political maps by its constitutional deadline of Nov. 15. Instead, the commissioners met in private for most of their five-hour meeting that day, emerging just minutes before their midnight deadline to approve a plan that wasn’t written down and wasn’t discussed in public.
Multiple lawsuits have been filed
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