Rice County Review: Minnesota Redistricting

Redistricting is just around the corner.

A process that takes place every 10 years after the U.S. Census, elected officials gets their chance to redraw the lines in which constituents are grouped into for representation at various levels of government.

The Rice County Board of Commissioners has begun those discussions and the conversations will pick up in February, said Northfield's county commissioner, Galen Malecha.

The lines are redrawn every 10 years to keep the population among districts as equal as possible. In Rice County, where there are about 60,000 people, that means the goal is to shoot for about 12,000 people in each district for each of the five county commissioners. The law requires that all districts have to be within 10 percent of each other.

"Boy, if you don’t know algebra and geometry or something, you’re in trouble,” said Commissioner Jeff Docken at Tuesday's county meeting where Rice County Auditor/Treasurer Fran Windschitl gave a report about the process, the Faribault Daily News reports. “I thought I had this thing all figured out, but it’s a pretty sophisticated process.”