Dallas City Council Redistricting Plan 3 died about 8 PM on 8-20-11

It is sad to announce to the hundreds of supporters, and the 22 who spoke at the forum to support the plan, that Plan 3 is no longer in the running to be the redistricting plan for Dallas City Council. 

At this evenings meeting after the forum the Commissioners wrote their first choice, second choice, and third choice on a sheet of paper in an effort to eliminate one map.  After that was done it was decided that the two plans with the most first choice votes would be the ones to go forward. The one with the least first choice votes would be out.  Plan 16 received 10 votes, Plan 5 received 4 votes. Plan 3 only received 1 vote for first choice.  Plan 3 was out.  The Chair states that all of the votes would be read into the record.

=======================================
This vote was ultimately recorded on page three from the minutes for the Commission Meeting on 8/20/11.  Here is a link to the copy of these minutes on the Commission web site.  Here are the results of those votes by the 15 Commissioners, followed by the percentage, in parenthesis, of Commissioners who thought that the plan should either be first or second:

wPlan03c: 1 first place vote, 12 second place votes , 2 third place votes, (86.7%)
cPlan05b: 4 first place votes, 1 second place vote, 10 third place votes,  (33.3%)
cPlan16b: 10 first place votes, 2 second place votes, 3 third place votes, (80.0%)
=======================================

The strange way in which the votes were interpreted were certainly disappointing, but there was no opportunity for comment from the public relative to the questionable logic involved in the elimination of Plan 3 instead of Plan 5.  One commissioner spoke up who noticed the irregularity, but they were overruled by the others.

Only 8 votes are needed for a plan to be selected.  Ten votes were received this evening by Plan 16.  Unless there are major changes by Tuesday, it is certain Plan 16 will be the selection.

I am still in the Commission meeting.  It is now 9:21 PM.  They continue "tweaking" the remaining plans, 16 & 5.  The staff analysis of the results of these changes will hopefully be posted on the Redistricting web site Monday along with the new maps. We need to watch and see if these changes will weaken these plans from the strength they had originally shown as significant improvements to the current Dallas City Council District Map.