Oklahoma Legislature Adopts Preliminary Maps
OKLAHOMA CITY — Governor Stitt has approved of the new district maps for the Oklahoma Senate and House of Representatives which were drawn by the state legislature earlier this spring.
It is important to note that these maps are not the final version of the legislative maps. These maps were drawn using five-year population estimates produced by the American Communities Survey, which is a product of the U.S. Census Bureau. However, because redistricting must be done using data from the decennial census, the state legislature will have to revise these maps once the 2020 Census data is available later this fall.
We have compared the preliminary maps drawn by the state legislature to maps submitted by members of the public, including our organization, and they are comparable in most respects. However, because the state legislature made a point to protect all incumbent politicians who will be running for reelection, their maps are slightly less competitive than most of the maps submitted by the public. Overall, the new legislatively-drawn maps are more compact than the current maps.
The next step in the redistricting process is that the legislature will hold a series of town hall meetings over the summer to solicit public input on how they should redraw Oklahoma’s five Congressional districts. The 2020 Census data is expected to be released in August 2021 and the legislature has indicated they plan to return for a special session in October to complete redistricting.
