The United States Census Bureau has announced they will be delaying crucial census block data until September 30th of this year. The State of Ohio has filed suit, and the lawsuit has revealed that census data may be available as early as August.

Here in Arizona, the Independent Redistricting Commission has hired Republican Eric Schmitt as their Executive Director. The commission also voted to hire the law firms Ballard Spahr as Democratic co-counsel and Snell & Wilmer as Republican co-counsel.

Meanwhile, Fair Maps Arizona is proceeding as planned with our citizen education and volunteer recruitment campaign. We have given more than a dozen presentations on redistricting at local Republican district party meetings, and have many more presentations scheduled throughout the spring.

At these meetings we are recruiting county and legislative district field directors, as well as individual volunteers, to provide crucial testimony when the commission’s draft maps are released later this year.

In addition, we have begun researching Arizona’s current demographics in order to gain a better understanding of our current population distribution before the census data is released. We are preparing to hire a mapping consultant to begin producing example state legislative and congressional district maps based on these population estimates.