redistricting

No election season is complete without appeals to exercise your constitutional right to vote. That includes making your voice heard in next week’s March 5 presidential primary in Massachusetts, one of 15 states casting ballots on Super Tuesday.

In a process its Civil Rights Committee Chairwoman Ruthzee Louijeune called contentious, the Boston City Council has passed a second redistricting map with a 10-2 vote, sending the map to Mayor Michelle Wu’s desk for approval.

The lead plaintiff in an Alabama voting rights case before the United States Supreme Court visited Boston last week to raise funds and cultivate allies for a statewide coalition of activists working to promote Black civic engagement in the southern state.

On Wednesday, two City Council members introduced demands for city records in the form of two so-called 17F requests, both seemingly aimed at re-airing various grievances being aired by opponents of the map approved by a majority vote of the Council last Fall.

At-large Councilor Michael Flaherty took the stand Tuesday, testifying for the plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging the Council’s redistricting map.

According to the plaintiffs suing the Boston City Council over the redistricting map, the body violated the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by taking race into account in re-drawing district lines. Lining up in support of the lawsuit are a Who’s Who of Irish American elected officials representing South Boston and Dorchester.

A handful of incumbent politicians are seeking to testify in the federal court case challenging the legality of Boston’s voter district maps, including U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch, who has served in Congress since 2001.

A coalition of South Boston-based organizations and activists have filed a lawsuit against the Boston City Council in an attempt to overturn a redistricting map the body passed by a 9-4 vote on Oct. 26.

Faced with a redistricting map that would transfer three traditionally Irish American Boston precincts into a predominantly Black city council district, Councilor Frank Baker invoked the oppression of Catholics in the North of Ireland and called out the Redistricting Committee chair for being a Protestant.

As the city’s once-in-a decade redistricting process comes to a close, city councilors have had to pick their battles in order to meet the deadline for redrawing voting boundaries.

A longstanding racial divide on the City Council has moved to center stage as the 13 members of the body debate the redrawing of the city’s nine council districts.