The first public step down the path of redistricting in Edgefield County began Tuesday evening with a called meeting of County Council to hear a presentation on the process delivered by Wayne Gilbert of the South Carolina Office of Research and Statistics.

The process of redistricting, or redrawing the lines that separate county council districts, takes place every 10 years following a census cycle. Based upon that data, new lines are drawn which must adhere to federally mandated criteria set in the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to prevent the “cracking” and “packing” of minority districts.

These criteria include, but are not limited to: equal populations, districts that do not dilute minority voting strength, contiguity and communities of interest.

Once members of County Council have made adjustments to the proposed plan presented Tuesday (if any are called for), the plan will face three readings, including a public hearing, and the scrutiny of the U.S. Department of Justice. Mr. Gilbert said the U.S. Department of Justice, which must eventually approve the plan, has set a deadline for the conclusion of the process at October 31, 2011, to preserve upcoming 2012 election cycles.

“Any delay will interrupt that timeline,” Gilbert said.

Based upon a county census of 26,985 persons, each district would need to target a number of 5,397 persons, which the plan presented Tuesday would do. It would also keep the towns of Edgefield, Johnston and Trenton intact (with each town’s populations being represented by a single council member rather than being split in half), which was a request of each town’s mayor as members of council toured the towns over the summer months.

A point of contention which surfaced immediately pointed out the fact that under the proposed plan, both of the county’s two prisons would be included within one district (District 4). And with a district size of 5,397, the inmate populations (2,752 total, which do not vote) would then represent around 51-percent of the district.

The foundation for the proposal lay in the application of 2010 district numbers to current county council district lines.

“Once you do that, this gives you your marching orders if you will,” said Gilbert.

And whatever changes are made will serve as a “domino effect” upon the entire process, as each proposal will have to meet the established criteria.

And as County Council chairman Dean Campbell would point out later in the meeting, the Council has the option of either including the prison inmates within the district numbers or taking them out.

If Council decided to take them out, they must still be counted within the total county population, so the average district size would be recalculated (around 4,846) and then the prison populations folded into those districts taking into consideration the criteria established by the voting Rights Act of 1965.