Idaho’s New Legislative Map: By The Numbers And More

Tuesday was a busy day in the Idaho legislature. Redistricting the state’s voting lines proved to be one of the biggest issues. The process may finally be coming to a close thanks to a new map that splits far fewer counties than the previous version.

The new map splits Bonneville County into four pieces. It puts three incumbent state representatives — Janice McGeachin (R-Bonneville County), Jeff Thompson (R-Idaho Falls) and Erik Simpson (R-Idaho Falls) — in district 30 together.

If this map is adopted, the three will have to vie for only two seats.

“The three of us will have to sit down and talk to each other and discuss how we’re going to deal with this,” said McGeachin. She said they hadn’t talked about it yet, because a decision of the lawsuit regarding the last district map hadn’t come down yet.

But as far as the commission is concerned, the plight of the incumbent politician didn’t factor into the process at all.

“We worked together on it, never once checking where incumbents lived,” said Republican commissioner Sheila Olsen of Idaho Falls. The commission was made of three democrat and three republican delegates.

She said the chore may be done, but nothing is perfect.

“I’m very sad about the map we came up with,” said Olsen.

Sad, she said, because following guidelines not to split counties meant stretching rural districts like District 8, which now contains a wilderness area between the Oregon and Montana borders.

Splitting Bonneville County four ways, said County Clerk Ron Longmore, is better than what happened with the last map.

“That plan split small counties that didn’t even have enough for one district,” said Longmore.

What to do with a state so rich in Native American Indian heritage?

“We figured the four indian tribes were communities of interest we tried as hard as possible to keep them whole,” said Olsen.

Our station spoke to senator Diane Bilyeu (D-Pocatello). She said the Fort Hall reservation gets split 4 ways and is frustrated there isn’t one voice for the tribe in the legislature.

But he map will stand unless there is another lawsuit. The last map was contested by Twin Falls, who said they will not challenge this version.

In Bonneville County, here’s the map by the numbers:

District 34:

17 percent Bonneville County 83 percent Madison County Towns of Iona and Ucon

District 32: 10 percent Bonneville County 90 percent Caribou, Franklin, Oneida, Teton counties Towns of Swan Valley and Irwin

Districts 30 and 33 100 percent Bonneville County Cities of Ammon and Idaho Falls split between the two districts