DELAWARE- AÂ public virtual meeting held by the Delaware General Assembly Tuesday evening will give Milford residents an opportunity to weigh in before lawmakers redraw the state's district map.Â
It's a process that happens every decade and across all states in the U.S. After receiving its Census data, Delaware will now begin to redraw the state's district map for legislative representation.
The General Assembly is tasked with redrawing all 62 legislative districts based on the latest federal 2020 Census data.
State Rep. Bryan Shupe (36th District) said this determines the representative or senator assigned to a given district, who would then deal with issues like transportation, infrastructure or even healthcare.
"So here in the state of Delaware, we are starting to see people move out of northern Delaware and move into southern Delaware," he said. "So we will actually be looking at, potentially, seeing another representative district here in southern Delaware and potentially losing a district in northern Delaware."
Rep. Shupe said in the span of 10 years, numbers also show an exponential growth in the Hispanic community with about 2900 more individuals now living in Milford, in comparison to an increase in 300Â White/Caucasian individuals and 500Â Black/African Americans.
Milford School Board Member Rony Baltazar-Lopez said the goal is to make sure the districts are proportional in population and everyone gets represented equally.
"Historically, we've seen that population redistricting hasn't always been fair, or equitable across all demographics," Baltazar-Lopez explained. "So this, tonight's meeting is an important meeting to kind of ensure that people are listening, people are watching and people care about, you know, the redistricting process."
Tuesday's virtual meeting will be held from 6 p.m. to 8Â p.m. (click here for the link to participate)
A special session in late October or early November will be held to vote on the new map, which would take effect for the next election cycle.