Redistricting

Showing that it’s never too late to do the right thing, the General Assembly enacted legislation redrawing Senate district lines around the metropolitan Providence area. The legislation settled a lawsuit filed last year by the Urban League of R.I., the NAACP and others that claimed that black voting power on the South Side of Providence was improperly diluted by the legislature’s decennial redrawing of Senate district lines in 2002. The Senate’s willingness to reconfigure one-third of its districts was aided by two district vacancies caused by the resignations earlier this year of Senators William Irons and John Celona.