The Hundreds Redistricting Plan

Since the Redistricting debacle, I have been thinking about ways to reform the process in the General Assembly, but also about our districts themselves. Look at Northern New Castle County:

It looks like a child scribbled lines all over a map. Neighborhoods are divided and thrown together in an adhoc manner. So while the process must be reformed, there also must be a way to keep communities together in this process. So while the process must be more transparent and open in 2020, and based on more rational criteria than Tony Deluca’s vengeance, we must also draw our legislative districts to better keep established communities together.

On the national level and in other states much larger than Delaware, the basis commissions, judges and legislators use is county, city and town lines to accomplish that goal. But in Delaware, all we have our three counties and the city boundaries of Newark, Wilmington, and Dover. So that doesn’t help us to assign 41 House and 21 Senate districts.

So we must find some other boundaries to help us. So I turned to something rather unique to Delaware: the Hundreds system. You’ve all heard the Hundreds system referred to before: Brandywine Hundred in Northern Delaware, Appoquinimink Hundred in Middletown, Baltimore Hundred down in Bethany and Fenwick. In Delaware, Hundreds are a further subdivision of the three counties to more specifically define real estate boundaries. In fact, if you pull out your real estate deed to any property that you own, you will see your property referred to in reference to the specific Hundred you are in.

A Hundred is an old English political unit, smaller than a county or a township. Their use in England dates back to at least the 900’s, but were probably in use long before that. The ultimate origin of the term may refer to an area which which a hundred soldiers could be mustered for war. Delaware, as with some of the other original 13 colonies, used the hundreds system to subdivide real estate. There were five hundreds established in New Castle County in 1682: Brandywine, Christiana, New Castle, Appoquinimink, and St. Georges. There were five hundreds in Kent County also, and two in Sussex. As the population grew, more hundreds were formed from the originals. By the 1870’s, there were 33 hundreds in the state. But by then, the system of Hundreds was no longer used by other states and territories, as they preferred instead to use the subdivisions of towns, townships and boroughs. Even merry old England gave up using Hundreds in the 19th Century. Only good ole Delaware continued to use it, but only in real estate transactions, as I mentioned. All land parcels are assigned numbers based on their hundred.

But what if we use the 33 hundreds that do exist as the prime basis for redistricting. Here is the map of the 33:

Now, before go on, I will provide a caveat: hundreds have been created before out of larger original hundreds when population growth demanded it. Thus, if these 33 divisions are not sufficient or no longer reflect community boundaries, they can be redrawn to better fit current community divisions. However, they will be a starting point for the following exercise, because the idea is to have well defined community boundaries as a basis for representation in the General Assembly.

In the House, almost all of the individual Hundreds will get at least 1 Representative, much like each representative district in the U.S. House gets one representative. In Sussex County, I have combined three of the hundreds into neighboring hundreds: Broad Creek and Little Creek are combined, Broadkill and Georgetown are combined and Dagsboro and Gumboro are combined. I do this because it would seem to me that the population of each of these six hundreds are not sufficient to warrant separate representation as compared to the rest of the state. And that may be true of other hundreds throughout the state as well, but for now, we are only combining these three for this exercise.

So that gives us 30 districts, each with one guaranteed representative. That leaves 11 more seats to assign to get to 41, and these seats will be assigned to the hundreds based on population. For example, Wilmington would get 2 extra representatives in addition to its one guaranteed representative. See the chart below. Again, the additional 11 representatives can be moved around based on changes in population after every census.

Now, you are probably asking yourself if this system is awarding more representatives downstate that is warranted. Does Kent and Sussex Counties get over-representation at the expense of Wilmington and New Castle County. Here is the breakdown:

As you can see, Wilmington loses a representative, and New Castle County loses 1.5 (as the new 11th District in the real world is divided between NCCo and Kent). Meanwhile Kent County gains 1.5 and Sussex gains 1 seat. In my mind, I think that is perhaps good enough and probably more in line with population growth downstate.

Now let’s turn to the Senate. Now, what I wanted to do is assign a single Senator to each of the individual Hundred, so that the Delaware Senate would be like the U.S. Senate in that each state is represented equally regardless of population differences, so too would each Hundred. But that would result in 33 Senators, well over the 21 currently in the Senate, and in this day and age of budget cuts, I doubt it would be wise, or practical, to increase the size of the Senate by a third. Nor would it be wise or practical to not consider population differences. So, while the system of Hundreds are again the basis of representation in the Senate, we will be combining them like we did with the six Sussex hundreds above.

As you see below in the chart, I have combined Mill and White Clay Creeks, Pencader & Red Lion, Appoquinimink & Blackbird, Kenton and Little and Duck Creeks, the Dovers, the Murderkills, Milford and Mispillion. And in Sussex County, I have combined the Hundreds there into 3 combined Hundreds. These combinations, again, can be changed based on population differences.

Each of these Hundreds and Combined Hundreds will get one guaranteed Senator to represent them in the Senate. More populous Hundreds and Combined Hundreds will get additional Senators as their population warrants, out of the 6 additional Senators that are available for redistribution. The county difference between the 2010 Senate Districts and this plan are very minimal:

So, that’s my plan. I look forward to comments, concern, outrage and thoughts.