Boston Mayor Michelle Wu on Monday quietly signed the City Council–approved redistricting map, making official newly redrawn voting district boundaries for the next municipal election.
Wu’s press office announced her approval on the eve of Election Day without much of a statement to address the map itself, or the controversial process that rendered it.
The map,authorized via a 9-4 vote at last week’s City Council meeting, came after a multi-month process that included tense community meetings, council hearings and a legal case still pending in state court. The design makes the biggest changes to the lines that shape who votes in the city’s South Boston and Dorchester-based districts.
South Boston, represented by Council President Ed Flynn, saw population growth since the 2010 census that outpaced the city’s eight other districts. To remedy the imbalance, the district was shaved in several spots, placing voters into abutting districts — mostly a slow-growing Dorchester district. That move also shifted the Dorchster-based district northward, leaving voters near the borders of Milton and Quincy to unite with a different district anchored by the predominately Black neighborhood of Mattapan.
A spokesperson for the mayor said Monday that the city’s legal department confirmed the map complies with the Voting Rights Act.
Over the weekend, Wu signaled her intent to approve the new boundaries while expressing dismay with councilors' conversations and attacks related to the map.
“Redistricting is never an easy conversation and I think we see that when it is the legal responsibility of just 13 individuals who are each very deeply and personally impacted by what comes of that, it adds extra layers of complexity,” the mayor said during an appearance on WCVB’s "On the Record."
“It’s been really disappointing and frustrating to see the kind of tone and types of attacks that have happened,” Wu added, possibly referring to Dorchester Councilor Frank Baker’s implication that the maps were the result of a religious conspiracy to disempower Irish Catholic Bostonians.
Even though a judge dismissed a restraining order request to block the council from voting on the map last week, lawyers for the city and the South Boston contingent that brought the legal action are due back in court Wednesday to argue over a open meeting law complaint. Multiple sources familiar with the council’s inner working indicated the case seems unlikely to succeed.
Boston’s new map will be in effect beginning Jan. 2024. Potential challengers looking to unseat city councilors for the 2023 preliminary election will run based on these new districts.
