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U.S. Department of Justice Page 4 September 20,2002 (9) The City of La Porte City Council Re-Districting Sub-Committee, established by the City of La Porte City Council in its meeting of June 24, 2002, and comprised of three Council persons, including the Black citizen representative of District 4, produced final changes to the proposed Re-Districting map submitted to City Council by the Re-Districting Committee in its Final Report. A copy of the minutes of the meeting of the City Council on June 24, 2002, is attached hereto as Exhibit "E". (10) An explanation of the difference between the submitted change affecting voting, and existing law or practice is best demonstrated by the map attached to Exhibit "A" and comparing that to Exhibit "B", the existing map. The Final Report of the Redistricting Committee, Exhibit "0", best establishes the rationale behind the changes and differences. (11 ) The change affecting voting has not yet been enforced or administered. (12) The reasons for the change affecting voting are the substantial population growth of the City of La Porte since the last Re-Districting. The population growth requires Re-Districting to more equitably reflect population grown patterns among the six single-member Districts. Also necessitating changes affecting voting is the history of voter confusion and agitation caused by the high number of polling places relative to the population distribution within the City. Because each polling location is restricted to the voters of a particular district, and effectively communicating the correct location to vote within each district has been difficult, many voters have been caused to show up at the wrong polling location. The proposed solution is to allow one polling location to serve all West side voters, and the other, all East side voters. (13) The anticipated change affecting voting is calculated to avoid retrogression to the best extent possible to the Black and Hispanic minority communities in Districts 3 and 4 (both currently represented by Black citizens), while simultaneously honoring the "one person one vote principle". As such, in reconfiguring District 4, which presently has a significant Black population, the Re-Districting Committee and Sub-Committee reconfigured the district lines of the district to both 1) equalize its population with the remaining five districts (by requiring a maximum 10% variance between the largest and smallest proposed district) and 2) avoid reducing the voting strength of protected minority groups to the best extent possible. Due to the increase of population in the city and the pattern of population growth in and around the District 4 area, the effort to comport with the "one person one vote" principle required the Committee to include a higher number of non-minorities in the district. However, working within this limitation, proposed District 4 was redrawn to increase the overall Black population from 554 individuals to 908 individuals, an increase of 64%, Accordingly, the overall Hispanic population was increased 383%, from 279 individuals to 1,347 individuals. An effort to further increase the population of Black citizens within District 4 was hampered by three considerations: First, the general dearth of