CHAMPAIGN — One of the three proposed Champaign County Board district maps forwarded by the county's redistricting commission may have legal problems, according to the Champaign County Farm Bureau.

Officials from the organization will appear at tonight's county board meeting to oppose adoption of a map, known as NAACP Plan B, that had been recommended by the local chapter of the NAACP and was forwarded Monday night by the independent Champaign County Redistricting Commission.

The other maps to be considered are known as Plan 1F Revision 1 and Plan 3D Revision 1.

The board is scheduled to meet at 7 p.m. today at the Brookens Administrative Center, 1776 E. Washington St. A separate public hearing on the three proposed county board district maps, one of which could be adopted and used for the next 10 years, is set for 6:30 p.m.

A review of the NAACP map shows that, ironically, it does not have a majority minority district, which the county board in a recent resolution stated "should be the highest priority" of the redistricting commission.

A majority minority district is defined as one where minorities make up 50 percent plus one of the voting age population. Minorities are politically cohesive blocs of racial groups, according to an ACLU guide on redistricting, where "a majority of minority voters vote for the same candidates a majority of the time."

But an analysis of the NAACP proposal found that the district with the greatest number of minority voters — District 11, which includes some parts of north Champaign and north Urbana — had a voting age population below the 50 percent threshold.

The voting age population in the proposed district is 14,502. Of that number, 4,184 are black and 1,386 are Hispanic or Latino, for a total of 5,570. The white population in the proposed district is 7,487.

Asians make up 1,596 of the district's population, but the Farm Bureau argues that Asian voters are not politically cohesive with black and Hispanic voters.

"It's not a legal map, and it's not a fair map," said Jerry Watson, president of the Champaign County Farm Bureau.

"We have looked at the numbers in a broad sense, but we're questioning if the majority minority district is that way. I don't know that there's enough minority to make those districts correct. From the way we're looking at it, we don't see that the numbers are there for them," Watson said. "I think there could be a lot of questions raised. If this isn't a legal map, lawsuits and everything are a possibility."

County board member Michael Richards, a Champaign Democrat who served on the redistricting commission, said he believed the proposed District 11 "is very similar to the current (county board) District 5. I'm pretty confident that district would elect persons of color.

"I think that (proposed District) 11 is majority minority, and I don't think that's necessary on a map anyway. What I wanted to see was more than one district that could elect persons of color. Plan B and 3D both have two districts that could do that."

Farm Bureau officials also said they would oppose the NAACP map because only three of the 11 county board districts in the proposals could be considered "rural."

District 4 in the NAACP map stretches all the way from the southwest corner of the county into a large section of south Champaign. Even though the district includes Tolono, Pesotum, Sadorus and most of the rest of the southwestern quadrant of the county, it gets about 60 percent of its population from the city of Champaign or Champaign Township.

"There's 51 percent in city of Champaign Township and 9 percent in Champaign Township," said Brad Uken, manager of the Champaign County Farm Bureau. "With 60 percent being urban or on the urban edge, it's clearly not a rural district."

The redistricting commission had established an objective of having four rural districts, Uken said.

"The Farm Bureau will be opposing that map because we believe we need to have four rural districts in Champaign County," Uken said.

"When they're calling that a rural district and it's clearly not, that concerns us big time," Watson said.

Richards said, however, that because of the county's declining rural population, it's difficult to draw a map with four full rural districts. Champaign and Urbana, plus Champaign and Urbana townships, make up about 75 percent of the county's population, he said.

"So three to four, or 3 districts, is what you should expect to get," Richards said. "When we're not making the maps, it's hard to take that into consideration and try to tweak around that."

All of the proposed maps can be viewed at http://www.ccrpc.org/planning/ChampaignCounty_Redistricting.php.