AMARILLO, Texas (KAMR/KCIT) — Potter County Commissioner’s voted against redistricting in the county’s four precincts this morning.

County commissioner’s voted against the measure after preliminary data from the 2021 Census was presented in Commissioner’s court. According to county officials, redistricting is based on Citizen Voting Age Population, or citizen’s who could vote.

“Not only is it numbers, but it also shows where those numbers are,” said Melynn Huntley, Elections Administrator for Potter County. “It’s Citizen Voting Age Population that redistricting is based upon, so, then the County Commissioner’s have the right to vote ‘yes, we’re going to redistrict, or we have to redistrict.”

Huntley said legally, under the One Person, One Vote rule to ensure equal representation, if Potter County’s four precincts are not within a 10% threshold of each other based on population, re-districting must happen.

“What happened here today, we have four JP’s (Justice of the Peace), four commissioner’s,” she said. “The Citizen Population and Citizen Voting Age Population of those four have to be within 10 percent of each other, if they’re not within 10% of each other, you must redistrict.”

The county barely met that requirement at 9.69%.

Huntley added small tweaks may be made by Commissioner’s based off of 2021 Census data, but no major re-districting would happen.

Another item from Commissioner’s Court, Potter County’s population actually decreased by 2,500 people since the 2010 Census. According to Huntley, there were about 121,000 residents in the Potter County back then.

Now there’s a little more than 118,000.