Phase 2 of the 1990 Redistricting Data Program provided an opportunity for each State to designate a State Liaison to coordinate the State’s participation, provide its VTD boundaries to the Census Bureau, update the boundaries to reflect changes in governmental unit boundaries, and receive all data and geographic products associated with the program.
During the summer of 1987, the Census Bureau sent a letter about participating in this voluntary project to officials in each State responsible for redistricting; this included the legislative leadership of each State, except Alaska and Maryland, in which the Governor is responsible. By January 1989, the 46 participating States had named a liaison (some States named more than one) for the Census Bureau to work with on Phase 2 of the project. In the spring of 1989, the Census Bureau delivered precensus maps depicting legally defined entities (with boundaries current as of 1988) and the 1990 collection geography (census tracts, block numbering areas, and non-suffixed census block numbers) to State liaisons. Participants had seven months to annotate the maps with their VTD boundaries and return them for the Census Bureau to produce the tabulated data products. After receiving the maps, the Census Bureau inserted the VTD boundaries into the TIGER data base. Subsequently, to ensure accurate data tabulations, the Census Bureau updated any VTD boundaries coincident with a governmental unit boundary that changed after 1988.
Table 14-1 lists the number of true and pseudo VTDs for the 46 States that participated in Phase 2 of the 1990 Redistricting Data Program. The District of Columbia and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico also delineated all their VTDs. Thirty-eight States participated in full; that is, they delineated their VTDs in all counties or equivalent entities. Four States delineated their VTDs in all but one or two counties. In four other States, the extent of participation was significantly lower; the percentage of counties for which the States delineated VTDs ranged from a high of 57 percent to a low of 35 percent.
Voting Districts14-15
