FROM STAFF REPORTS

Alabama Lt. Gov. Kay Ivey appointed an Alabaster legislator to the state’s Reapportionment Committee March 3.

Sen. Cam Ward, R-Alabaster, joined 10 other Alabama senators on the committee, which is in charge of dividing Alabama’s seven U.S. House of Representatives seats based on each district’s percentage of the state’s population.

After the 2010 census results, Alabama neither gained nor lost any electoral votes, and will still have nine votes in 2012. The state’s number of votes is equal to its number of U.S. House and Senate seats.

“The purpose of reapportionment is to ensure fairness in elective representation in the legislative branches on the state and national levels,” Ivey wrote in a press release. “We are going to diligently re-draw districts that are equal in population and homogeneously representative of the people.”

The Reapportionment Committee will also redraw the 105 Alabama House of Representatives districts, 35 Alabama Senate districts and the eight State Board of Education districts.

In addition to the 11 members appointed by Ivey, the committee is also comprised of 11 state representatives appointed by the speaker of the house.