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- Gibson Research Group, Inc. 704 3802 Deerfield Drive San Antonio, Texas 78218 August 27, 1993 _o~- Mr. Mark B. Taylor city Attorney City of San Marcos 630 E. Hopkins San Marcos, Texas 78666 Dear Mr. Taylor: In our response to your request for a proposal, we have attempted to offer the city a number of options. We understand that this project is for the purpose of determining the "~egality of the City's continued use of an at-large system for election of the San Marcos city council under section 2 of the federal Voting Rights Act." The majority of the analysis that we describe below speaks to the issue of voting patterns within the city with an emphasis on polarized voting, voting cohesion and the effects of the system on minority candidates. Much of this analysis is directly linked to subsequent decisions that you may make regarding changes, if any, in the city's election system. I We have contacted the Hays County Clerk's office regarding the county's redistricting submissions for 1981-82 and 1991-92. We have been told that these files are available, but we have not had the chance to review the details of these files to confirm their applicability to your request. Nonetheless, through discussions with county staff, we have some expectations that these resources can be used. If not, the tasks as describe must be followed. If the city used the voting precincts devised by the county for county-wide elections, the data sets from these submissions should provide much of the demographic data that would be required. Any city annexations between the time of the original submission (1981- 82) and the more recent submission (1991-92) would have to be considered and incorporated into the data files. Our proposal assumes that the data sets are not available in the appropriate format. We do not want to surprise you with a change