Rhode Island § 22-1-3 - Composition of Senate

§ 22-1-3. Construction of chapter — Legislative purposes.

This chapter shall be liberally construed to effectuate the purposes of it and to apportion the state into senatorial districts in compliance with the requirements of the United States Constitution. It is intended that the senatorial districts described in this chapter completely encompass all the area within the state and contain all the citizens resident in the state. It is further intended that the apportionment and districting provided for in this chapter results in the creation of districts containing substantially equal population. It is also intended that no senatorial district shall include any of the area included within the description of any other senatorial district. If the districts described in this chapter do not carry out the purposes of them because of patent unintentional omissions, duplications, overlapping area, erroneous nomenclature, faulty description of boundary lines, street closings, changes in names of streets or of public places, alteration of the courses of rivers or streams, the filling in of lands under water, or changes in shorelines due to accretion, the secretary of state is authorized and empowered to correct the omissions, overlaps, erroneous nomenclature, or other defects in the description of districts so as to accomplish the purposes and objectives of this chapter. In making these corrections, the secretary of state shall be guided by the following standards:

(1) Gaps in the description of any district shall be completed in a manner which results in a total description of the district in manner consonant with the description of adjacent districts.

(2) Areas included within the descriptions of more than one district shall be allocated to the district having the lowest population.

(3) Areas not included within the descriptions of any district shall be allocated to the adjacent district having the lowest population.