JEFFERSON CITY, MO -- State lawmakers expect to receive the final population data from the U.S. Census Bureau this week. They say they will immediately begin the process of redrawing congressional and legislative boundaries with computers doing much of the work.

Separate committees in the House and Senate will work on the district boundaries. The process wil begin with a series of hearings around the state. This will allow the public to say what should be protected and what should not.

"Our goal is to get the public hearing aspect of this in the next week to 10 days," Rep. John Diehl of Town and Country explained. "By that time, the data should be in usable format and we can begin the process of building maps in the two committees, the Senate committee and the House committee."

Computer software has changed drawmatically since the last redistricting process 10 years ago. The details goes well beyond the county-by-county populations and demographics.

"The software gets as detailed as you want where, if you're trying to build a map and you're trying to find another 3,400 people, you really have to get into the census, block by block by block," said Sen. Scott Rupp of St. Charles.

Rupp says once the process begins to generate maps with possible districts, the legislature will post those maps online. That will allow people who can't make it to the public hearings to give input before the final maps are drawn and voted.

The conventional wisdom is that St. Louis's Russ Carnahan is the odd man out. But what happens if the computer software doesn't see it that way?

"There's certainly not a function on the computer where you push a button and it says, 'here's your best map' or anything close to that," Rep. Diehl said. "It is highly dependent upon the assumptions that you put into it. And part of those assumptions are gonna be what we hope to draw out of those public hearings."