[Sorry, this is kind of rough, but it's been a long day and there will be more to do tomorrow, so until official transcripts go up, here's what happened today.]
Today's Redistricting meeting was intended to get the Board ready to spend the next couple of days back at their computers making the final maps.
There was public testimony first. Really, some speakers who got a lot of time. Rep. Matt Claman submitted written testimony and discussed it with the Board. Randy Ruedrich, former chair of the Republican party, the main brain behind the AFFER maps, and one of the best versed Alaskans on redistricting spoke about the AFFER maps and why deviation has to be the most important criterion. Also Robin O'Donahue and David Dunsmore of AFFR went through the changes AFFR has made to their maps in response to all the public testimony.
Then Peter Torkelson, the Executive Director of the Board explained how the staff verified that the
Census data they downloaded on August 12 and used to make all the maps, was indeed the real Census data and hadn't been hacked. He did this by comparing it to the physical hard drive and disc that arrive recently and matching the fingerprints. I get the general idea, but not the details.
Then he outlined what the Board has to do in the next week before the November 10 deadline. I went through that in the previous post. They have to truncate the Senate seats - after the finish the new maps and pair the house districts into Senate seats.
Truncating means identifying which districts have a substantial increase of new voters, that is voters who never voted for the incumbent Senators. This is necessary because people shouldn't have representatives who weren't elected by the voters in the district. There's no exact definition of substantial, but 30% apparently is at the high end. That much and the district has to be truncated. A normal senate seat is four years. And that means instead of serving out the rest of their term (if they aren't up for election in 2022) those seats that are truncated will have to run again in 2022.
But that's only step one. The Constitution says the Senate seats need to be staggered so only 10 senators are up for election in any one year. (That way there are always some senators who have some experience in office.) So, there's a good chance that more than ten senators will have to run in 2022. In that case, the Board will have to decide which ones will run again in 2024 and 2026.
Eric Sanders, a tech on loan from the Department of Labor, will spend the weekend - or as soon as there's a final map - writing legal descriptions of each district. This will verbally describe the boundaries of the districts based on geographical and man-made features. He did this for the previous redistricting board to.
Then, they recessed so they could move the meeting from the Legislative Information Office to the Board's office in the old University Center. It's in the hallway between where UAA and the University Theaters used to be (the DMV is there now) and where Roundtable used to be. They're close to the Round Table end, but you have to enter where the DMV is.
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| Meeting at Redistricting Board Office at University Mall |
I stopped by there on the way home. Only Robin and David were in the audience. You can zoom in. It didn't look like I'd gain much watching them this afternoon and I had other things to do so I took some pictures and left.
Below are my very rough notes of the meeting with more detail, but for most people I'd recommend just stopping here. Not sure there is much more that the average citizen needs to know. Tape and transcripts should be available before too long.
MY ROUGH NOTES
9am waiting for connection
Four members there - Budd Simpson not
Adopting agenda.
Agenda
Call to Order and Establish Quorum
Adoption of Agenda
Adoption of Minutes
Public Testimony – will conclude at 10:30am
Dial into one of the phone numbers above and indicate to the operator that you wish to testify
Had to connect by phone. Sounds like testimony
Randy Ruedrich Talking about deviation.
Binkley - SC urged lower deviations in local areas, Anchorage .93 % Sounds like Randy Ruedrich - results in FB overpopulation. We got an ideal map. Reason large deviations then we had VRA and to maximize to get Native majority districts
Binkley: clarify. When you say maps have 12X between the highest and lowest.
Ruedrich: Talking about over population in FB in 2010 - .39% ideal statewide compared to FB
This year, v3, deviations above 4% on average is 10X .4%.
Binkley: I understand, previous SC decisions have applied deviation within Municipality, but not Statewide.
Ruedrich: After litigation in 2002, met with Board to get deviation as low as possible. 16% excess population divided among Matsu districts. SC commended board for lowering deviations.
Borromeo: Asking us to minimize FB deviations?
Ruedrich: Exactly. Should be minimized everywhere. AFFER adds the Glen Allen precinct to get us a full 6 units of population. We’d have exactly 6 districts.
Do you think that’s more important than SEI?
Ruedrich: SEI is overrated - Most are within urban areas so it’s irrelevant. Only a few districts where it’s a problem - District 40 is what’s left. It’s mostly Doyon Villages. Much better of 2013 map which put Doyon villages in ?? districts.
Bahnke:
Ruedrich: Map we presented in FB has a Northside district. We go east to west, Old Nenana Road goes top of all existing districts. Northside should be competitive district and leaves less than 4K people (20%), that can be put in District 5 the rural Athabaskan district.
Binkley: You’re saying SEI
Ruedrich: First equal representation, 5 districts 2 ok, other 3. Traditionally one NP district, other ?? District, 3rd is far north which combine with NS. Chena Ridge inappropriate.
Rep. Claman - Turned in written testimony. Here 2 things. Product of 1998 amendment to constitution. Changed deviation. Need to bring deviation low as possible. Close to 1% deviation which means 1/2 percent. 33 or 34 districts statewide in urban. Less than 1% problematic.
Page 4 of written testimony - NSB 5.3% Main point - deviation is starting point, then SEI next. Cordoba shouldn’t be in SE in previous SC, but changes, such as ferry system, make it worth reconsidering. Basis for Board to find that integrating Cordova to SE. Now connected to kodiak, which seems further.
Borromeo: Thank you. More difficult areas, I have read your testimony. Any thoughts on Valdez.
Claman: Time spent there. Part oil and part Fishing. Lean to more oil than fishing. Better paired with Matsu than the fishing communities, but you could make argument for both.
Bethany: Deviation between 5 districts in FB or from target population of entire map.
Claman: On page 4 of my testimony. If take 18,335/ Anchorage population - just shy of 16. Trying to get 16 districts w/in 5% of that number. 16th district as close as possible. Same with FBs. FB gets 4+ districts. Look at most populous areas and should be able to get those areas within that target since two maps did.
Binkley - is deviation considered within the Municipalities, not
Matt Singer (atty) - talking about Hickel SC ruling - 10% total statewide deviation, but within Muni should be within 1% of ideal population, but SC never said that. Are urban voters more entitled to one person one vote than rural votes? If reduce to almost zero in urban areas, then necessarily creating exaggerated deviations in rural areas. We’ll be able to talk more in executive session.
9:34
Borromeo: Asking for minimum deviation or one person one vote for FB?
Claman: Matsu is 5.84, my perspective. FB .22 over the 5 is much closer to five than six. So 5 districts in FB and sixth district that gets part of FB. Based on SC precedent, rural areas are harder to get right.
Borromeo: Cancel each other out?
Claman: Hard to make case that FB should have six districts when overage is .22
Borromeo: Overpopulating FB short changes them
Claman: Districts should be closer to the targets.
Binkley: Thanks OK Randy Don’t see anyone on line
Borromeo: ????
9:38
Ruedrich: Respond to counsel - 2002 case, different set of constraints than today. VRA act to create minority-majority districts with assumptions that those districts would be under populated. That issue is gone, so interpretation in view of that change is that we minimize deviations. Not within one B or another. Mission as we did map - minimized deviations altogether. Western -.35 for Aleutian chain = -1.08. Admit with very few populations. Won’t get rural to 1/8 percent only by accident. Just above 1% is goal achieved. Strives to maximize representation for Western Alaska. D37, 38, 39, basically south to north. D37 already needed 1000 people. Had 8 villages. Our solution was to take 5 Lower Kuskokwim school districts and putting them into 37?? And they could all vote for same Senator. Wind up with deviation of -1.08 and -.35 for Calista. Accomplishes significant things for Calista people. Have half of a Senator. Larger share of Senate S.
Binkley: You said Doyon broken 5 times and in this map broken once?
Ruedrich: It had 4 different representatives. No only in 39 and D5?
Like to move to Matsu Borough. Six whole house seats, need 6 hundreds of a house seat. Denali B has 9 hundredths of a house seat. Would work. I’d prefer full representation situation, requires take Glen Allen district SEI, those folks, go back to core area of Matsu to go shopping when things not available in Glen Allen. Borough requested - not updated, incorporated in AFFR map.
Wasilla - a highway town. Mayor’s comments on record. City centered N-s on Mainstreet - Wasilla Fishhook. N part of district 13 on this map. Western boundary Church road. Wraps around Church and comes back down south. This is what the mayor requested. Can’t say there would be a different outcome than other districts from what we’ve drawn.
Binkley: Thanks Randy, you’ve put a lot of thought into this. I see one on the line. Let’s go to FB person
Debbie ??? FB - Thank you very much for all your work. I went through all the plans. Noticed SE - every map presented have the 4 districts 800 to 1000 under the 18,335. These are shrinking. Other districts must be over populated if they are underpopulated. So I recommend that SE boundaries reach up to Cordova and possibly Kodiak to get them fully populated.
Wasilla/Palmer are growing the most, so those districts should have the largest underpopulation and in ten years they wouldn’t be underpopulated. Tried to get maps from 40 years ago.
I want best representation for voters. AFFER or v4.
Binkley: Questions. Looking to how things might grow in the future, not something we allowed to do. We have to go by Census numbers. Can’t consider the census inaccurate. In terms of over and underpopulation. We’ve gotten as close as practicable. We have to look at Compactnes, Contiguity, and SEI. Then look at least deviation. In SE, geography restricts us. Can only go to north and only community is Cordova, but it would overpopulate, but would split Cordova in half. That would be hard to divide Cordova like that.
Debbie: Cordova, on the map, appears a lot closer to SE much closer than to Interior.
Binkley: Different maps connect Cordova with different areas. It’s about 2500.
Debbie: Oh, that’s small.
Binkley: We appreciate you taking the time. Here in Anchorage
Robin O’Donoghue and David Dunsmore: AFFR, we submitted a 25 page report - all the comments since Sept. 1 and tried to coordinate. AFFR had most statewide report - Western Alaska and Aleutians. Responses on Constitutional issues - looked at constitutional impacts of the 6 plans taken on the tour. Believe our map is the only constitutional option. We made two modifications and David will comment in moment. Comment on VRA and some additional public testimony. Last, request for board, process. Early on Board withheld Senate pairings - ask ample time to provide feedback on the Senate pairings. Take in testimony until the final day of this process. Thank you for all your work. Here’s David on our changes.
David: Amendments after public testimony. Regions of the state.
Thank you all and staff for hospitality you’ve shown across state tour and hard work.
One overarching constitutional issues is Borough boundaries. Hickel case why our approach minimizing breaking B boundaries. Hickel - recognize may be necessary to break a B to deal with excess population, Then all should go to one district. 2011 ?? Cases the same with FB. AFFR is only map that achieved that. One area where did have to divide B twice was Kenai Pen B. Not possible to do that and all other maps did that.
Technical corrections. Told board already. Operator error. 1) Yakutat - portion of Canadian borough put in Coast district by mistake. 2) Anchorage - Elmore Road by mistake 3) two substantive amendment move ?? fromDistrict 38 and 39. SE remove PoWales Island from D4 to D2 and switch with portions of Admiralty Island.
Kenai - unanimous opposition to Status quo - had to drive thru Soldotna to get to rest of district (Seward) want to be connected with Homer. Homer strong desire for entire Kachemak bay in a single district.
He goes on to talk more about Kenai, SE, FB details
Interior also strong support for our concept - Eilson, Salcha,
Bahnke - Nome - captured Nome sentiment
Dunsmore - Robin can speak more to that. Robin spent hours poring over the testimony. Aware, Nome had population loss. No way to make a district that doesn’t include other distinct cultural groups with Nome.
Bahnke: Makes no sense -Nome testimony - to connect Athabaskans with Sea people - your map was not popular in Nome.
David: It’s possible there’s an error in the numbers. Your assessment of Nome is accurate. My recollection was no one’s map was popular. Interior villages didn’t think it made sense to have Hooper Bay. Nome is one area where people would prefer a different map than any other map.
Bahnke - In Nome people like v4.
Borromeo - you are capturing sentiments, but miss Nome, so are others accurate?
Dunsmore: Based on what’s online and in the public record. We’ve shown methodology.
10:31 [I’m being distracted so not capturing this all.]
Binkley - one more public testimony
Brian - In prior opportunities expressed concern about west Anchorage - AFFER and v4 - approaching the ?? Process. Plug for AFFER for West Anchorage. V4 That’s all I have.
Binkley: Conclude public testimony. Go into Executive Session -OK take a break then go to ES.
10:30am – Executive Session with Legal Counsel Voting Rights Act Compliance in 2020 Proposed Plans
Voting Rights Act Compliance in 2020 Proposed Plans
Presentation by Matt Singer, Schwabe, Legal Counsel to the Board
1:14 - Board back from ES - Matt Singer, Board attorney presentation, handouts.
Voting Rights Act - has been part of Alaska Redistricting. CAn’t diminish Alaska Native Control districts. Have traditionally elected Native politicians. Dr. Katz is statistician, Bruce Adelson VRA expert. Analysis. Katz concluded that racially polarized voting does occur
Districts 37,38,39 40 are protected. Analyzed v3 to see if needed modifications. Concluded they do not because D37-40 have enough Native population to elect candidate of their choice. Did note that some districts have very high native populations. Cracking would be diluting by spreading over districts. Packing - when minorities packed into some districts and not giving them more power. Could we add a fifth Native district? Decided that we could not - just wouldn’t make sense.
Detailed report to explain our IRA analysis. Barring some drastic changes - all the plans had those four districts - they drew themselves the way the population is divided.
Other component - Neighborhoods in Anchorage with diverse neighborhoods we looked at distribution of Anchorage population as example and House D19 there are 33.4% id as white two or more 12.5 Hispanic ……. Can’t keep up…. Is there a difference between white and minority voters? We could not find statistical evidence to support there is political cohesion among the groups nor racial block voting. Not a VRA obligation to draw Anchorage districts a certain way. Board has obligation to NOT discriminate against minorities. Compact, contiguous districts board avoids discrimination.
Longwinded way is our advice to Board is VRA does not require alteration to the plans the board is now considering. We’ll run the final plan through the experts.
Q? No
Review of Sept 16 Census Physical Delivery Data
1:26 Peter Torkelson: Next item. Our receipt of physical data package. We sent out an email detailing this. Point here is to be sure that the data we are using is the actual Census data. August 12, downloaded from internet and things could be compromised. We cross-checked different ways to validate. Constitution says board must use Census data. Only authoritative data we can use. Census followed up with a hardware - DVD and thumb drive. Opened the files and found data file. At first glance seems to be same file we downloaded. These files look to be the same. But we must be able to document that downloaded data is exactly the same as the Census data.
Compared new data to the downloaded data. Digital fingerprinting - comparing two electronic files to make sure they are exactly the same
[Explaining in more detail how he checked to confirm the files are identical.]
Avalanche effect - one small thing can cascade an avalanche of difference.
Digital fingerprints of Aug 12 download identical to physical file received in September.
1:35
Binkley - a lot shorter than your email.
Peter: I got a lot of feedback about the email…
Public Hearing Tour Summary
1:37 Review places we’ve been to meet Constitutional obligation to hold public hearings. We took the six adopted plans
First half hour just talking with people about the maps on the wall and then offering public testimony. Smaller communities people less likely. [Basically talking about where they went - timing, etc. Not much critical substance..
List of Quick Stats - hundreds of truly generous Alaskans. One lady testified, then left. Went to store to buy us food before the local store closed. We were overwhelmed by generosity of Alaskans.
1:44
Binkley - we all share the thanks for the hospitality of Alaskans around the state.
Review & Discussion: Tasks Ahead, Key Decisions
VRA analysis not complete because we don’t have a completed map. I work at your discretion, but also my duty to hold your feet to the fire.
Next tasks ahead and vision for the week - board will do as they wish, but we’d recommend. We urge you to get a final map by Friday. We need another of days after the final map to fulfill our duties.
Mr. Sandberg from Dept of Labor has to write detailed descriptions of 40 districts. He offered to work the weekend to get it done.
Other tasks. Contacted by GIS departments of Boroughs and cities about problems with maps and they want to take our shape file and run it through their systems to identify where out maps may divide a house or other problems.
Want to do the Senate pairings and to do that, have to run core constituency reports - what % of voters were in the previous districts. In some districts we’ll have 90% the same voters, but in other districts not so high. May have to truncate because voters in that district have substantially changed. 20 Senate seats, ten elected every cycle. Decide a) which seats have to run again, and b) assign which election cycle each seat will run.
That’s why we have to do final map by Friday. But it won’t be final official map until we adopt the full proclamation - need to have everyone do all these things. So need to get the map done by Friday.
We have organized our offices to have work sessions. Maps on walls. Time for board to look more inward and draft maps that reflect the standards and the public input we’ve received. Are two days enough? I don’t know.
Then come back here when done and explain Friday and formally adopt.
Binkley: Thank you Peter. For all of us first time through and trying to get through. You’ve outlined a good course of action.
Borromeo: I find the office a better atmosphere for mapping. Plenty of seats for everyone who is here today. I encourage people to just do their mapping.
Marcum: I agree we’ll be more productive mapping. Trying to do all this in two days, I suggest we start today and tonight. Rather start early and intensely and get done early, rather than wait.
Simpson: I agree
TJ Presley: There needs to be a final public testimony opportunity. Just make sure you are incorporating that.
Torkelson: The mapping at the office will be open to the public. We’ve got seating and made that possible. Suggest public testimony before we make final decisions.
Binkley: We’d come back with Senate pairings and recommend public testimony after we do the senate pairings - maybe Monday morning. Try to get things done Friday and staff can clean up on Monday.
Binkley: OK, then we can recess, suggest.
Matt Singer: Recess to another location.
Torkelson: We have a zoom link, however, this is a dynamic process, people doing around. No way to capture this whole process. Not the same as if you were there in person.
1:59pm
Matt: When you make decisions should do that in way that is as public as possible.
Peter: Work session will be recorded. Need to move from formal process and when decision points come, get more formal.
Matt Singer: You will have to make decisions at different points should make that clear.
Pressley: Want testimony now?
Binkley: If someone has something to say? David Dunsmore
Dunsmore: Brief time to look at VRA handouts. It seems to me clear evidence of racial profiling in East Anchorage. We concur with conclusion for rural Alaska that 4 rural districts required. I’d suggest Board to ask Adelson to supplement report - one thing missing, curious how national expert would tackle the problem - how Prop 2 is going to interplay with bra analysis. Under prop 2 (ranked choice) uncertain how last election would have ended up. Appropriate to Board to ask for analysis of Ranked Choice voting. It’s happened in various countries around the world, so I assume there are methodologies for analyzing. Also appropriate to ask in ecological analysis, not just races, to see where Native Candidate against non-Native candidate. Also VRA considers candidate of its choice, but doesn’t have to be same race.
Also put on record couple of races - haven’t seen Anchorage analysis. I think some showed clear racial voting. Bettye Davis barely won her district but when paired with ER, minority voters denied the candidate of their choice. White voters in ER heavily voted for Anna Fairclough. Also 2012 Garen Tarr v. Cal Williams - clear white/minority voting. That was a primary race, so not partisan polarization. Also given new voting system, overlapping Senate district - Tom Begich v. ???. Thank you again for the opportunity to give testimony
Matt Singer: Adelson believes some white cross-over voting in AK native districts.
Dunsmore - I did see but not that tied in post Prop 2 world.
Matt Singer: If five districts in Anchorage with 45% or more minority population.
Dunsmore: I don’t have the numbers in front of me.
Matt: v3 and v4 had five minority districts in Anchorage where a majority - if you buy that the diverse minority groups voted the same - every group came up with about five districts.
Dunsmore: Haven’t had chance to review the other plans for this.
Binley: Thank you. If not close and recess to work session at our office
Borromeo: 3901 Old Seward Highway, near DMV (Old University Center)
They adjourned at this point. I’m afraid I stopped tracking the time. It was maybe 2:30 or so.
Mapping Work Session
This continued at the Board’s office.
Adopt Final Redistricting Map - postponed, most likely to Friday
Adjournment
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