Redistricting Trial Day 2: Some Insights

[It's been a long day at the computer.  I'm putting this up now, but reserve the right to edit it later when I have more time.] 

On the surface today seemed more like a regular trial.  There were witnesses and attorneys questioned them.  Sometimes other attorneys objected and the judge had to decide whether to sustain it or overrule it.  

My rough notes are rougher than usual and it would be tedious for just about everyone if I posted them so I'll skip that today.  Instead I'll comment on what the testimony said to me about redistricting.  

I would like to make two observations on the Board's representation today after my comments yesterday.  Board attorney Matt Singer was, in my opinion, far more respectful of the witnesses than he was of the witnesses yesterday.  Also, I'd suggested he should have one of his associates take over some of the in court appearances so he can get a break, and Lee Baxter did much of the work today for the Board.  I'm sure that was arranged a while ago, but I want to let regular readers know there was a difference today.  

This was Mat-Su's day, though Valdez (which is doing the case with Mat-Su since they both object to being paired  with each other) had a witness - the Mayor - today as well because she was available today.  The district in question is 29-O  (O is the Senate seat.)

The Stated Issues

• Is District 29 (the one that pairs Valdez with suburbs of Palmer) contiguous?
• Is District 29 compact?
• Is District 29 socio-economically integrated?
• Is District 29 unconstitutionally over populated?

These are the  State and Federal constitutional requirements for a district.  

Questions and answers over these issues got just short of ridiculous, making it clear to me that it would be helpful if the Supreme Court offered some new advice on what these ideas mean and how you would test them - particularly contiguous and socio-economically integrated.

Types of Witnesses Today

• Elected Officials
• Mayor Edna DeVries - Mat-Su Borough Assembly
• Michael Brown - Mat-Su Borough Manager
• Mayor Sharon Scheidt - Valdez
• Mapping Experts
• Stephen Colligan

Insights (if that's not too lofty a word for these thoughts)

1.  Redistricting Criteria

Throughout the Board's mapping process last year - including the public hearings - I was struck by how the board used the criteria listed above.  Too often they were NOT used as criteria to measure the districts they were making.  Rather they were used to justify the districts. Perhaps that sounds like double-talk on my part.  I mean that criteria were used to justify doing things, not to stop and check whether what they had done was correct.  

This became more obvious as one criterion took precedence over another one that had been crucial earlier.  At one point we heard the all districts within a borough boundaries were socially-economically integrated (SEI) so they didn't have to consider, say community-councils in Anchorage, or whether neighborhoods were similar or different.  At other times, say when Bethany Marcum was trying to put part of East Anchorage into the same district as part of Eagle River, she was listing all the Socio-Economic Integration of the two areas.  

At one point getting low deviations was important until it fell by the wayside for other criteria.  

Today's discussion made some of the criteria look so malleable you could stretch them to mean whatever you wanted.  Let's look at three of them.  (I'm going to leave compactness out for now because that seemed to be abused the least.)

1.  Deviation - This is a federal requirement. In order for the one-person-one-vote concept to work, districts have to be as close to equal in population as possible.  In theory anyway.  Part of Mat-Su's complaint is that Mat-Su as a whole is over populated because it's districts range from 1.1% more than the ideal 2020 Alaska Redistricting population number of 18,335. (That comes from dividing the 2020 Census number for Alaska by 40 House seats.)  At one point, their challenge added up the percentages for each district and they claimed they were 13.7% above.  But as I pointed out in a post yesterday, you can't add up percentages.  If you take the population of the six Mat-Su districts and divide them by the ideal size of six districts, the deviation is 2.2 or so.  

The Supreme Court has ruled that in urban areas it should be less than two and the lower the better.  In rural areas there is more flexibility.  The absolute limit from the Supreme Court has been a 10% limit between the highest and lowest deviations.  So if the highest deviation is 5% above 18335, then the lowest allowable would be 5% below.  But even that number would have to be justified.  

Stephen Colligan, the challengers' expert today, complained about Mat-Su's overpopulation and said they didn't have as much influence in Juneau because of it.  But really, if they have 400 more people in their district out of 18,335 people, how much of a difference does that really make?  This is a theoretical equality.  At what point does it become really an equity issue?  Some districts have a much higher proportion of non-voters than other districts, such as children or non-citizens, or prisoners.  Don't get me wrong.  Equal size districts is an important criterion, but we shouldn't obsess over it.  It's become even more of an issue now that software is available to reduce the differences to 1% for most districts and under that for urban areas.  AFFER's maps did that.  And Colligan's point that Anchorage and other areas were uniformly underpopulated is a valid one.  Was that done intentionally?  I suspect not, but it probably didn't have to be that way if the Board had more professional mappers working on the maps.  But I'll pursue that later.

2.  Contiguity - This basically means that all parts of the house district are touching.  It's the main criterion for Senate pairings. (In Senate pairings the two House districts have to touch, somewhere.) Here the basic issue in District 29 is that there is no way to get from Valdez to Mat-Su by car without going through another district.  The Board argues that the land is contiguous, it doesn't matter if the road goes out of the district for 60 miles or more.  Board Attorney Lee Baxter seemed to mock witness Colligan's use of the term 'auto contiguity' which got changed then to 'transportation contiguity' which then no longer seemed to have any meaning when helicopters and chartered plane brought up.  

But I'm all for the 'auto contiguity' concept.  People should have to drive out of their district to reach other parts of their district.  Of course, there are exceptions in rural Alaska where there are no roads, or where there is water and island.  But in urban areas and in areas with roads, 'auto contiguity' makes perfect sense to me.  You shouldn't have to drive through nearer areas to get to the other side of your district.  In Valdez' case to where 75% of the population of the district is located a four hour drive away, in good weather.  But this should also apply in Anchorage and Fairbanks.  Last time a Fairbanks district was 'connected' by a military bombing range that was closed to the public.  It was done to dilute the vote of the main part of the district.  And in Anchorage this time, this same sort of thing is being done in the Eagle River Senate pairings.  Yes, the districts are contiguous by land, but not by land people can use to get to the other side.  Instead they have to drive through other districts and then eight or more miles to get to the other side of their district.  This too was for partisan reasons and if the Court recognizes 'auto contiguity' it would put an end to this sort of gerrymandering.  

3.  Socio-Economic Integration - This is the most ambiguous criterion.  In my mind, it means that there is an important relationship, a common interest, that makes it beneficial to be grouped together and be represented by on representative.  But the plaintiffs and the defendant alike are coming up with all sorts of ways areas are similar or different.  Do they use the same highways?  Where do they shop?  Do Valdez folks shop in Mat-Su or Anchorage?  The answer from the mayor of Valdez was, "if your 45 minutes from Anchorage, why stop in Mat-Su where you have to pay sales tax?"   I thought Valdez had a strong list of reasons they are connected with the Richardson Highway communities - from goods coming in the port going up to Fairbanks, to the pipeline, to electrical utilizes, to higher education, etc.  But the Board's attorney pointed out that Valdez sports teams play in Mat-Su once a year.  The Mayor pointed out they play in Kenai too, but mostly along the Richardson Highway.  The Board's attorney asked Valdez if they thought Mat-Su was socially-economically integrated with Tonsina?  Later the Board was challenged whether Holy Cross was socially-economically integrated with Glennallen?  Both had been paired in different maps that had been supported.  It just shows that not every pairing will work exactly and the different criteria have to be weighed and compromised here and there to get districts.

At the Board meetings we heard that Interior Native Groups have nothing in common with Coastal Native Groups.  I understand they can have different language traditions and other traditions, but does that mean they have more in common with the White folks who are relatively recent arrivals to Alaska than to other Alaska Natives?  It became clear to me over this process that we can  find all kinds of areas of commonality and differences.  But which ones are really important in terms of having a representative?  And if you put everyone who is different in a different district does this ultimately strengthen or weaken their representation?  Packing is the type of gerrymandering where you put a lot of one group into one district.  They'll elect their representative by 50% or more.  But that also means they had 50% excess votes that could have made another district more competitive.  Lots of think about here.  

Expert Mappers versus the Board

Third party groups like AFFR (Alaskans for Fair Redistricting) and AFFER (Alaskans for Fair and Equitable Redistricting), Doyon, the Democratic Party, and the Senate Democratic Minority  attended most of the public Board meetings.  As I listened to them testify and talked to them, it became clear that they had begun mapping months before the Board even started.  They had people trained in GIS (Geographic Information Systems) that is the basis of the mapping software.  Stephen Colligan, today's expert witness is the head of AFFER and said he has people with masters and PhD's in this field working on mapping.  He said that Mat-Su had begun working on this five years ago.  

In comparison, the Board is made up of people with little or no previous mapping experience.  They had basic classes for beginners to help them learn how to use the software.  At the time I was beginning to form thoughts like - "the board is way behind the third party groups" and "the board is learning on the job."  Colligan today said that the Board didn't start until September 7 and then gave themselves two days to come up with maps.  They actually started playing with the software on August 24, 2021.  Meanwhile the third party groups had professionals and had started making maps months earlier.  [UPDATE Jan 25, 2021: I tracked down my post "Redistricting Board Meets To Learn Software" which happened on June 30, 2021.  They had a three day workshop.]

This just tells me that for 2030, the Board needs to hire professional map makers and not be dilettantes trying to do a specialists work.  I don't blame the Board itself.  The technology has changed rapidly and they didn't know enough to know how in over their heads they were.  

I suspect this is something the legislature needs to work on, because we can't settle for amateurs doing the mapping and judging the maps next time.  We need people who are trained and experienced in this.  

You could tell by the level of detail Colligan went into.  It was a totally different kind of conversation than with the other witnesses and different from how the Board members talked about mapping.  You could also tell when Doyon attorney Tanner Amdur-Clark talked.  He too was very involved with the Doyon mapping and software.  This is like the difference between lay folks and doctors talking about medical issues.  

Should Local Areas Be Required To Submit Statewide Maps To Be Listened To By The Board?

This was a Valdez and a Mat-Su report.  The Board's attorney mocked is probably too strong a word, but was dismissive that Valdez submitted a map that only made appropriately sized districts for part of the state in the map they submitted to the Board.  "The Board has a responsibility to the whole state, not just your area."  Colligan said the same thing happened to Mat-Su who submitted maps for their districts.  

Colligan felt it was unfair to ask local areas to map out the whole state.  They should only be asked to do a map that shows their preferences and it's the Board's responsibility to do the whole state.  

I think this is an issue future Boards need to think carefully about.  It's expensive to hire experts to do a whole state map.  But I also understand it's easy to do one small area if you don't have to consider how it affects the rest of the state.  I raise here just to get it on the record for the future.  

Enough now.  It's late.  This isn't the he-said-she-said report of the trial, but I think it's just as meaningful if not more.  Take care.