What's A Blogger To Do? Mat-Su Case Due Monday, But Haven't Yet Addressed Friday's East Anchorage Case

 Thoughts and ideas are sloshing back and forth in my head like waves racing up the beach, that quickly sliding back down into the ocean.  And it seems the facts and actions in the combined Redistricting cases are as easy to describe as the constantly moving surf.  

So, let's hold off on Friday's hearing.  You can read Matt Buxton's account here which captures much of what you should know.   

To prep for the Mat-Su case, here's the Board's final map of the Matsu districts.  Districts 25, 26, 27, and 28 are shown completely, but 29 and 30 are cut off.  You can't, for example see that Valdez is part of 29 or that 30 includes Denali National Park but not Cantwell.  It's best to use the Board's interactive state map here.

So let's at least get a sense of what Mat-Su is complaining about and wants.  You can see their suit here - it's ten pages, not too bad.    I've tried to pull out the key points they're making from a section called "Counts".

Valdez Case Connected
I'd also note that the Mat-Su case is paired in trial with the Valdez case - both locations don't like being paired with each other.  I've done two posts on the Valdez case which you can see here (Part 1) and here (Part 2).

Mat-Su has two counts:

• Equal Protection
• In this one they point out the Federal requirement that the districts be as equal in population as possible and that the Mat-Su as a whole is over-populated, that is their districts have more people than the perfect size district of 18,335 residents. (State population as of official 2020 census/40 house districts.)  
• The plaintiffs claim that the six Mat-Su districts "Combined, the total overpopulation of the districts is 13.75 percent."  The problem here is that they are adding the percent above the ideal for each district.  That doesn't make sense with percents, because percent is district size/ideal size.  If you have two districts you have to calculate 2 districts/2*ideal size, etc.  The chart does that for each district and then shows the total percent over for all six districts - 2.3, not 13.75.  

  
  

  District	Over or under	Total Pop	Ideal Pop	% above/ Below
  25-M	487	18,822	18,335	2.66
  26-M	472	18,807	18,335	2.58
  27-N	464	18,799	18,335	2.53
  28-N	458	18,793	18,335	2.50
  29-O	438	18,773	18,335	2.39
  30-O	201	18,536	18,335	1.1
  Totals	2520	112,530	110,010	2.3

  Looking at the chart, when you add the six districts and divide their total population (112,530) by the ideal size for six districts (110,010), the percent is 2.3 over the ideal size for all six Mat-Su districts combined.  That's well within the parameters for redistricting in non-urban areas.  
• One could argue that the smaller, more urban districts like Palmer (D-28) and Wasilla (D-27) should have lower deviations than the much larger and more sparsely populated D-30.  That might raise a question or two about the overpopulation of all the Mat-Su districts.  But the claim of them being 13.75% above the ideal is a specious argument.  If they really were that high, they would be automatically ruled unconstitutional because the greatest difference allowable between the lowest under populated district and the highest overpopulated district statewide is 10%.  
• District Boundaries - Here they argue the constitutional requirements of compactness, contiguity, and socio-economically integrated.  The Valdez plaintiffs, in their challenge, make a strong argument about socio-economic integrity in their long list of how Valdez is tied in with the Richardson Highway communities.  Compactness gets squirrelly when we get into rural Alaskan districts because of the sparsely populated areas.  But I think contiguity is an important factor is this case.  Valdez is connected by road to Palmer, but you can't drive from Valdez to Palmer without going outside the district.  Yes, they are contiguous by roadless, unpopulated, land, but not by road.  The courts have accepted contiguity in rural Alaska where communities are not connected by road.  But that's been in areas where there are NO roads at all between communities.  In this case there is a road that connects Valdez to a number of communities they have much closer ties to than to Mat-Su.  Valdez residents have to drive through another, much closer, district to get to the Mat-Su part of their district. This is also part of the argument in the East Anchorage case where this is an even more extreme example of using geographic contiguity to connect districts that are actually far apart.  

From Mat-Su's complaint:

"COUNTS COUNT I – EQUAL PROTECTION Paragraphs 1 through 36 are incorporated herein as if fully set forth. The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides that the State shall not deny any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. 39. Article I, Section 1 of the Alaska Constitution provides that all persons are equal and entitled to equal rights and protection under the law. 40. The Final Plan violates the equal protection clauses of the United States and Alaska Constitutions. 41. The Board's plan unnecessarily divides the excess population of the MSB in a way that dilutes the effective strength of municipal voters, including by placing them in districts centered elsewhere and that have different social and political concerns; ignoring traditional senate configurations; and, failing to respect political subdivision boundaries and communities of interest, thereby depriving its citizens the right to be an equally powerful and geographically effective vote, all of which is in violation of the equal protection clauses of the United States and Alaska Constitutions. 42. The Final Plan overpopulates each of the six House Districts within the MSB in an excessive amount and out of proportion with the remainder of the State of Alaska, demonstrating that the Board failed to apply the quotient in a practicable fashion in violation of the equal protection clauses of the United States and Alaska Constitutions. COUNT II – DISTRICT BOUNDARIES 43. Paragraphs 1 through 42 are incorporated herein as if fully set forth.

44. Article VI, Section 6 of the Alaska Constitution provides the requirements for each House District. They are to be compact, contiguous, and contain as nearly as practicable a relatively integrated socioeconomic area, and consideration may be given to local government boundaries. Each must contain a population as near as practicable to the quotient obtained by dividing the population of the State by forty. Additionally, drainage and other geographic features shall be used in describing boundaries wherever possible.

45. The Final Plan violates Article VI, Section 6 of the Alaska Constitution.

46. The Final Plan overpopulates each of the six House Districts within the MSB inan excessive amount and out of proportion with the remainder of the State of Alaska, demonstrating that the Board failed to apply the quotient in a practicable fashion in violation of Article VI, Section 6 of the Alaska Constitution.

47. House Districts, including but not limited to, 29, 30 and 36 as included in the Final Plan violate Article VI, Section 6 of the Alaska Constitution, as the House Districts are not compact, contiguous, do not contain as nearly as practicable a relatively integrated socioeconomic area, nor do they consider local government boundaries."

My Conclusions  

Valdez is a tricky community to deal with in redistricting.  Its location and size make it hard to add to any district without doing some sort of stretching of the constitutional criteria.  I think Valdez made a strong case for it being with the Richardson highway communities, but that leaves Mat-Su with a partial district that needs to be paired with something.  I think the lack of road contiguity is also a big issue.  

I also get pretty suspicious of parties who make misleading arguments - like the claim that Mat-Su is 13.75% over populated.  Either they can't do the math or they're being disingenuous. Either case is bad, but shouldn't prevent the court from weighing the rest of their arguments.  

If this Valdez-Mat-Su house district is rejected by the courts, there will be a ripple effect as the Board has to find ways to make other districts that are reasonably sized and are compact, etc. 

Alaska districts are a balancing act and the courts will have to decide whether the arguments here are compelling, whether there are better alternatives, and how disruptive it would be to tell the Board to go back and draw a better map.