The Alaska Redistricting Board Meets Monday May 15 To Decide To Approve Interim Plan As Final Plan - Or Not [UPDATED]

 

Alaska Redistricting Board Meeting, May 15 at 1pm

The Alaska Redistricting Board will meet at the Anchorage Legislative Information Office's Denali Conference room, 1st floor.  Live stream will be available at: http://akl.tv

Public Testimony will be taken in-person, via Dial-in Teleconference, by email to: testimony@akredistrict.org

Or from the Board website's public comment form here: https://www.akredistrict.org/map-comment/

When:
 - Monday, May 15, starting at 1 pm.

Where:
 -  Anchorage Legislative Information Office
 - 1500 W. Benson Blvd, Anchorage
 - Live stream: http://akl.tv
 - Teleconference

Teleconference public listen-in and testimony phone numbers:
 - Anchorage: 563-9085
 - Juneau: 586-9085
 - Other: 844-586-9085

 

Agenda

1. Call to Order and Establish Quorum

2. Adoption of Agenda

3. New member swearing in, pending appointment

4. Adoption of Minutes

5. Public Testimony

6. Review by Legal Counsel of Alaska Supreme Court Decision

   In the Matter of the 2021 Redistricting Cases, April 21, 2023

7. Consideration of Adoption of Interim 2022 Plan as Final 2023 Redistricting Plan

8. Board member comments

9. Adjournment

Board Member Bethany Marcum resigned from the Board [on March 23, 2023] after being appointed to the Board of Regents [on January 23, 2023] by the governor.  However, her appointment was not approved by the Alaska legislature today.  So it's possible she might be reappointed to the Redistricting Board.  

[UPDATE May 11, 2023: The governor reappointed her to the Redistricting Board on May 9, 2023]

In one sense, that would be a good appointment because she has been through the whole Redistricting process.  However, she was one of the most partisan Board members voting twice for splitting Eagle River into two Senate seats.  Both those efforts were deemed unconstitutional gerrymandering by the Alaska Supreme Court.  

The Board's decision Monday will be whether to approve the Interim Redistricting Plan (imposed by the Supreme Court in May 2022) as the Permanent Plan.  The Court imposed this interim plan after rejecting the Board's plan because there wasn't time for the Board to devise a new plan to meet the deadline for candidates filing for office.  

Most of the 40 House seats and 20 Senate seats are already approved and locked in.  There really isn't much the Board could tinker with.  Just a couple of new house pairings to make new Senate seats in Northeast Anchorage would be my guess.  Since changing districts is always a bit confusing to voters, there is no real reason to make the changes except as a last ditch effort to mess with the legislators in those seats.  

From my perspective, approving the interim plan as the permanent plan would be the best decision for the state and for the voters  and for would-be candidates in the districts that could be played with.  

I've circled the Senate seats that could possibly be in play.  The House seats can't be changed, they can only be paired differently to create different Senate seats.  Below are the incumbents of the House and Senate seats.  

House Seats	Senate Seats
17 - Zack Fields - Democrat	I - Loki Tobin - Democrat
18 - Cliff Groh - Democrat	J - Forrest Dunbar - Democrat
19 - Genevieve Mina - Democrat	K - Bill Wielechowski - Democrat
20 - Andrew Gray - Democrat
21 - Donna Mears - Democrat
22 - Stanley Wright - Republican

All the seats except one House seat has a Democratic incumbent.  The only real purpose of rearranging  the House pairings into new Senate seats would be to put Democratic incumbents in competition with each other and shake things up a bit.  

I don't think the Superior Court or the Supreme Court would approve such an action.  It would be seen, once again, as partisan gerrymandering.  

But the Republican majority on the Board did this twice before and there's no way of holding them accountable if they try it again.  It will just waste public monies to go through new court hearings and, if actually accepted by the Supreme Court, in redoing state maps and confusing voters in those districts.  

NOTE:  I'm slowly working on a post that looks at the Alaska Supreme Court's recent Opinion that explains their reasoning for the decisions last year that found the Board majority had committed partisan gerrymandering.  The Court took its time debating and writing its decision because it really isn't urgent. It's a guide for the 2030 Redistricting Board.  And I'm taking the same approach.  It's not urgent.  But I'll have something up before the end of summer, assuming that this Board meeting next week doesn't do something that will require the Court to add new discussions.  

I would note that the Court also said that once the Permanent Plan is approved by the Board, the public will have 30 days to challenge it.  I understood that to mean if they approve the Interim Plan as the new Permanent Plan.  If they do something else, that too would be challengeable.  But I also understand that those challenges are limited to the Anchorage Senate pairing changes.  The rest of the map remains the same and those challenges were already heard.  

All my redistricting posts are indexed on the Redistricting tab just below the What Do I Know? Banner on top of the blog.  You can also get to it here.  There's also a tab for the 2010 Redistricting process.