The Case That HD 5 Was Gerrymandered - Part 1

I'm dividing this into sections so it's easier to find the parts you want or need to read.

Introduction
 
This is the first of two posts on HD 5 in Fairbanks.  The title reflects the implied case that the plaintiffs are making against the Board.  The Plaintiffs argue that HD 5 has compactness problems.  They also want a different pairing of House District 5 to make a better Senate seat - one that would make more likely the election of a second Democratic Senator in the Fairbanks area.  They don't use the word gerrymandering, but, as I mention below, the constitutional standards tend to stand as proxies for the harder to prove gerrymandering.

In Part 1 here, I want to give background.  In Part 2 we'll look at maps and details of HD 5 and the related Senate districts.  Other districts in Matsu and Kenai and rural Alaska are challenged by the plaintiffs, but just looking at this one in close detail will be more than enough to understand what's going on and what's at stake.  And, I hope, help people be able to react to the eventual court decision with facts as well as partisan fervor. 

Purpose of the Post

To make this accessible to people not following this day-to-day.
This isn't that hard to understand, it's just that there are so many details, that keeping it all straight is difficult.  Plus, a lot of stuff is subjective and requires someone who has enough grasp on the facts and the standards to come to an informed conclusion.  For example both sides will talk about compactness and then one side will say moving these people from this district to another will cause a ripple effect.  The other side says, no, they can be put into another district easily.  It takes someone who has watched the map making to have a better sense of which claim is more accurate.

As someone who has been to nearly every Board meeting held in Anchorage and at most of the others via the phone or online, I know that this is complex and that there is more to this than can be presented in the facts.  In this post I'm going to present what the parties have said and also give you my sense of which side is more persuasive.  But I have no special powers and other people who were there a lot might come to different conclusions.

Scope of this Post

I'm focusing on Fairbanks HD 5.  I think I understand this a little better than the other points being challenged - Matsu and Kenai and some rural districts.  Looking at HD 5 will inevitably get us into neighboring districts - mainly 3 and 4 - and into Senate Seats B and C.  I'm hoping, though, that if people get into the details of HD 5, they can get a grasp of the competing standards, and why this is all so difficult to prove one way or the other.  But at least, when the judge's opinion comes down, you'll be able to follow it.  

Background - How We Got Here

1. The Redistricting Board submitted its latest redistricting plan July 14, 2013
2. The Riley plaintiffs - George Riley from Ester and Ron Dearborn from Goldstream, two liberal leaning communities near Fairbanks - challenged the plan.  They also challenged the original plans as well, challenges that ended with the Alaska Supreme Court
1. invalidating the first plan
2. requiring some changes to accept the second plan as an interim plan that was used in the 2012 elections, because there wasn't enough time for a complete new plan, and
3. determining the interim plan was unconstitutional and that the Board needed to make another plan for the 2014 election
3. The Board objected to the plaintiffs challenges
4. More briefs were filed with more details of the complaints.
5. The Board filed briefs to dismiss the complaints
6. The Alaska Democratic Party filed complaints.
7. North Star Fairbanks Borough filed an amicus brief.
8. The judge - Michael McConahy - can make summary judgments on some or all of these motions.  That means he can just decide who is right or wrong and issue an order.  Or he can say he needs more information and allow the two sides to make further arguments in court. My guess is that he may make a few summary judgments and then identify the points he needs to hear more on in court.  That court date is set for Dec. 9 - 16 in Fairbanks. 

You can see all these briefs at the Board's website.  In this post my focus will be on House District 5 to give you a sense of what the court has to decide.  But looking at 5 will mean also looking at the districts around it.  But there's lots there.  Here are the ones I'd start with:

Corrected Copy of Riley Plaintiff's Memorandum in Support of Motion for Summary*
Doc 296 - ARB's Response Part 1
Doct 296  ARB's Response Part 2
Doc 296  ARB's Response Part 3

*I can't find this one on the Board's list.  It was sent to me and I think it's a consolidation of previous motions.  It's long, but there aren't that many words on each page. 

Background - Redistricting and Gerrymandering

 These two words go together.  Redistricting is about redrawing the lines of the political districts (in Alaska's case since we only have one member of the US House, redistricting is only about the state house and senate).  How one draws the lines can have enormous impact on which party gets more members elected.  Gerrymandering is the term used to describe shaping districts to favor one party over the other.

It takes Wikipedia's entry on Redistricting only 253 words to start talking about gerrymandering.  At All About Redistricting's page What Is Redistricting? gerrymander is the 207th word.   My point is that most people who know anything about redistricting expect the party in power to take advantage of their power.  The only real question is can they make their maps so that they favor their side BUT also stay legal?

Both parties will claim, publicly, their innocence and exclaim the other party's guilt.  "We have done nothing but correct the gross abuse of the other party in the last redistricting."

ProPublica's Redistricting, A Devil's Dictionary identifies several of the typical gerrymandering ploys:

• Cracking: This technique splits a community into multiple districts to ensure it doesn't have significant sway with a candidate. . .
• Packing: When faced with too many unfriendly voters, it can also be a winning strategy to limit the damage by drawing them all into one district. The benefit for you is there are fewer of the voters you don't want in all the surrounding districts. When race is involved, redistricting pros call it bleaching.  . . .
• Hijacking: If there's an incumbent you don't like, you can make their re-election difficult by putting them in a district with another incumbent to contend with. . .
• Kidnapping: Most politicians have geographic political bases; places they came up in politics where they have supporters, political allies, donors and name recognition. But what if their home address ends up in a different district than their base? That can make re-election tough. . .

The ProPublica link gives more explanations and examples with maps.


This is like poker.  People keep as straight a face as they can while they make all sorts of claims.


The current partisan redistricting facts in Alaska are these: 

1.  The Alaska Supreme Court declared the process the Board went through last time to be unconstitutional.  The Board will tell you, and not incorrectly, that the Court found the process, not the product, unconstitutional.  But since the process was unconstitutional, the Court didn't look at each district's constitutionality.

2.  The Board has four Republicans and one Democrat.  The Democrat, Marie Greene, is the CEO of NANA Corporation, an Alaska Native Regional Corporation.  The Board  claims that all their decisions were unanimous and since they had a Democrat, it shows there was no partisanship.  I agree that almost all the decisions have been unanimous.  But my sense was that Marie Greene's main concern was to make sure that Alaska Natives were treated fairly.  She did not raise issues about other Democratic party concerns. 

3. The state Senate,  before redistricting, had a 10-10 split between Democrats and Republicans, with a bi-partisan coalition running the Senate.  After the 2012 election, which used the interim redistricting plan, the Senate had a 13-7 Republican majority.  Two Democratic Senators were redistricted into the same district in Fairbanks. (Note the ploy of Hijacking above.) Alaska's only Black legislator was given a far more conservative district than before (Cracking), and a Republican and Democratic Senator were put in the same district in Southeast Alaska.  There had to be a pairing of two incumbent Senators in SE, because of population decline. It could have been two Democrats, two Republicans, or one of each. 

4.  While the Chair of the Board declared, at the first Board meeting, that he had no instructions from the Governor (who appointed him) and had not even met with the Governor, the Chair of the Republican Party, Randy Ruedrich, was an active observer throughout the whole process.  The Executor Director of the Board had recently worked for Ruedrich as the Republican Victory Director in 2010.  I like the (now former) Executive Director and he was always fair and open with me.  And there is nothing illegal about these arrangements, but the Republican Party was able to share its opinions about the districts more easily than was the Democratic Party.

5.  The Board member who did most of the mapping of Fairbanks, Jim Holm, is a former Fairbanks legislator who was defeated by current Democratic representative Scott Kawasaki.  His original maps of Fairbanks turned out to have what was called by the Democrats "the Kawaski finger."  The house of S. Kawasaki was 'kidnapped' into another district by a small protrusion.  It turns out that the house belonged to Sonia, Scott's sister, but you can't convince the Democrats that it wasn't an attempt to put Scott into a totally different district.  The Board's attorney recently pointed out to me that the Court found, in the previous trial, the arguments of gerrymandering unpersuasive.  And I agree that the evidence presented probably wasn't enough to prove anything.  But being the one who does the maps where you lost your last election smells a bit like conflict of interest to me.

As a blogger, I'm more than conscious that raising these points will likely cause Republicans to declare my obvious bias.  But these are things I observed or heard about and to not mention them would also be bias. If readers are going to get a sense of what was happening I need to include them.  These points, by themselves prove nothing, but they do give the context for judging the outcome.   I also heard Democrats who said they would take the same liberties if they had been in power. 

I should also note that the Board’s rules, drafted by the Board’s attorney, Michael White,  say that gerrymandering is illegal, White has also said on a number of occasions, that no redistricting plan in modern times has been overturned because of political gerrymandering.   

The point is, unless a Board member says explicitly that they have gerrymandered, it’s hard to tell what was going on inside their heads. 

That’s why the process of redistricting is so controversial.  The Courts now use the more objective criteria of compactness, contiguity, etc.  as a proxy for gerrymandering.  They don’t call it gerrymandering, but if a district looks strange enough, it can be ruled not compact and thus unconstitutional.  No need to use the G word. 

So, the assumption by many, if not most, is that the Republicans are going to do their best to take advantage of their  4-1 majority on the Board to nudge the districts here and there to favor Republican candidates. 

And the Board members are going to deny this, because if they acknowledge gerrymandering, they would then have their plan thrown out.  So even if a Board were completely unbiased, there would be suspicion of gerrymandering.


And In The Board's Defense

I would also note that the Board meetings were all very accessible for anyone, like me, who had the time and was in Anchorage.  And most meetings, after the first few months, were accessible online or by phone. Most of the Board members and all of the staff were always willing to answer questions in detail during breaks and after meetings.   The Board had a difficult task before them balancing different criteria to map a huge state with a sparse population.    Strangely large districts are inevitable.  Compared to what's happened in some states, this Board has been transparent and did not get greedy.  I think some of the new districts also reflect the split within the Republican Party between the traditional leadership and the new Tea Party activists.  The court's decision is not going to be a slam dunk by any stretch of the imagination.  

The question the Court will have to address is whether the issues that the plaintiffs raise are violations of the Alaska constitution, or whether the anomalies they allege are simply the by-products of balancing many factors to map a huge state with a sparse and scattered population. 

Part 2 will look at the maps and the details of HD 5 and neighboring house and Senate districts to help folks understand what is happening and why.  

[UPDATE Nov. 15, 2013:  Part 2 is now up here.]


 

Alaska Redistricting Board Withdraws Motion To Delay Trial

Last week the Alaska Redistricting Board filed a motion to delay the potential* trial scheduled for December 2013.  The lead attorney's radiation treatments are going to take longer than anticipated and he would not be able to attend.

The Alaska Democratic Party filed a motion opposing the Board's motion.  While they had immediately agreed to the first postponement, they wrote, there was too much riding on this to delay further.  It would put them in the same position as last time when there was not enough time to complete the process and an imperfect interim plan was put in place which the Supreme Court later determined had to be revised.  Thus the current proposed plan.

The Board's motion says:

COMES NOW, the Alaska Redistricting Board ("Board"), by and through counsel, and hereby withdraws its Second Motion to Continue Trial filed on October 39, 2013.  Given that there is no medical guarantee regarding Mr. White's ability to participate in any necessary hearing or trial should this court grant the Board's request to reschedule such hearing until January 2014, the Board and its legal counsel believe it best to move forward.  In this regard, the Board and its legal counsel recognize the importance of the issues involved as well as the need to have a redistricting plan in place without delay.  Accordingly, in the interest of the Alaskan voters, the Board withdraws its motion to further continue any necessary hearing or trial.

This is a markedly different tone from the Board, which in the past has tended to be aggressive in defense of its actions.  

*I write 'potential' trial, because the judge still has not released his omnibus order in which he spells out which issues he will make summary judgment on and which will require trial to resolve.  Potentially, all could be resolved by summary judgment, making a trial unnecessary, though I doubt that will be the case. 

Politics is like driving. To go backward put it in R. To go forward put it in D.

This was in a comment by "True Blue Majority" on the Daily Kos story about Former Speaker of the US House, 90 year old Jim Wright, being denied a voter ID card in Texas. 

The story quoted the Star-Telegram: 

Former House Speaker Jim Wright was denied a voter ID card Saturday at a Texas Department of Public Safety office.
“Nobody was ugly to us, but they insisted that they wouldn’t give me an ID,” Wright said.
The legendary Texas political figure says that he has worked things out with DPS and that he will get a state-issued personal identification card in time for him to vote Tuesday in the state and local elections.

Texas was one of the states that was covered in Section IV of the Voting Rights Act that was invalidated by the US Supreme Court last June.  If I understand it right, changes that affected access to voting had to be pre-cleared by the Justice Department before.

Section IV was the formula for which states were required to have pre-clearance.  The law which was created in the 60's identified specific problems the biggest problem states had  at that time.  The judges decided that since many of the issues that were mentioned no longer existed, the Congress had to come up with a new way of identifying the states that needed automatic clearance.  And now, free of the pre-clearance requirement, some of those states (and others that didn't need pre-clearance) are devising voting requirements that will make it harder for Democratic voters to vote. 

Texas is one of three states that I'm aware of - Kentucky and Alaska being the other two - that still have not resolved their redistricting plan.  Kentucky's plan got knocked in court just this past week.  A Nov. 1, 2013 post at the ACLU Kentucky site:

COVINGTON, KY – A panel of three federal judges late Thursday declared the ACLU of Kentucky and the ACLU Voting Rights Project winners in a redistricting lawsuit. In August, the judges sided with the ACLU (and the plaintiffs in a companion case brought by a group of Northern Kentucky voters) and held that Kentucky’s House and Senate districts established in 2002 were unconstitutional.

Shortly after this summer’s ruling, during a special session, lawmakers enacted new maps and filed a motion requesting the dismissal of the ACLU’s case as moot. On Thursday, the court once again ruled in the ACLU’s favor, making the temporary injunction permanent and clearing the way for the recovery of attorney’s fees.

And Alaska's is due back in court in December, unless the Court accepts the Board's request to postpone it until January.

[Feedburner notes:  This one took four hours to get on other blogrolls.  I posted.  Waited about 15 minutes, then manually pinged it.  Nothing happened.  I repinged it several times.  Then I copied and republished the whole post.  Nothing happened.  I pinged it again.  Nothing happened.  I deleted the new version and pinged again.  About 20 minutes later it showed up on the other blogrolls, four hours after it was posted.  I don't know if it would have gotten up by itself in four hours or whether my manually pinging makes a difference.   I'm keeping these notes so I can tell if there is a pattern.  It's easier to put them here, but maybe I'll create a separate page eventually.] 

Redistricting - The Bad News (Unless You're A Republican) for Left or Right Brained Folks

As I've been writing about the Alaska Redistricting Board, I've tried to present things as objectively as possible.  But when you start talking about gerrymandering, some people think you are taking sides, even when you are simply presenting facts.  Here's some national context on the impact of biased redistricting around the country.  And why I've spent the last three years carefully covering the Alaska Redistricting Board here.  This stuff matters, even though it's mostly invisible.

For left brain folks - here's the redistricting song.






For right brain folks, here's the the analysis of how no matter what the Democrats do, the 2010 redistricting round has produced an almost vote proof Republican majority in the House of Representatives.

Redistricting Likely to Hamper Democratic Efforts in 2014, Study Finds

By JEREMY W. PETERS

Thanks largely to the way Congressional districts were drawn in the latest round of redistricting, even a dramatic wave election like the one in 2008 that swept President Obama into power and added to Democratic majorities in Congress would do little to alter the composition of the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, a new, nonpartisan study found.
FairVote, an organization that examines voting patterns and laws, predicts that Republicans will maintain control of the House in 2014 unless Democrats meet the unlikely threshold of winning 56 percent of the vote nationwide.

Read the whole April 2013 New York Times blog post here.


But the Soviet Union was toppled and women have the right to vote, so nothing is impossible.  Though the new wave of state voting legislation that seems aimed at stopping Democratic voters (blacks, Hispanics, students, women) that followed the Supreme Court's decision to invalidate Section IV of the Voting Rights Act makes women's and other likely Democratic voters access to voting harder.

You think I'm exaggerating?  Just listen to former North Carolina county precinct GOP  chair Don Yelton talking to Assif Mandvi about the new voter ID law.  (He's former because he was asked to resign after this video went public.)

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook

From Media-ite: 

"He insisted that the voter-ID law is “not racist” before admitting that he’s been called a “bigot” in the past. He defended a picture of President Obama “sitting on a stump as a witch doctor” as making fun of the “white half” of the president. He said if the law “hurts a bunch of lazy blacks who just want the government to give them everything, so be it.”
When Yelton started throwing around the “n-word” and complaining that only black people are allowed to use it, Mandvi stopped him to ask, “You know that we can hear you, right?” It only made things worse that Yelton’s ignorance was presented in contrast to the reasoned arguments of Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), the historic civil rights leader, who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

It turns out, this isn't racism or sexism, it's about keeping Democrats from voting.  What is it about humor that can get to the truth so much better than actual news shows?  That gets people like Yelton to say what he says?
The whole video is definitely worth watching.  Don't miss the end where they have suggestions for suppressing Republican voters.  (Remember, this was on a comedy show.)

And here's another one today on this from the Business Insider,  "Why Republicans Can Keep Screwing Up And Still Control The House."

#redistricting at Twitter has been a helpful source.  I found about the Yelton video at Immoral Minority.

Alaska Redistricting Board Meeting Friday - They Go Into Excecutive Session

I'm on the phone line - 1-855-463-5009 - waiting for the meeting to begin.
The AKL-TV says no live streams scheduled for 48 hours.

The Board members are talking to each other about the weather in Fairbanks now.  Marie Green is talking about the AFN conference.

Mike White doesn't sound real good.  It's hard to understand him. (He had surgery in his mouth recently.)

They're waiting for Bob Brodie. . .

11:03 -  still talking about the weather, no snow yet in Fairbanks, it was raining in Kotzebue when Marie left.  They're waiting for Bob Brodie.  No mention of Peggyann McConnochie.

Torgerson asked about AFN turnout.  Marie said not as many as when in Anchorage.  Costs of getting to Fairbanks more. 

Sounds like they have:

Chair John Torgerson, Jim Holm, Marie Green.

There's Bob Brodie.  Peggyann McConnochie won't join them.

Starting rollcall:
Torgerson, Brodie, Green, Holm there, McConnochie absent.  Michael White is also there.

Motion to approve agenda seconded. Approved. 4-0.
Going to Executive Session to discuss litigation issues.  Approved 4-0.
11:10 - they are disconnecting and calling to another teleconference number.  They are gone.  And it looks like the AKL-TV never was activated. 

There was no mention of how long it would be  - well, when they were chatting before the meeting they said it probably would be a short meeting.  So I don't know if we'll stay connected or they'll end this call and we have to guess when to call back. 

11:13 - so far it seems I'm still connected.

Assembly Repeals New Labor Law. Mayor Vetoes Their Vote

Anchorage Assembly Meeting - click to enlarge

The Assembly voted 7-4 to repeal Assembly Ordinance 37 which squeaked by last year after Assembly Chair Ernie Hall cut off public participation.  The ordinance pretty much gutted collective bargaining in Anchorage and Ernie Hall nearly got voted out of office by a write in candidate who came within several hundred votes after joining the campaign two weeks before the election.   Some have argued this was similar to the anti-union ordinances that have been pushed by the Koch brothers in places like Wisconsin.  It was a hugely divisive ordinance. 

Tonight, after a lot of testimony, the Assembly voted 7-4 to repeal the old ordinance.  This was possible because Tim Steele was elected over appointed Assembly person Cheryl Frasca and because Adam Trombley and Bill Starr, who both voted for the original legislation, tonight said there were flaws in the bill and they were willing to work with others to make a better ordinance.   Trombley and Starr voted with Dick Traini, Elvi Gray-Jackson, Paul Honeman (who was there by teleconference), Patrick Flynn, and Tim Steele. 

You can see all the Assembly profiles here. 

Mayor Sullivan (r)

However, as soon as the bill passed, the Mayor immediately vetoed it and had his veto already written, printed, and ready to hand out. 

The no votes sounded pretty adamant about their votes and to override the Mayor's veto requires eight votes.



Here's the veto.  I saved it as very big file so you can read it easily if you click on it.

For me the big question is why did Starr and Trombley change their votes?  Both were strongly supported by the mayor and have voted with him on most if not all critical votes.    Both said they were willing to meet with those who so strongly opposed 37 and work out a better ordinance.

Yet I can't help think that after watching how Ernie Hall almost got beaten in the last election - by a write-in candidate no less - that they are looking out for the next election in April 2014 when their terms expire.  They can say to the unions that they voted to repeal the ordinance.  And if they did their homework and counted the votes, they knew that the ordinance would stay in place with the mayor's veto.  Starr comes from Eagle River which tends to vote pretty conservatively, so perhaps that isn't his motive.  On the other hand, I don't know how many union voters live in Eagle River and Municipal elections don't have that much of a turnout usually.  Trombley represents East Anchorage which is a lot more volatile and former state legislator Pete Petersen has already said he was going to run against Trombley.

I generally stay away from Assembly meetings.  The ones I've gone to have sucked a lot of blogger time out of me.  If I went regularly I'd have no time for anything else.  We went to the discussion on democracy and the role of government upstairs, and after we stuck our heads in to see how things were going.   So I'm not completely clear on the timeline of this.  But a petition to repeal Ordinance 37 got enough signatures.   In a video interview I did with Assembly member Dick Traini during a break in the meeting [see below], he said the Assembly plans to put the repeal measure on the April municipal ballot.  He also says the mayor plans to veto that, but he's sure the Assembly will win in court.  The elections are handled by the Municipal Clerk who works for the Assembly, not the Mayor.




But if the ballot included repeal of 37, then a lot of union folks are sure to vote.  Municipal elections - especially when there is no mayoral race - have turnouts under 20%.

So Assembly members Trombley and Starr had some incentive to repeal the measure already.  That would keep it off the ballot and not as many union members would vote.  And this way they can say they already voted to repeal it.

Interesting dynamics.

[UPDATE Jan 18, 2014:  Judge sided with the Mayor on his ability to veto the vote.]

There Are Now Two African-American US Senators

African-Americans make up about 13% of the US population and with today's election of Cory Booker as the new US Senator from New Jersey, their number and percentage in the US Senate has doubled from one to two.


 On this apparently final day of the current round of budget and debt crisis brinkmanship, engineered by, it would seem, the likes of the Koch brothers, their fellow plotters, and their followers (witting or unwitting), it would seem that the election should tell us something about voters' reaction to the Congressional bullying. 

Here are the results:

Overall Result*			99.3% Reporting
Candidate	Party	% of Vote	Vote Count
Winner C. Booker	Dem	54.6%	713,594
S Lonegan	GOP	44.3%	579,388

*Data from Politico as of 1:41am ET

Here, based on the New Jersey State website data on voter registration as of September 2013 are the numbers and percentage of registered voters of the main groups.  (There are a number of small parties that have less than 1% of the population and I've left them out.)

Una	Dem	Rep	Total
2,570,260	1,825,751	1,093,836	5,494,230
47%	32%	20%

So, with 99.3% of the voters counted (I'll round that up to 100%) there werre 1,292,982 votes in this race or 23.5% of registered voters.

Almost half (47%) the registered voters in New Jersey are unaffiliated.
32% are Democrats and 20% are registered as Republicans.


We don't know (at least I haven't found it) what percent of each party voted.  Democrats may have stayed home thinking their candidate had it locked.  Tea Party Republicans would likely have tried to get a larger percentage of their members  But these are just  assumptions.

There's too much missing data about who voted to make any generalizations about whether this election was affected by the Congressional nonsense or whether this can tell us what to expect in the 2014 elections.  My guess is that too much can happen between now and November 2014 to prognosticate how the budget/debt ceiling chicken game will affect them or whether this election can tell us anything.

The only thing I can say is that there doesn't seem to be a backlash against the Democrats or against a statewide Black candidate.

If Cory Booker Wins the New Jersey US Senate Seat Tomorrow, He'll Be The Only Current Elected Black US Senator

Barrack Obama was the last elected African-American US Senator.  When he left the Senate in 2009 to become President, there were no African-American US Senators.

South Carolina Rep. Tim Scott, the only Republican African-American member of Congress, was appointed to fill the South Carolina US Senate seat left vacant when Jim DeMint resigned in January 2013 to head the Heritage Institute.  Soon Scott was joined by African-American William "Mo" Cowan of Massachusetts who was appointed as Interim Senator to fill  John Kerry's seat when he became Secretary of State.  It was the first time ever there were two African-American US Senators at the same time.  Cowan did not seek election in special election in June 2013 when Ed Markey was elected and took over Cowan's seat.   Scott's seat will have a special election in 2014.

So, if Booker wins, he will be the second African-American, the only Democratic African-American, and the only elected African-American in the US Senate.

I keep track of these things because several years ago I discovered it was difficult to find out how many African-Americans are in Congress.  At that time I could find a list of all the African-Americans who'd ever been in Congress, but that took a lot of time to sort through to find out who actually was currently in Congress.  It seemed the info I found should be available to others, so I posted it.

Other sources are now more readily available, but I've been trying to keep my list up-to-date.  So when I saw mention that Cory Booker, the Democratic candidate for US Senator in tomorrow's election to replace Senator Frank Lautenberg who died in January, is an African-American, I took notice.

He's running against a Tea Party Republican, Steve Lonegan.  The polls have put Booker well ahead, but a recent poll shows Lonegan gaining some ground.  The Guardian's reporter sees little danger for Booker though. But this is a special election on a Wednesday!  If the Tea Party is able to get all its members out and the overall turnout is very low, who knows what could happen?  But I can't imagine that the Democrats are very aware of that and taking necessary measures.

Booker has a degree from Stanford and a law degree from Yale.  Here's a complete bio.
And here is Lonegan's bio.

"so oily I was thinking his nickname should be Valdez."

Twitter offers me to tidbits I might not otherwise see.  And mostly I wouldn't have missed much.  But every now and then there is something juicy that has an Alaskan angle.    I couldn't pass up this quote from a comment on a Washington Post article about Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler.  Here's the whole comment:

Well-said. I met him when he was an instructor at my law school, so oily I was thinking his nickname should be Valdez. He is is the liberal version of Rubio, another sociopath I have had the misfortune of meeting. Both are solely about themselves. Stay far away from both.

This is from a Washington Post article - Maryland Politics section - based on memos the State Police had about Gansler.  Here's the beginning of the article:

Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler regularly ordered state troopers assigned to drive him to turn on the lights and sirens on the way to routine appointments, directing them to speed, run red lights and bypass traffic jams by using the shoulder, according to written accounts by the Maryland State Police.
When troopers refused to activate the emergency equipment, Gansler, now a Democratic candidate for governor, often flipped the switches himself, according to the police accounts. And on occasion, he became so impatient that he insisted on driving, directing the trooper to the passenger’s seat. Gansler once ran four red lights with sirens blaring, a trooper wrote. Another account said he “brags” about driving the vehicle unaccompanied on weekends with the sirens on.

“This extremely irresponsible behavior is non-stop and occurs on a daily basis,” Lt. Charles Ardolini, commander of the state police executive protection section, wrote in a December 2011 memo that said the problem had existed for five years. “Attorney General Gansler has consistently acted in a way that disregards public safety, our Troopers safety and even the law.”

The links in the text go to the memos.


I don't know the internal politics of Maryland.  Gansler is a Democrat.  He sounds like the kind of politician who likes being important and having power that ordinary people don't have.  And abuses it.  We have those here too.   But, as I say, I don't know Lt. Charles Ardolini and his motives.  But from the tone of things, he seems a lot more solid than Gansler. 


Azerbaijan Election Results

And while we're at it, another Washington Post story reported on the elections in Azerbaijan. 

The vote counts – spoiler alert: Aliyev was shown as winning by a landslide – were pushed out on an official smartphone app run by the Central Election Commission. It showed Aliyev as "winning" with 72.76 percent of the vote. That's on track with his official vote counts in previous elections: he won ("won"?) 76.84 percent of the vote in 2003 and 87 percent in 2008.

But the newsworthy part of this report is that these election results were published the day BEFORE the election was held.  And we in the west who pride ourselves on how much more efficient and effective we are than other nations, we can take at least a few hours and sometimes weeks before we know the results.   


OK, this is not the kind of posts I want to be doing.  I put in the first one mainly because it had an Alaskan reference.  But normally I'd want to use stories like this to illustrate a larger point.  For a newspaper that wants to pull in the latest stories, using Twitter feeds can be helpful.  But it isn't real reporting - it's just second hand news.  The recent twitter based post I did was on copyrights, but that was a post with much value added on my part.  That's how I hope to use Twitter in the future.  Not like this post.

I don't plan on making a habit of this.  I don't want my readers to start calling me Valdez.

(Do you think he pronounced it Spanish way "ValDEZ" or the true Alaskan way "ValDEEZ"?)

Equity versus Socio-Economic Integration - ADP Memo Supporting Motion on Socio-Economic Integration of HD 6, 37, 39, and 40

This is the first of three late motions from the Alaska Democratic Party supporting the Riley Plaintiffs' most recent redistricting challenges.   My hope is to make these motions more accessible to the average Alaskan so when the decisions come down, they will understand the ruling.  You can see the motion on HD 6, 37, 39, and 40 here.

Summary of the challenge

It's basically arguing that Tanana Chiefs Conference/Doyon villages in central Alaska were unnecessarily spread out into these four different districts (plus, I assume there are also TCC/Doyon members in the other Fairbanks districts).  The memo uses different maps to show that the Department of Labor, ANCSA, Schools, Housing, and Health systems all group these villages together, but that the Redistricting Board chose, unnecessarily, to split them to lower the overall deviations to a point lower than they need to be. 

Also see V. Conclusion below for their own summary of the arguments.

The basic issue I saw was the tension between equity among districts (by having very low deviations* from the perfect sized district of 17,775) and preserving socio-economic integrity (one of the Alaska constitutional requirements.)


Going through the motion, step-by-step

I.  Introduction
II  Facts (pp. 2-3)

Points out that the Board encouraged and accepted plans after the June 21, 2013 deadline.

"Fairbanks is the hub of the TCC/Doyon region.  It is surrounded by 47 smaller predominantly Alaska Native villages with populations from 20 to almost 1,000."
The (TCC/Doyon*) "Misplaced Villages" (ADP's term) =
HD 40:  Alatna, Allakaket, Evansville, Hughes, and Kaktovik
HD 39:  Galena, Huslia, Kaltag, Koyukuk, Nulato, and Ruby
HD 37:  Anvik, Grayling, Holy Cross, McGrath, Nikolai, Shageluk, and Takotna

[Different sources give different numbers of of TCC/Doyon villages.  I'm not sure how many are in HD 6 and how many members are in other Fairbanks districts.  Given a total of 47 villages, the misplaced villages represent 38% of the villages, but I don't know what percent of the population.]


III.  Districts 6, 37, 39, 40  Are Not Socio-Economically Integrated (pp. 3-9)

“In rural Alaska, the lines that most reflect socio-economic and political integration are the boundaries of the ANCSA*(see glossary below) regional corporations.”

A.  TCC/Doyon* Socio-Economic Integration
TCC= Tanana Chiefs Conference - Interior Alaska, the not-for-profit corporation
Doyon is the ANCSA for-profit regional corporation for TCC
    1.  Economic Development
ADP Exhibit 5 - Economic Regions of State on 2013 Proclamation Plan - Econ Regions come from the Alaska Dept. of Labor and Workforce Development.  Interior region is one of the few that closely follows the boundaries of a regional corporation.  The Board’s plan does not reflect the economic patterns of the region.
    2.  Education
1975 - Molly Hooch case and setting up of regional education attendance areas (REAA).  Legislation required state to establish boundaries of the REAA’s by using the boundaries and sub-boundaries of ANCSA regional corporations. 
Exhibit 6 - Map of AK school districts.  REAA boundaries in the interior vary only slightly from ANCSA boundaries.  All the Misplaced Villages are located in either Y-K or Ididarod Area REAA, both in TCC/Doyon region.
Thus, under Alaska law, the MVs are all socio-economically and culturally integrated with other TCC/Doyon villages in HD 6 and not with Arctic Slope, NANA, Bering Straits, and Calista villages in Districts 37, 39, 40.
High school athletics, esp. basketball.  The basketball conferences also show

Map of Basketball Conferences and Districts - click to enlarge

the socio-economic integration of the MV with other TCC/Doyon villages and not the villages in the house districts imposed by the Board.  The map is one of several exhibits showing the mismatch between TCC/Doyon villages and the Plan.
    3.  Health Care - TCC contracts with IHS to provide healthcare throughout the TCC/Doyon region.   All are linked to the Chief Andrew Isaac Health Center (CAIHC)
     4,  Housing - TCC is authorized to operate a housing authority in the interior region.  Pursuant to this authority, TCC established the Interior Regional Housing Authority (IRHA) which provides housing service to the TCC/Doyon region including all the misplaced villages.
    5.  HD 40:  Combines Athabaskan villages with substantially Inupiaq Eskimos.  Judge Larry Weeks “probably the single worst combination that could be selected if a board were trying to maximize socio-economic integration in Alaska.” 

IV.  The Board Had Alternatives Available (pp. 9 - 11)

Calista plan’s overemphasis on equal protection and low deviations wreaks havoc on SE integration.  Other plans including the Board’s Plan A offered much better SE Integration for TCC/Doyon

V.  Equal Protection Does Not Require Dismembering the TCC/Doyon Region (pp. 11-14)

Argues that the Board unnecessarily emphasized low deviations over other values and cites the Alaska Supreme Court's earlier interpretation in this case of the 2001 Redistricting cases:

"While the court finds the Board's intent to achieve low deviations to be commendable, it concludes that it must also live in harmony with the other constitutional requirements.  The Alaska Supreme Court's instruction did not imply that justification for deviating from the lowest possible deviation would not be accepted.  It simply stated that the Board must try to achieve low deviations."

Cites Justice Erwin in Groh v Egan - that while it would be easy to divide the state simply by numbers,

"it would be inconsistent with traditional notions of representative government for it would lead to absurd combinations of historical, social, economic and geographical boundaries with the state.”

VI.  Conclusion (p. 14)

“The Alaska Natives of the TCC/Doyon region are socio-economically integrated.  They live in a defined economic region.  They have a common cultural heritage.  They have common educational systems.  They have a common health and social services provider.  The Board has parceled out the Misplaced Villages into districts with which they have no socio-economic ties to achieve low population variances.  The 2013 Proclamation Plan violates the socio-economic integration requirements of art. 6, section 6 of the Alaska Constitution with respect to Districts 6, 37, 39 and 40.  The Court should grant ADP’s motion for summary judgment.”

Glossary
Deviation - Number and percentage difference between a district's population and the ideal population (17,775) of a district.  Keeping all the districts as close as possible to 17,775 helps preserve the one-person-one-vote principle.
ANCSA - 1991 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act
TCC - Tanana Chiefs Conference
Doyon - Doyon Native Corporation


Doyon website says they have over 18,000 shareholders.  Since 17,775 is the ideal number for a house district, if the population lived compactly enough, Doyon would have its own district with several hundred people left over.   It would seem the proportionality arguments could be applied here as well. 

I'd note that the Redistricting Board's website is adding motions that have been filed, so I'm way behind here.  

"The troubles of today are sufficient unto themselves and the troubles of tomorrow will take care of themselves." Court Accepts Late Filings By Alaska Democratic Party In Redistricting Case

The court wrote a short decision to accept the late motions.

The Alaska Democratic Party filed three late motions in support of the Riley plaintiffs' challenge to Alaska Redistricting Board's plan.  The judge's decision to accept the late filings was short and philosophical.

"The Alaska Democratic Party [ADP] filed its motins several days late.  Counsel for ADP contends he miscalculated the due date and then was unable to file the motion due to electronic difficulties.  Basically ADP requests relief due to excusable neglect, i.e., the ordinary frailties of mankind.  The Riley plaintiffs support accepting the late filed motions.  The Board does not given the unique nature of the case and the expedited briefing schedule.

The troubles of today are sufficient unto themselves and the troubles of tomorrow will take care of themselves.  The court accepts the ADP motions as filed as of 16 September 2013 and any opposition to those motions are due ten days from that date and replies are due accordingly in five days.  The troubles of tomorrow will not be appreciably increased by this modest exception."

What exactly does this mean?  That the court is leaning toward the challenge?  I decided I needed to know whether accepting late challenges is common, normal, rare or what?

While waiting for an attorney friend to return my phone call, I tried to find out on line.  Either this isn't addressed, is on very low ranking websites, or I just used the wrong search words.  I found various court statistics, but nothing that addressed my question.

But I did  find a video tape of the Supreme Court of Ghana accepting a late petition on an election appeal in July this year.  I couldn't quite understand all the words, but the Justice established some criteria for waiving the deadline:

• Counsel should be guided by the reasonable foreseeability  test.
• Must not lightly be thought that court orders are any but solemn matters which ought to be treated as such. 
• Close [couldn't catch] of the delay filed at 9am this morning
• Sins of the counsel should not be on the head of the client
• Convenience of the Court
• Sheer magnitude and gravity of this case

This seems like a better list than 'frailties of mankind.'

The video is really short and it's a reminder that despite our stereotypes, other countries, even African countries, use the rule of law.





But what's common in Alaska courts. My attorney friend called back and said:

• it is very common for late filings to be submitted
• it is equally common for them to be accepted

The only time when a motion to waive a deadline is not accepted, if you can show it is significantly prejudicial to the other side.  This means, as I understood his explanation, that the other side would not be able to respond because of the delay.  He gave an extreme example of a client who went into a coma during the delay and so they wouldn't be able to respond to the filing.

He couldn't think of a reason for other the attorney to strongly object.
However, if a party has made a practice of filing everything late and is delaying the case, then it it taken more seriously by the court.  The closer you get to a trial date or resolution date, the more problematic.  But even then, the real assumption is that pleadings will be accepted. 

Supreme Court will review and no judge wants to be seen as rule obsessed or pedantic. 

The Supreme Court, he said, is far more serious and the assumption there is the opposite.  Won’t be accepted unless you have a good reason.  But they require it be accepted in lower courts.   

The point he made at the end was:

If the judge had enforced the deadline, you could say the judge was prejudiced.

So waiving the deadline means nothing.  It's routine.

What are the motions that were filed?  I've looked at them, but am not ready to post about them.  Briefly they cover:

1.  Challenge to the splitting of the Matsu and Kenai Boroughs
2.  Challenge to the splitting up of TCC/Doyon villages in the Interior into four different districts.
3.  Challenge to the lack of compactness of Fairbanks districts 3 and 5.





You can see the three motions at the Redistricting Board's website here. Documents 385, 386, 387.

Redistricting Board Challengers Claim Political Gerrymandering In Court Filing

[Saturday 9/21/13:  I thought this got posted the other day, but apparently not.  I've taken advantage of the delay to clean it up a bit.]

I posted the September 13, 2013 Riley court filings without really having time to read them, but while J drove I finished them.  These new filings add details to the original filing that challenged the latest Redistricting Proclamation Plan. 

I’m typing in the passenger seat as we drive through spectacular fall colors near Whitehorse,  so this won’t go into too much depth, you can see the whole complaint on my earlier post and find the sections you want to read further.  I’ll put up several posts, I hope, when we get to Whitehorse.

Here’s an outline of the filing with some comments. 

I.  Summary Judgment Standard

II.  Compactness Claims
House districts 3, 5 - Fairbanks; 9, 12 - Matsu; and 32 Kenai.)  By breaking the Borough boundaries, they argue they also make the districts less  compact.  As proof they offer options submitted by other private parties.  

III.  Unnecessary splitting in the Matsu and Kenai Districts
There are challenges to some Fairbanks and Matsu and Kenai house districts because they are unnecessarily joined with populations outside of the boroughs they’re in.  These splits, besides violating the standard to keep political boundaries as intact as possible, also, they argue, results in the compactness problems they first mentioned.

They also get into discussion of deviation inconsistencies.  They offer options that were before the Board, even adopted as draft options by the Board, that they claim take care of these issues in a way that meets the Alaska constitutional standards better.  And they find fault with the Board’s articulated reasons for what they did as either inconsistent or non-existent. (I’m simplifying this so I can get it done by the time we get to Whitehorse.  [UPDATE 9/21/13:  I thought I'd posted this from Whitehorse, but didn't so I'm cleaning up and adding.  Probably a good thing it didn't go up before.]

You can read the original document HERE.


The Gerrymandering Claims

But when you read further down, there is a quote from Board member Bob Brodie talking to the Riley attorney, Michael Walleri.

III. [This is III in the original but should be IV] Avoidable Deviation Variance in SD 5 and 6

 I posted a detailed explanation of the deviation issues in an earlier post.  The numbers aren’t all that significant by themselves, but when you combine them with the compactness issues of the house districts involved - and for me the contiguity issue for HD 5 - and the splitting of UAF campus, they all seem to point toward something fishy. 

They argue here also argue that the Board really didn’t consider deviation among Senate Districts at all.  This is the first time they quote Board member Brodie. 

“Mr. Brodie admitted that the Board never considered or otherwise attempted to reduce deviations between Senate Districts.”

A little later they write:

“More interestingly, Mr. Brodie urged his fellow board members to deny the lower deviation configuration [switching housed districts in senate districts A and B] on political grounds:  i.e. to deny the Riley plaintiffs a perceived political advantage.” (p. 36)

This leads to footnote 94:

“94.  Boardmember Bob Brodie indicated that “he (referencing the undersigned [Riley plaintiffs’ attorney Walleri]) just looked at the political makeup of the senate districts where his clients live and now he wants to change it to give them (Mr. Riley and Mr. Dearborn) the biggest advantage they possibly can without any altruistic feelings of the state redistricting process.  . . Of course, Dr. Handley [the voting rights consultant] identified the residents of Ester/Goldstream as Democratic leaning voters, and Board counsel has often stated that the Riley Plaintiffs were stalking horses for the Democratic party.  Of course, the Board denies any motivation to benefit the Republican party with the resulting district configuration, however, the statements by Mr. Brodie indicate that he believed that the senate pairing benefited the political interests of the political party that the Board associated with the Riley Plaintiffs, and an intention to ignore deviation considerations in furtherance of an intention to deny any such advantage to the Riley Plaintiffs and their Democratic associates.  The motivations present factual issues in dispute that will require trial.” (p. 36)

We’re getting close to Whitehorse, so let me cut to the chase.

I’ve heard on various occasions that gerrymandering is illegal, but no one has every won a case against a redistricting board based on gerrymandering.  It’s too hard to prove the intentions of the Board members.  So, the proxy for this is whether they stick to the procedural rules while doing their work and whether they balance the different standards - compactness, one-person-one vote, contiguity, socio-economic integration, etc. - better than any alternative plans others offered.

The Riley Plaintiffs are arguing that they didn’t.  Here they don’t ask the Court to find gerrymandering - though they point it out - but rather find that districts are not as compact and deviations aren’t as low as they could have been.  That’s all I can do at this point. 

This part begins around page 35 of the document.

[Saturday update:  I'm adding on here since this didn't get posted earlier.]

Rejected Settlement Offer

In this section on  "Avoidable Deviation Variance in SD 5 and 6" the filing also reveals that the plaintiffs

"made an offer to settle the present litigation if the Board would swap the Dist. 4-B to 4-C, and to change Dist. 6-C to Dis. 6-B in the proposed "Concept Plan" under consideration by the Board."

This would swap two house seats and rearrange Senate Districts B and C to a configuration that, in my mind, makes much more sense.  The new districts would have much more contiguous house districts and the University of Alaska Fairbanks wouldn't be split and the deviations would be lower.

The Plaintiffs' complaint is not so much that the offer was rejected, but how it was rejected.  It was originally rejected without being mentioned in public meetings .  They also claim that the Board's attorney said that he had conveyed the message to the Chair who had discussed the issue one-on-one with each Board member and they had decided to reject it.

Three or more Board members are not allowed, by law, to discuss Board issues except in public meetings.  The plaintiffs argue that

"such a procedure --- often called daisy-chain communication - - - violated the state Open Meeting Act, and that the Board should cure the violation by meeting and placing the matter on the record.  Board counsel requested that the offer be made in writing, and on July 17, 2013, the undersigned [plaintiffs attorney Michael Walleri] provided the offer in writing which was included in the Board record."

It subsequently did go on the record on July 18.  So, presumably, the Board cured the violation, but the plaintiffs write

"In rejecting the offer, Mr. Brodie admitted that the Board never considered the deviations between Senate districts as a relevant factor."

 IV.  [Again, this should be V]  TRUNCATION

I've already done a long post about truncation related to this 2013 "Final" Proclamation Plan. 

The filing looks at the prior case law on truncation and then what's happened with truncation with this current Board's several Proclamation Plans.  And finally in this cycle.

The focus here is the change from the very high level of same constituency (I had put it at 10%, but the filing says 13%) in the previous round to 25% this last round which allowed Sen. Coghill to escape truncation.

The Riley filing goes on to point out that while SD P [Democratic Sen. Egan in Juneau] with an 86.7% same constituency was not truncated,

"Oddly, the Board truncated SD B (City of Fairbanks) [which had been held by Democratic Sen. Paskvan] despite the fact that SD B had changed less than SD P"

They also point out that in 2012

"As a result [of using 13% as the truncation cutoff] all seats with less than 85% of the population of the former district were truncated, including two (2) seats over 75%:  i.e. SD L (77.7%) SD T (78.1%)."

 As I understand the term truncation, it means cutting short those seats that still would have two more years to serve in the next election.  This allows the electorate a say on who represents them.  After the board truncates seats with substantially new constituents, it has to re-stagger the seats so that only ten seats come up for election each election. 

Under that definition, the three seats the Riley document claims were truncated (SD B, SD L, and SD T) were NOT really truncated because their terms were up in 2012 anyway (as I read the admittedly confusing charts that assign two and four year terms.  I say confusing because tracking the changing seat numbers and incumbents over the various changes takes some effort.) 

However, the fact that all three had their next terms limited to two years probably is of relevance.  But then the whole way this Board did the truncation and assignment of two and four year terms was significantly less straightforward and rational than the previous Board as I demonstrated in this previous post comparing how the 2000 Board and the 2011 Board went about truncating districts.

I do think it is significant that in the previous round, the Board made the cutoff for truncation about 87% and shortened the next terms of three Democratic Senators to two years, even though their districts were over 75% the same, while this time making 75% the cutoff point for truncation allowing a Republican senator to escape truncation.  It is also significant that this is the very district in which the plaintiffs in this case reside. 



V.  SENATE DISTRICT B AND UAF

Here, the Riley Plaintiff filing challenges the compactness of Senate District B  (the two house districts (3 and 4) it joins are contiguous at one tiny point, then they each go off in totally different directions).  Both districts are much more contiguous with the districts the plaintiffs proposed switching to. And they also point out that the University of Alaska Fairbanks is unnecessarily split into two different Senate seats and the deviations are lower.  They also imply that this was in part done in retaliation against the plaintiffs who live in this district.

"As noted in Mr. Bordie's [sic] comments at the July 17th hearing, the Board was fully aware that the configuration was adverse to the interest of the Ester/Goldstream area [where the plaintiffs live].  The totality of the evidence - -  meandering bizarre shaped district, mixing different communities of interest, and a Board record that clearly demonstrates conflicting political inclinations - - - demonstrates a strong inference of discrimination."

Is everyone totally confused now? Posts with pictures of trees was a lot easier to read (and write.) I hope some of this makes sense and helps a few people understand a little better what is before the court.  Perhaps reading this post will make reading the whole court filing easier.  Although it is 51 pages, the print is big, the line spacing is big, and there are a bunch of maps, so it isn't all that long.  Here's the link to the original filing again.

Comparing Truncation in 2001 and 2011/13 - Alaska Redistricting Board

 "The data does not indicate whether that seat was a mid-term truncation or not."

So wrote Michael White in a memo to the Alaska Redistricting Board.  Truncations (see explanation of truncation at the bottom of the page) happens at the very end of the process of redistricting.  The house seats have been created and then the Board has to pair the house seats into senate seats.  The house seats are numbered and the senate seats are lettered. 

This post was going to finish my truncation posts, but it's turning out to be more complicated.  So this one basically compares the 2001 Board's approach to truncation to the 2011 Board's approach.

Two years ago, in a post on truncation, I quoted a memo from Board attorney Michael White:

"Where there is substantial change to the population of a district, and the previous district is mid-term in 2012, Egan appears to require the incumbent's term be truncated and that an election be held.  What constitutes a substantial change is not defined by law or court decision.  In 2000, the three districts the board found substantially similar, all had less than 10% change in population between the previous plan and the new plan. The next highest percentage of maintained population was 66.2%.  The data does not indicate whether that seat was a mid-term truncation or not. " [See the 2000 Proclamation of redistricting here.]

The 2001 Board's Truncation Process

Actually the data do tell us.  I looked at the 2001 Board's Proclamation Plan. (It's a little complicated because they too had two different plans.  This is from the first one, but for truncation and assigning two and four year terms it appears they did them the same way both times.) It says:

"Second, that the terms of the incumbents of seven senate districts—C, E, G, I, M, O, and Q under the old identification system--be truncated because their districts have been substantially changed by this redistricting plan, and that the terms of the incumbents of three senate districts--A, K, and S under the old identification system--not be truncated because their districts are substantially unchanged, and

Third, that the 17 senate seats for which there will be elections in 2002 be assigned 2-year and 4-year terms according to the following schedule, which uses the new system of identification:

2-year	4-year
A (no election)	B
C	D
E	F
G	H
I	J
K (no election)	L
M	N
O	P
Q	R
T (no election)	S

From the record, you can extract the process the 2001 Board used for truncation.

Step 1:  (I began the quote above with step 2.) They identified the seats that might need truncation - all the mid-term seats. (The 2- year column above.)  That is the seats that had run in the most recent election (2000) and whose terms were not up until 2004.  Since the senate seats are staggered - ten run in one election and the other ten run in the next - ten would have two more years to serve and sit out the next election (2002) and ten would, in the normal cycle, be up for election in 2002.  So they just looked at the ten seats that had two more years.

Step 2:  They determined which of those ten districts had substantially changed.  They found that three seats were substantially the same:  District A had 95.9% of its population the same.  K had 87.6% the same, and T had 98.2% the same.   (Since K was 87.6% it really was a bit lower than the 10% or less that White wrote in his memo.)  These three were NOT truncated and so are marked "(no election)" because the incumbents will finish the remaining two years in their terms and next stand for election in 2004. 

Step 3:  The other seven districts with two more years to serve were found to be substantially changed and so they were truncated.  Whoever was serving in those districts would have to run again in 2002, just two years after they were elected to a four year term.

Step 4:  They decided that the seven truncated districts would run for two year terms that would end in 2004 - when their terms would have ended if they hadn't been truncated.   In effect these districts got a double hit - they were truncated and then they would only be elected for two years.  But this would keep them in their regular staggered cycle.  

The other ten districts (old letters B, D, F, H, J, L, N, P, R, S) whose seats were up in 2002 anyway and would have run for seats good until 2006, would all have four year terms ending in 2006.    

So, in effect, the only seats with four year terms, that would have been up for reelection in 2004, would still be up for election in 2004 because the seven that were truncated got two year terms until 2004, and the three that weren't truncated wouldn't have to run again until 2004.  At that point they would all run next in 2008.


2001 Board Had Elegant Solution

As I see this now, the 2001 Board found an elegant way to make this work.  Only seven districts were actually affected by having their term length altered by the Board, yet the Board still took care of all those districts that needed to be truncated AND they kept the Senate staggered as constitutionally required with minimal disruption.  Just seven seats were affected.  The terms of the other 13 were left completely alone and served out the terms they were elected to and stayed in the same staggered rotation.  

I would note that based on these documents, Mr. White's advice to the Board that "In 2000, the three districts the board found substantially similar, all had less than 10% change in population between the previous plan and the new plan" appears to be wrong.  

1. Of the three midterm seats not truncated, seat K (87.7% the same) had  more than 10% change.  
2. There were other districts that had less than ten percent change.  B was 100% the same and S was 91.6% the same.  It's clear also that the other ten districts (including B and S) weren't considered for truncation because their terms were up in 2002 anyway. 
3. If you click here, you'll get to the 2001 Board's truncation plan and you'll also see that Mr. White appears to be wrong about the next highest percentage.  It wasn't 66.2%.  In fact none is listed at 66.2%.   If we don't count the other two districts over 90%, B and S (B kept the same letter, S was T),  the next highest percentage is E (previous P) at 68.8% and then G (previous N) at 67.7% and  H (also previous N) at 66.9%.  The next one is  N (previous F) at 66.6%.  Of those four, the one with the highest percentage, E (68.8%), was truncated.  The other three were not because their terms were up in 2002 anyway.
4. White appears to be wrong about the fact that the report doesn't indicate if the next highest percentage was a two or four year seat.  As I said in 3), E (68.8%) was a seat not due to expire until 2004 and it was truncated to 2002. 

The 2011 Board's Truncation Process

As I mentioned, truncation is one of the last things the Board has to do.  The hard part of creating the house district lines is done and they just have to pair the completed house seats.  In addition to the Alaska constitutional standards of compactness, contiguity, and socio-economic integration, they also are supposed to consider 'proportionality.'  I don't completely get this term (as they used it) but basically they said that if a borough had enough population for four house and two senate seats, then all those seats should be in the borough and not split with other boroughs.  The idea is that their size in population should be reflected with a proportional number of representatives.  (Like the other standards, it might have to be given some slack because it competes with other standards.  In this case, Fairbanks had enough population for 5.5 seats.  The .5 remainder had to be paired with someone outside the borough. 

I intended to explain the process this 2011 Board used.

But, in hindsight, they really hadn't thought out the process too clearly.  White's memo, if anyone remembered it by the time they got there, did not seem to reflect a careful review of the 2001 process as the errors of fact indicate.  Also, the Board did this twice - in 2011 and then when that plan was tossed, again in 2013.  Both times what you saw at the meeting was kind of confused.  I was going to offer the steps the Board used, but I think now it makes more sense to talk first about the standards they had.

Standard 1:  The senate seat letters had to follow in order the numbers of the house seats.  So A had to pair house seats 1 and 2.  B had to pair house seats 3 and 4, etc. (This is not unreasonable.  It's how it was done before.  But I don't remember hearing anything that said it had to be that way.

Standard 2:  Seats that had substantially changed, would be up for election at the next election (2012 the first time and 2014 this time around.)  My point here is that they really didn't pay that much attention to which seats were mid-term and which were up in the next election.  Their focus seemed to be on districts that had changed a lot.   I think Michael White (the Board's attorney) might have mentioned 'mid-term' now and then, but it wasn't as though anyone was listening.  They clearly did not divide all the seats into two groups of ten - the mid-term seats and those due to run again in the next election anyway.

Standard 3:  Determining which seats would be two year and which would be four year was divorced from what a seat's normal cycle was.  Their principle here was basically procedural, not substantive.  They wanted the two and four year terms to alternate alphabetically.  It did not (at least publicly) take into consideration what the original seat's normal election would have been, the way the 2001 Board did.  They didn't distinguish between seats that had been truncated and those that would have run in the next election anyway.  A was to be four year, B two year, C four year, etc.  This was particularly confused this second time around because the seats for the 2012 election had been equally arbitrarily chosen.   No one mentioned whether some districts had been truncated twice plus given a two year both times or not.

Their argument at the time (2011) was this would make it random and would keep them from biasing the decisions.  If I recall right, in 2011, they brought the list of lettered senate seats into the meeting, so that wouldn't have prevented them from massaging the list before hand.  I'm not saying they did, but it wasn't a transparent process.  For instance, no one ever explained why the counting of house seats started in Fairbanks instead of Southeast Alaska as it previously had.

Standard 4:  This one was voiced by Board member Peggyann McConnochie. She declared that the seats within a city or borough had to be staggered too.  At one point she said that contiguous seats should be staggered.  Given that districts often are contiguous to more than one other district, this would be impossible.  McConnochie never said where this city and borough staggering standard came from.  It makes a certain amount of sense, but it's clearly not in the Alaska constitution and attorney White had said there were no guidelines for how to do this part of the job.

Step 1:  If there was a step one, it was a fairly chaotic process where they tried to fit the senate letters to the house numbers and debated back and forth.  At the time I wrote that it sounded like they were exhausted from the setting up of the house districts and that they really hadn't thought this next step out.  The transcript reflects this.

Step 2:  A member of the audience says something about the need to change some of the house district numbers so the senate seats letters will fall right.  I'd note, as I did at the time, that having an audience member speak to the board was pretty extraordinary.  Audience members can talk to board members during breaks and before and after meetings, but when the Board is in session, only Board members, their staff, and invited guests (pretty rare - like the Voting Rights Expert they hired) can speak.  Everyone else must listen only.  The exception is when they had public testimony and people were given a set amount of time to address the Board.  At Board meetings others didn't address the Board.

But this time, an audience member spoke up and suggested a way out of the knot they were tying themselves up in.  Also, of note, is that the audience member they allowed to address them was Randy Ruedrich, former chair of the Alaska Republican Party.

Step 3:  Adjourn for about half an hour.

Step 4:  Come back with a new list and then alphabetically divide them into two year and four year seats.

There's another decision of importance here too.  Somewhere in all this, before the break, the Board determined that their previous standard of 10% of less change in a district's population would be lowered to 75%.  (Actually, in the end, I seem to have missed where it happened, the standard was lowered to 70%.  In 2001 a district that was 68.8% changed was truncated.    The current Board did this explicitly because John Coghill's seat was 77%.  And White had told the Board (incorrectly as I pointed out above) that all the 2001 districts that were not truncated had less than 10% change.


The Consequences

I'm going to save most of this for a later post.  Going through the truncation list and the new terms assigned to each district is tricky.  Their lists have seat letters only - no incumbent names.  And this time, since they made two different plans, it has added complications.  And this post is already very detailed.  So I'll get some charts ready that I think will make it easier to see the changes in districts from the 2010 election to the 2012 election and what is planned for 2014 and beyond.  In brief, though, for now:

The 2001 board had fairly simple and elegant plan.  Split the seats into those that had to run in the next election and those who had two more years to go.  Only the second group was considered for truncation.  Of the ten, seven had to be truncated.  When it came to two and four year terms, they kept all the districts in their original rotation.  Only seven seats were affected.

The 2011 board didn't seem to take the regular staggered rotation into consideration and put every seat up for a lottery for two or four year terms.  Trying to figure out the consequences is pretty difficult because of the changes in the district letters and because they did this twice. I'm still working on these. 

[Whoops, I accidentally posted this.  I'm going to leave it up, but reserve the right to fix any typos I missed in the morning.]





Truncation:   Senate terms are for four years, while house terms are for only two.  Senate seats are also staggered.  Half (10) are voted on in one election and the other half (10) in the next election two years later.  If redistricting significantly changes the constituency of a senate seat, then a large number of the voters of the new district are represented by someone they didn't vote for.  Thus, senate seats with significant changes are subject to truncation.  This means that regardless of when the term is up for the sitting senator, the population should be able to participate in choosing their senator in the next election.

So, all the new districts whose terms expire in 2016 that have a significant change will be up for election in the next election (2014).  Those up for election in 2014 will be up again anyway so they don't need to be truncated.  But this messes up the staggered terms, so some have to be designated as two year terms and others as four year terms to get ten up for election one year and the other ten the next election. The 2012 election used a new redistricting plan in which all but one of the seats were truncated and then the Board assigned two or four year terms to them. And now they have to do that again. 

Court Sets Out Issues And Schedule For Alaska Redistricting Court Challenges

In an order dated 28 August 2013, Superior Court Judge Michael P. McConahy said:

 

I.  Introduction

Overview of what's happened so far in the case, starting with last December's Supreme Court decision (though somehow 2013 instead of 2012 got past the proof readers).

II.  Consolidation

The Riley challenge and the Alaska Democratic Party challenge to the Redistricting Board's July 2013 Redistricting Proclamation Plan shall be consolidated into one case.

III.  Amicus Curiae

All the parties that filed amicus briefs either before the Superior court or the Alaska Supreme Court shall get copies of all orders of the case and are free to file pleadings though they may not initiate motion practice.  [I think that means they can only comment on the issues that have been raised and not raise new ones.]

IV.  Electronic Filing

Details for filing electronically.


[The points above are paraphrased. For Summary of Issues I've copied it as verbatim as my eyes and fingers allowed]

V.  Summary of Issues 

Fairbanks

1. Compactness issues in House Districts 3 and 5 
2. Socio-economic issues due to the split of the University of Alaska-Fairbanks in House Districts 4 and 5
3. Whether the higher deviations from the ideal district population in House Districts 1-5 are justified
4. Compactness and contiguousness issues in Senate District B.
5. Whether higher deviations from the ideal district population in Fairbanks Senate Districts are justified. 

Mat-Su

1. Socio-economic integration issues in House Districts 9 and 12 by combining areas outside the Mat-Su Borough with the Mat-Su Borough  
2. Whether the plan affords proportional representation to voters residing inside and outside the Mat-Su Borough

Kenai

1. Socio-economic integration issues in House District 32 by combining areas outside the Kenai Peninsula Borough with the Kenai Peninsula Borough.
2. Whether the plan affords proportional representation to voters residing inside and outside the Kenai Peninsula Borough.

Rural Alaska Districts

1. Socio-economic integration issues in House Districts  40, 39, 37, and 6. 

Truncation

1. Whether the Board considered improper factors in deciding the truncation of senate terms. 

VI.  Briefing Schedule

• The judge wrote that since legal standards for establishing house and senate districts have already been addressed previously, they won't be repeated now.  
• "Therefore any party that objects to the 2013 proclamation plan as violative of the compactness and contiguity requirements of the Alaska Constitution must file a motion for summary judgment regarding all such concerns within 15 days of the date of the distribution of this order. [Which by my count comes to Sept. 12.] The Board shall have 10 days to file its opposition.  Replies, if any, are due 3 days thereafter. "
• Socio-economic issues "may or may not be able to be decided on the merits" but "any party objecting to the proclamation plan as violative of the socio-economic requirements . . . must file a motion for summary judgment, supported by admissible evidence" in the same time frame.  And it must be in a separate motion.

VII. Scheduling

• "It is the intent of this court to have all issues resolved within 90 days"
• "If testimony is required the court anticipates setting a trial week on short notice"

So, What Does This All Mean? 

Administrative Issues

• The Riley and Democratic Party challenges were consolidated into one case
• Administratively, the judge has outlined the issues to be discussed - most of the issues raised by Riley and the Alaska Democratic Party.  
• However,  the requests to appoint a master to draw the maps  wasn't mentioned.
• Amicus can comment on the issues outlined but not bring up new ones
• The parties have 15 days (Sept. 12 if that's calendar days and not working days) to support their claims.
• The Board has 10 days to respond.
• The Parties have 3 more to respond to the Board.
• 90 days is the target to get everything to be done.  That should fall just before Thanksgiving Day.

Substantive Issues

I've covered the Fairbanks issues in some detail in these two posts:

• Was Fairbanks Gerrymandered:  A Look At the Riley Challenge to Alaska Redistricting Board' 2013 Plan Part 1
• Was Fairbanks Gerrymandered?  The Riley Challenge to the Redistricting Board's 2013 Plan Part 2:  Truncation  

The line  "Socio-economic issues may or may not be able to be decided on the merits" probably means that this is pretty much a judgment call.  Facts play a role, and there are some precedent standards - such as everyone in a borough boundary is considered to be socio-economically integrated" but there is no clear up or down test for this. 

I haven't even looked at Kena, Mat-Su, or the other  rural districts.  I'll try to get something up.
I have covered truncation (second link above) and I'm working on a post comparing the 2000 Board's truncation method and the current board's method.

In the meantime, you can read the Judge's full order below:

Alaska District Court Order On Riley and Democratic Party challenges to Latest Alaska Redistricting Board P...

Also, there is a response from the Board to the two filings (Riley and Alaska Democrats) on the Board's website.  Most of the documents filed on this are also on the Board's website here.

Thanks to  EW.