Was Fairbanks Gerrymandered? Riley Challenge to Alaska Redistricting Board's 2013 Plan Part 2: Truncation

In Part 1, I looked at the parts of the Riley challenge that dealt with Fairbanks issues of compactness, contiguity, socio-economic integration, and deviation issues.  That post has an explanation of terms, maps, a population deviation table, and other information to help people understand the Riley challenge to the latest Redistricting Plan.

There was one more Fairbanks related issue, truncation, that wasn't as intertwined with the other issues which I left to a future post.  Now is the future.   Here, again, is what was in the Riley challenge concerning truncation:

25.  The Board's Truncation Plan for Senate Districts improperly considered improper factors (a) substantial changes from an unconstitutional Interim Plan as opposed to the prior Final Plan in effect for the 2010, b) incumbency protection relative to Senate District B; and (c) previously considered partisan voting patterns of persons within the Ester/Goldstream Area. 

[Let me note here that I started this about two weeks ago, but I've been interrupted for and by a lot of other things.  Plus this wasn't altogether clear.  I thought I should call Michael Walleri, Riley's attorney, to see if he could clarify things.  But when I called him about Part 1, he didn't return my call.  Part of me thinks there is value in just posting my take on things.  I've watched enough of this process to be relatively well informed, but in this part of the challenge I had real questions.  Tuesday afternoon I decided that before posting this I should give Walleri's office a try.  This time I got through.  I've decided to leave my original post as it was and then add what I learned in the phone conversation.  How will you know which is which?  If it's in blue, it's new.]? 


 Here's how I explained truncation in the previous post on this:

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. 

I think there is an extra 'improper' in their point number 25 (way above the truncation explanation), but I'm not sure.  I think they are saying . . . well, actually it's not all that clear to me so I won't guess. 

Here's what I know.

The first time this board made a plan, their standard for truncation was 90% or more of the district was the same.   Only one Senator's district was that high - Sen Egan of Juneau.  All the other Senate districts were truncated.  This time they changed the threshold for truncation to 75% and they they all but said that that was to exclude from truncation one incumbent - Sen. Coghill - who lives in the new Senate seat B.

Item 25 includes three itemized points.  Here's the first:

(a)  substantial changes from an unconstitutional Interim Plan as opposed to the prior Final Plan in effect for the 2010

I'm not sure what (a) means.  Perhaps they are saying that they should have compared the new plan with the 2010 plan instead of with the interim plan to determine how different it was.  If that's what they meant, then (a) is a good example of why it's important to write clearly, because that actually says the opposite to me; that there's a bigger difference between the new plan and the interim plan, than the new plan and the 2010 plan.

[Mr. Walleri told me Tuesday that in fact there is a greater difference between the most recent redistricting plan and the districts used in the 2010 election.  And that if Senate District B were compared to the 2010 districts there would be a greater than 50% change in constituency and the seat would have to be truncated.  But, I asked, so what?  I remember somewhere in my brain that this issue came up before Shelby County v. Holder determined that Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act was invalid and thus there were no standards for determining which states were required to undergo Section 5 pre-clearnace.  The Board's attorney, I believe, told the Board that for pre-clearance they would be using the Interim Plan in place for the 2012 election, not the 2010 election districts.  

But Walleri was arguing that that might have been the standard for VRA benchmarks, but not for the Alaska Supreme Court.   The Interim Plan was declared unconstitutional and was used only because there wasn't enough time to create a constitutional plan.   

I suspect that this might be unexplored legal territory in Alaska.  According to the Board's attorney (from a memo to the Board):

"There are no statutes, regulations or case law guidance on how to ascertain the seating process."

The only justification for truncation I recall was that voters shouldn't be represented by people they didn't have the chance to vote on.  Michael White's memo to the Board goes on to talk about how this evolved from a Supreme Court decision.  Thus if a district were substantially different, a substantial number of voters would not have had a chance to vote for the senator.  Therefore those voters should have a chance to vote on that senator in the very next election.  Thus the justification for truncation. 

Walleri claims that that 2012 plan was declared unconstitutional and thus it shouldn't be used.  But if the issue is disenfranchisement of voters, then it seems that the 2012 districts would be the most pertinent because those are the people who voted for the sitting senators.] 

(b)  incumbency protection relative to Senate District B

This could mean a couple of things.  It might refer to the Board lowering the percentage that would require truncation to 75% to let Coghill escape truncation.  At the July 7, 2013 meeting, Board chair John Torgerson said,

"MR. TORGERSON:· Thank you.· Again, that's 22· ·three-quarters of the district or more is the threshold 23· ·that we're establishing, and in this case, it only 24· ·affects the one district, Senate District B." [from the July 7, 2013 transcript, p. 114]

Two years ago, in a post on truncation, I quoted a memo from 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 truncation plan here.]

[Actually the data do tell us.  I looked at the 2001 Board's Proclamation Plan, but I'm going to save that for another post.  This gets really wonky and I still need to analyze how the current Board did the truncation and the setting of two and four year terms to put the previous Board's work into context.]

So he said there is no specific law or court decision defining substantial change.  However, he also tells us that in the previous redistricting - 2000 - three districts that were NOT truncated all had less than 10% change.  It wasn't clear, he tells us, whether the next highest - 66.2% same population- was a mid-term truncation.  [Note:  the follow up post will raise questions about these figures.]

Then the current Board decided that 75% should be the cut off point (15% lower than their previous standard and the 2002 standard and less than 9% higher than the 66.2% mentioned above for the 2002 Board.)  They set it at this point because they knew - and talked about it at the meeting - that Coghill's new district was 77% the same.  This level would save Coghill from truncation.  I could argue persuasively both for and against the proposition that 75% of the population makes the district substantially the same.  But public bodies don't usually set such standards AFTER one knows how they will affect the outcome.  Usually you determine these abstract standards before you know who will be affected. 

But that isn't really what I think of when it comes to incumbent protection.  To me that means making a district safe for an incumbent.  Senate district B is made up of districts 3 and 4.  Coghill lives in the new HD 3.  The new HD 4 tends to be a liberal district as I understand it.  But is HD 4 liberal enough to defeat Coghill?  I'm not from Fairbanks, but my encounter with Coghill in Juneau tells me he's a very likeable guy and will be hard to beat.   I'm not sure this is making B safe for Coghill.  Rather, by splitting what seems a natural pairing of HD 3 and HD 5, they've prevented, probably, a likely Democratic Senator.

[What I understood Walleri to say was something like this:  the Board discussed protecting incumbents by making sure that not only was the Senate staggered statewide as required by the Constitution, but also that it should be staggered by communities, and thus Coghill was saved from truncation by lowering the percentage from from 90% used in 2001 and 2012 to 75%.  It's true that Board member PeggyAnn McConnachie made this local staggering seem like it was a Constitutional requirement at that meeting, but I don't think that was related to truncation percentages directly.  The discussion on staggering districts came after truncation was settled.   I think the percentage needed to be substantially the same is probably an issue the judges will be interested in. That plus the pairing of HD 3 and 4 into SD B and HD 4 and 5 into SD C, combined with de facto non-contiguity of HB 5, and the lowering of the percentage to 75% all combined in the Fairbanks area, drawn up by former Rep. Jim Holm who lost his seat in 2006 to Scott Kawasaki, one of the Democratic incumbents (whose sister's house* he gouged out of the district) do all add up to something worth paying attention to.  
*A house listed as S. Kawasaki in the phone book was drawn out of Rep. Kawasaki's district in the first maps of Fairbanks Board member Holm offered the Board.  It turned out to belong to Scott's sister Sonia. Redistricting insiders call this protuberance on the map the Kawasaki finger.]

(c) previously considered partisan voting patterns of persons within the Ester/Goldstream Area.

Again, I'm not really sure where this is going.  I do know that the Ester/Goldstream areas in the new HD 4 were identified as high voter turnout Democratic precincts the first times around.  They were paired with Bering Strait villages on the grounds that this would meet the Voting Rights Act (VRA) criteria.  This gets a bit complicated, but they were trying to make a 'Native District' which, for the VRA, would mean a district where the Native choice candidate was likely to be elected. Since Alaska Natives tend to vote Democratic, if they added Democrats to the district, it required a lower percentage of Natives to qualify than if they added population less likely to vote the same as the Native vote. 

The Board very clearly discussed the partisan voting patterns of the Ester/Goldstream area, but I don't know what the implications are here concerning truncation.

[When I asked about this, Walleri started talking about packing districts.  Yes, he was referring to the fact that the Board had pointed out the liberal nature of these two communities as justification for putting them into Native House District 38 last time round.  He also acknowledged that there was some self-packing involved simply by the fact that these folks all lived near each other.  Time was limited at this point and so we didn't discuss this too much.  He did say that he'd submitted an amended challenge that was edited, which I haven't read yet, but which you can find here.  He also mentioned that White is arguing that these challenges should only be about the law, not about the facts.  But since the facts are so changed, I don't see how you could exclude them.  I guess that should be the Board's position, but the Court, so far, hasn't been that friendly to some of the Board's positions that seemed to be contrary to the public good.

I thought that once I talked to Walleri I'd be able to finish off this post.  And I am bringing it to a close.  But in double checking some things after we talked, I've discovered issues  I need to post, but I need a little more time to put them all together.  Stay tuned, this should get good, in a very technical way.]

Democratic Challenge To The Redistricting Board's July 2013 Plan

Here's the Democratic Party's suit against the Alaska Redistricting Board.  It identifies the locations the plaintiffs feel are problematic:  Fairbanks, Kenai, Matsu, and some rural areas.  (The complete document is at the bottom.)

• For Matsu and Kenai, they are arguing that both boroughs have enough for five and three (respectively)  districts wholly within the each of those boroughs, but that the Redistricting Board unnecessarily broke the boroughs and added population from outside the boroughs.  In Matsu's case in districts 9 and 12 and that this fails to give proportional  representation of the voters. 
• It complains that House Districts 6, 37, 39, and 40 are not socio-economically integrated.
• In HD 37 they argue Anvik, Grayling, Holy Cross, McGrath, Nikolai, Shageluk, and Takotna are not socio-economically integrated with the rest of the district.
• In HD 39 they argue that Galena, Huslia, Kaltag,Koyuku, Nulato, and Ruby are not socio-economically integrated with the rest of the district.
• In HD 40  they argue that Alatna, Allakaket, Bettles, Evansville, and Huslia are not socio-economically integrated with the rest of the district.
• HD 6, they argue, is comprised of two distinct regions that are not socio-economically integrated. 

[Socio-economic integration is one of the Alaska constitutional requirements for the districts.  And yes, it's a vague term.]

• Further in Fairbanks, they argue that HD 3 and HD 5 are not compact (another constitutional requirement of districts.)

They ask the Court to set aside this third Plan and appoint a master  or masters to recommend a final plan.   And to be awarded costs and attorney fees.

The official plaintiffs are the Alaska Democratic Party, Wasilla resident and the secretary to the Alaska constitutional convention Katie Hurley, and Chickaloon resident Warren Keogh.  Keogh the Matsu Borough Assembly member who challenged the Mayor for speaking for the Assembly when he told the Redistricting Board that the Borough supported their plan to break Matsu boundaries twice in the new districts.  

This document is simply a list of the charges and presumably it will be followed up with detailed backup.  I'm sure the Board will argue that while Fairbanks, Matsu, and Kenai, did have enough seats for their own districts, that there were adjoining areas that needed population and it made sense to take it the way they did.  Stand by.  This may not be over yet.  About 15 months until the November 2014 election.

Democratic Party Court Challenge To Alaska Redistricting Board's Third Final Plan

Was Fairbanks Gerrymandered? Riley Challenge to Alaska Redistricting Board's 2013 Plan Part 1

[I started on this a couple of weeks ago, when I got a copy of the Riley challenge to the Redistricting Board's newest plan.  Since then the Board has also issued a response which you can see here.  Basically it affirms that the earth revolves around the sun, but denies most everything else. I'm not going to discuss the Board's response in this post.  I got it late and the post is already too long.  My point is to help people understand the challenges, but not decide the case.]

In this post I'm going to list some of the key allegation made by the plaintiffs about the redistricting plan along with their complete filing.  In this post I'm focusing just on the Fairbanks part of the challenges. In the end I left some things out and some in though they are speculative. 

1. The specific problems with the Fairbanks districts listed in the Riley court challenge.
2. Explanations of the terms (in red) 
3. Fairbanks maps so you can see the districts
4. Discussion of the claims made by Riley, though I'm leaving the truncation issue to a later post. 
5. The complete court document

1.    Specific Problems  (I'm quoting here from the Riley challenge; I've added the red.)

"FAIRBANKS HOUSE DISTRICT 3

14.  The Third Final Plan establishes the boundaries of House Districts [sic] 3 which fail to comply with Article VI, Section 8 of the Alaska Constitution in that it is not relatively compact.

FAIRBANKS HOUSE DISTRICTS

15.  The Third Final Plan establishes House Districts 4 and 5, which unnecessarily divides the campus of the University of Alaska and fails to comply with Article VI, Section 8 of the Alaska Constitution by drawing a boundary that unnecessarily divides an area that comprises an integrated socio-economic area. 

16.  The Third Final Plan fails to comply with Article VI, Section 8 of the Alaska Constitution by establishing House Districts 1-5 with unnecessarily higher deviations from the ideal district population and do not contain populations as near as practicable to the quotient obtained by dividing the population of the state by forty. 

FAIRBANKS SENATE DISTRICTS

17.  The Third Final Plan establishes Senate District B which is  unnecessarily non-contiguous and non-compact territory as required by prior Alaska Supreme Court cases.

18.  The Third Final Plan fails to comply with Article VI, Section 8 of the Alaska Constitution by drawing boundaries with unnecessarily higher deviations from the ideal district population and violates equal protection of voters rights to an equally weighted vote and the right to fair and effective representation.

TRUNCATION

25.  The Board's Truncation Plan for Senate Districts improperly considered improper factors (a) substantial changes from an unconstitutional Interim Plan as opposed to the prior Final Plan in effect for the 2010, b) incumbency protection relative to Senate District B; and (c) previously considered partisan voting patterns of persons within the Ester/Goldstream Area. 

2.  Explanations of Terms

What does this mean?  The US and Alaska constitutions require one-person-one-vote, thus there should be minimal deviation between districts.  The Alaska Constitution requires that house districts be compact, contiguous (all connected, not separated), and socio-economically integrated.

Deviation - The one-person-one-vote principle means that every district should be equal in population.  The 2010 Alaska Census counted 710,200 Alaskans.  There are 40 House districts.  Dividing the population by 40 yields 17,755 people per district as the ideal.  Deviation is the number (or percentage) of people in a district above or below that ideal number.  In the urban areas the goal is to keep deviations at or below 1% (177 people).  In the rural areas, in the first rounds of this process, when the Voting Rights Act required pre-clearance from the Department of Justice, the Board followed a rule that 10% was an absolute maximum allowable (but to be avoided if possible) total deviation in the state from the district with the highest positive deviation to one with the lowest negative deviation.

The general rule is that deviations should be as low as possible to achieve the other goals.

Compact - Districts should be as small and concentrated in area as possible.   One problem in achieving this in Alaska is that we have a lot of land and relatively few people.  Since all the districts need the same number of people, where there are lots of people (urban areas) it's easier to draw compact districts.  In rural areas it is harder to find 17,755 people and also keep the district compact.  It could get larger and/or have strange protrusions to capture villages here and there to get the population up.

Here's a table to show what this means more visually.

Examples of District Maps	House Districts	Senate Districts
	6 imaginary districts, each compact and contiguous	Made up of two house districts. Ideal options = 1&2      1&2     1&3 3&4      4&6     5&6 5&6      3&5     2&4   (The Board wanted the Senate districts to be made up of House districts in numerical order - 1&2, 3&4, etc.) Technically, 1&4 could be contiguous, but would be questionable and then 2 & 6 would be isolated.
	6 is the only  compact district. 3 & 5 have those extensions. 1, 4, & 2 are ridiculous. 1 and 4 are not contiguous. 3 is iffy.	The pairings would have to be as compact and contiguous as possible.  But I think the House districts are so bad, it would be impossible to create constitutional Senate districts.

Contiguous - Basically the districts should be one area without any breaks. In the squiggly map in the table, districts 4 and 1 are not contiguous, because there are areas not connected to the rest of the district.

In Alaska, there are islands connected to other land over water. They called this contiguous over water.  But the islands were too small to be a whole district.  See House District 32 in the new plan.  HD 32 connects Kodiak to Cordova and Yakutat.   When the Board decided to use the AFFER Matsu map instead of the Calista map, they were troubled that the Calista map connected north Anchorage to the rest of the district (Valdez and the pipeline corridor) over glaciers and uninhabited mountains. 

These two criteria are relatively easy to determine.  If you start with a squarish district, you may need to stretch it or have protrusions off the square to get a pocket of population here and there.  The question down the line will be whether those deviations from a tight compact district were necessary to meet other criteria, reflect geographic features (like a meandering river), reflect quirks in the census blocks,  or are done to include or exclude particular people or groups of people. 

Socio-economic integration - This is a little harder and more abstract.  In Alaska, keeping political units together is important.  A city, like Anchorage, or borough like the North Star Fairbanks Borough, is considered socio-economically integrated.  So combining Muldoon and Eagle River is considered ok since both neighborhoods are in Anchorage, even if they are economically different.  (They were combined in the previous plan, but not this one.)

The Board's job was to create equal  districts (minimal deviation) while balancing compactness, contiguity, and socio-economic integration.  When judging that, the Court has to determine if anomalies were due to the geography and population distribution or attempts to gerrymander.

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 with 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 truncate.  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. 

3.  Looking at Fairbanks

Click for bigger and clearer map

The numbers indicate the House District and the letters indicate the Senate District.  Two contiguous house districts make up one senate seat.  



The map shows districts 1, 2, and 3 completely and parts of districts 4, 5, and 6. In fact, HD 5 is large, and HD 6 is huge.  Here's a map that shows all of 4, 5, and 6.

Unfortunately the colors switch from map to map.  Fairbanks is in the center.  You can see 3B, 4B, and 5C.  (1A and 2A are too small to see in this map.)  House District 6 is that huge sea of blue along the Canadian border, around Fairbanks and back down the other side.  You might also note 9E.  It goes from Fishhook Road near Wasilla, to Valdez and then up the pipeline corridor to the edges of Fairbanks. 

4.  The Riley Challenges regarding Fairbanks

The Riley challenge's first complaint (14 in the court document) is that "House Districts [sic] 3 is not compact."  While it doesn't look all that big, HD 3 is long and stretched out, so they are claiming that people are further from each other than is necessary.  If this were the only available population in the area, this might be unavoidable, but I'm told there were plenty of people available to make a more compact district.

Yellow is HD 5 and dark blue is HD 4

The second complaint (15)  is that the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) is unnecessarily split between two house districts (4 and 5).  Political units are supposed to be kept intact if possible, but I'm not sure that the university campus qualifies.  Yet, common sense would keep the campus together unless there was a compelling reason to split it.  College campuses tend to vote more liberally than the general population.  I was told that the two precincts  (in the new 5) that voted Democratic in the 2012 election have been disrupted. One was put completely in the already Democratic leaning District 4 and the other (the University) was split between 4 and 5 . I don't know Fairbanks and I had trouble matching up the Board's maps to University maps, but I think the map gives a reasonably close approximation of where the University is.

I don't know where the dorms are and how they are split up, if at all.  And I don't know how many students register with their University address rather than their home address.  So I don't know how many actual voters are affected.



The third issue (16) raised is that districts 1-5 have unnecessarily high deviations.   Let's look at the Fairbanks deviations.  I've included HD 6.

House District	Senate District	Total Population	Percent Deviation From Ideal (17,755)	# Deviation
1		17,726	-0.16%	-29
2		17,738	-0.10%	-17
	A	35,464	-0.13%	-46
3		17,673	-0.46%	-82
4		17,786	0.17%	+31
	B	35,459	-0.14%	-51
5		17,837	0.46%	+82
6		17,807	0.29%	+52
	C	35,644	0.38%	134

The individual districts are all well under one percent deviation.  The total deviation from the lowest (-0.46%) to the highest (+0.46%) does come to 0.92%.  But that is still under one percent.  Anchorage, the biggest urban area (it's easier to have lower deviations where there are more people,)  has higher deviations.  On the face of it, I think these deviations should be fine.  UNLESS, it's clear that they could easily have been made lower, combined with other issues like compactness or contiguity or gerrymandering.    But gerrymandering hasn't been raised. (Well, not exactly true.  The word wasn't used but the truncation challenges suggest political intent.) And showing intent is pretty hard. 

The next two issues apply to Senate districts.

The fourth (17) is that Senate district B is unnecessarily non-contiguous.  HD 4 is a pretty large district (the first map above only shows part of it) and it's only connected to HD 3 at one little 2.5 mile spot that doesn't appear to have much population.

2.5 mile connection between HD 3 and 4

In contrast, much of HD 4 is connected in a long swath to HD 5 and they have the University split between them.  As it is, HD 5 is a strangely drawn district.  Most of it - I'm told all of it below the river - is uninhabited military bombing range.  Nearly all of the populated area is west of the City of Fairbanks.  There's a tiny jigsaw piece to the east of the City.  It doesn't appear to have much population.  And it looks like it's only contiguous with the rest because of the bombing range.  But I don't think one could drive to the main part of the district without going outside the district.

I understand that the courts have said contiguity doesn't require that people are able to drive from one part of the district to another.  But I suspect that ruling refers to rural districts with villages not connected to the road systems where it's hard to find enough population for a district.  Downtown Fairbanks is an entirely different situation.  

Here's the map of District 5. In the larger scale, the map's cut off on the left.  The inset has the whole map but it's tiny. (If they can't make a map with the whole district, does it mean it isn't compact?)

The Fairbanks News Miner has editorialized that the board should have paired HD 4 and HD 5 into one senate district  and HD 3 and HD 6 into another.

As I look at this, it seems like a reasonable idea.

• There's a long border between HD  5 and  HD 4 with connected neighborhoods.
• Pairing 4 and 5 would  reunite the university in a single senate district.  (Light blue circle.)
• Most of HD 5 is uninhabited bombing range and essentially the eastern part of HD 5 (big red circle on the lower right) is NOT contiguous with the west part in any real sense.  I don't think you can drive from one side to the other without going out of the district.  (Maybe you can go by boat along the river.)
• The real border between the populated area of HD 5 and HD 6 is a tiny little corridor. See the circle in red in the inset with an arrow pointing to where it would be if they showed the whole district on the map.  

And if you look at the deviation table, you'll see that HD 5 has 82 too many people and HD 3 has 82 too few people.  I wondered how many people lived in the east pocket of HD 5 and whether just giving that pocket to HD 3 would balance them.  Well, I was told there are about 500.  Too many. But having watched the Board move around population on the computer to find better borders, I'm convinced that there's a way to make some adjustments to get rid of this de facto non-contiguous pocket of voters.

But as it stands Senate district B (3&4) has a deviation of -51.
Senate district C (5&6) has a deviation of 134.

If you paired 3&6, the new senate district deviation would be +30.
The deviation for new senate district of 4&5 would be +113

Combined, the deviations would be lowered by 42 people.  That by itself is not much, but combined with all the other issues, it seems like these two senate seats were mispaired.

It also appears that  a senate pairing of HD4 & HD5 would have a greater chance of electing a Democratic senator than the way the Board paired them, which would be a good reason for some on the Board to prefer the HD3 & HD 4 and HD 5 & HD 6 pairings. 


TRUNCATION

There was one more Fairbanks related issue, truncation.  I think this post is already long and confusing enough without adding the truncation piece.  While the topics here are all very closely related, truncation is really a different issue and can be handled separately.  I'll do that in another post. You'll see that the Board was pretty spacy by that time.  I did post on the truncation Board meeting already for those who can't sleep without knowing more about this charge.  And that post links to a post two years earlier where I tried to explain truncation when it came up with the first plan. 

Below is a copy of the Riley challenge to the Board's most recent final plan.  As I mentioned at the beginning, the Board has replied to this challenge point by point and you can read that here.


Riley Challenge To July 2013 Alaska Redistricting Plan

PART II on Truncation is here.

Thursday Meeting, ADN Article on Fairbanks Plaintiffs' Coming Legal Challenge, Where to Find Documents

Here's the agenda for Thursday's Alaska Redistricting Board meeting, most of which was scheduled for executive session.  I missed the first three items, but listened in after that.  But there was nothing while they are in executive session.

1. Call to Order 
2. Roll Call 
3. Approval of the Agenda 
4. Executive session to discuss litigation issues
   The board will disconnect from the teleconference network and call back in for the executive session.
5. Re-connect to the teleconference network. 
6. Board actions if necessary Adjourn

I'm at my mom's in LA and she needed a number of things and I had some calls come in and missed the Board's reconvening.

But the Anchorage Daily News had an in depth article about what happened and the likelihood of a lawsuit because the Board couldn't didn't respond as the Riley plaintiffs requested regarding the Senate pairings in Fairbanks.  


Meanwhile, Ernie Weiss, who works for the Aleutian East Borough has filled a gap left by the Redistricting Board.  Last year, the Board, to its credit, posted all (I assume) the briefs that were filed regarding the Redistricting Board.  Anyone could see, not only the orders of the Courts, but also what all the parties filed.  That list of links can still be found here. 

This year the Board has most (maybe all) of the orders and opinions up, but almost none of the 2013 ancillary documents that help someone understand what the order means.  (Sometimes the order is clearly explained, but the last one simply said the Board's petition was denied.)  There is also a new pleadings page with three documents dated July 18, 2013.  Be careful though.  The first document is 739 pages. 

In any case, **Ernie Weiss has set up a website** where he's putting up the various petitions and amicus briefs, etc. that are being sent to the court. 

Did Redistricting Board Intentionally Target Tea Party Members?

At the Sunday Redistricting Board meeting, I met a woman who had an email that had been sent out to, I think, Republican legislators from Randy Ruedrich with a:

• list of sitting Senators
• what percent of their district remained the same
• if they had to run in 2014

The woman was angry.  The Board had gerrymandered, she told me,  so that two Republican senators and two Republican representatives had to run against each other.  And a third Anchorage area Republican Senator only had 50% of her old districts while a bunch of Anchorage Democrats had 100% of their old districts.  And that Senator had to run again in 2014 and only for a two year term.

I pointed out that the Board was made up of four Republicans and one Democrat.  That didn't seem to matter - she said something about them not being real Republicans.  I also mentioned that since there are a lot more Republicans in the legislature than Democrats, so if every thing was done without bias, Republicans would be more likely to be affected than Democrats.  She seemed to have her mind made up and nothing I said made a dent. 

Rep. Tammie Wilson

Sen Fred Dyson Introducing Joe Miller 2012

But as we look at the Republicans who got pinched in these things - Tammie Wilson in Fairbanks (paired with Doug Isaacson) and Fred Dyson in Eagle River (paired with Anna Fairclough) - we see that both Wilson and Dyson supported Tea Party favorite Joe Miller in 2010. 

Cathy Giessel, the Anchorage Republican Senator who lost half her constituents and who, thus,  has to run again in 2014  and for only a two year seat is also of that far, far right Republican persuasion.  Is this all a coincidence?  The Republican Party has had a big internal fight between Tea Party activists and the traditional power brokers of the Party.  Randy Ruedrich, until recently the Chair of the Republican Party, has feuded with the Tea Party Republicans.  He was also very involved in creating the AFFER map and actually made a comment from the audience when the Board was discussing truncation and determining how to figure out the two year and four year seats.  Although audience members are not allowed to speak, they let him, took a recess, and came back with the solution he had suggested from the audience: to renumber some of the districts.  

But, in fairness, both Isaacson and Wilson are listed as from North Pole and one of the principles in redistricting is to leave political subdivisions intact.  So perhaps it was the previous redistricting that allowed two different North Pole districts that was the problem.  Also, though not as critical, pairing the two Eagle River house seats into one Senate seat makes a lot of sense.  Finally, Giessel's old Senate district included the northern Kenai House district and this time they tried to keep Kenai more intact.  But those issues didn't prevent the Board from breaking Matsu twice, even though Calista offered a map that would have kept Matsu whole.  And I'm sure if they had wanted to, they could have kept these incumbents in different districts.

Anyway, below is an adaptation of the chart from the email.  I added the letters of the current (2012 election) and new (2014 election) Senate seats and I added the last column, because the email didn't say how long the terms would be for people not running in 2014. 

Republican or D (current - new District)	Kept of 2012 District	Status	Next Term
Kelly  (B-A)	97.6%	running 4 yr seat
Coghill (A-B)	77.0%	not running	2 years
Bishop (C-C)	46.8%	running 4 yr seat
Huggins (E-D)	96.9%	not running	2 years
Dunleavy (D-E)	52.0%	running 4 yr seat
Open (M-F)	49.3%	running 2 yr seat
Fairclough (M-G), Dyson (F-F)	50.1%	running 4 yr seat
D-Wielechowski (G-H)	100%	not running	2 years
D-Gardner (H-I)	100%	running 4 yr seat
D-Ellis (I-J)	100%	not running	2 years
D-French (J-K)	100%	running 4 yr seat
McGuire (K-L)	100%	not running	4 years
Meyer (L-M)	100%	running 4 yr seat
Giessel (N-N)	50.1%	running 2 yr seat
Micciche (N-O)	50.3%	running 4 yr seat
Stevens (R-P)	51.3%	running 2 yr seat
D - Egan (P-Q)	92.7%	running 4 yr seat
Stedman (Q-R)	90.7%	not running
D - Hoffman (S-S)	54.3%	running 4 yr seat
D - Olsen (T-T)	80.3%	running 2 yr seat

Some background for people who haven't been keeping track of these things:

Senators have four year terms.  The terms are staggered so that ten senators run in one election and ten in the next.  That way there are always at least ten Senators who aren't brand new.

If a new Senate district is changed so that a substantial number of people are new, the seat is truncated.  Truncation means that instead of serving out their full term (if it would not be up at the next election), their term is cut to two years and they must run in the next election.  The reasoning here is that a substantial number of people will now be represented by someone they didn't have an opportunity to vote for (or against.)

So, how many is substantial?  Last year's discussion of truncation said that any district that had more than a 10% change would be considered substantially changed.  Last year there was only one district that was less then 10% - Juneau - and the next was 65%.  This year they decided that the cut off would be 70%, which allowed Sen. John Coghill (75% change) not to have to run for reelection in 2014.  (Generally, people set standards before they know who will meet them and who won't so they aren't biased by knowing how the standards will affect real people.)  In any case, Coghill was also a Joe Miller supporter, so that would suggest that they weren't necessarily after Tea Party folks.

The gerrymandering charges this year were from Democrats.  But might it be possible the Tea Party is going to challenge the redistricting plan?  Can you charge gerrymandering when it's Republicans out to get Republicans?  (I'm not saying that happened here, just a hypothetical.)  Maybe this isn't over yet. 

Alaska Supreme Court Denies Redistricting Board's Appeal

Here's what's posted on the Alaska Redistricting Board's website today:

IT IS ORDERED:  The Petition for Review is DENIED.

But what was in the petition?  The Redistricting Board staff member I called to find out said, no, those other documents aren't being posted now. (They were last year.)  One of the Board members, when I complained that they'd taken these sorts of documents down, told me that people should know how to get them themselves.  So I called the Alaska Supreme Court and was told, no, they don't post the petitions online, but I can come down to the Supreme Court office in downtown Anchorage and ask to see them.  The Board staff person said she'd try to get the other documents that explain what this order means up tomorrow.

So I went back to the video I posted this morning of the Board's attorney, Michael White, talking about how much time people will have to file objections.  Here's what he told me in that video tape:

"The original process is the Board proclaims and then sits back and waits 30 days to file.  The trial court filed an order recently that seemed to imply that we were back using the same process.  And our interpretation of the constitution is that’s wrong.  We’re not saying people can’t challenge this map.  We’re not saying that new people can’t come in and say we don’t like this one.  We’re saying, no, you don’t wait 30 days to see if there are challenges, you resubmit it and see if the court says file your objections in ten days, 15 days, whatever.  The Court still could give them 30 days I suppose. But given the time line he told the Board to operate under, maybe he gets 30 days maybe he doesn’t.  But that issue is still before our Supreme Court now.  We asked for their guidance before the 20th."

So, I'm guessing that the Board's assertion that they should submit the Plan to the court now and let the judge give people a time frame to object was denied.  Instead, I'm guessing the Board is to wait 30 days and then submit the Plan. 

Meanwhile, I was also told that the Board has a meeting scheduled Thursday, but the only thing on the agenda is Executive Session.  So I expect they'll be talking about what this ruling means and what their options are.  I know they can go into Executive Session to talk about litigation (discussion of their legal adversaries and their own legal strategy), but simply talking about the meaning of a ruling is something they've done publicly before and I would think is inappropriate for Executive Session.  But legal stuff is always subject to interpretation I guess.


They proclaimed the new plan on Sunday, July 14, so thirty days we be Tuesday, August 13. If my guesses here are correct, then people have until that day to file challenges. 

Will there be any challenges?  

When I interviewed Democratic Party Chair Mike Wenstrup Sunday, he said there were problems but they'd have to wait until they read the Board's findings.

A woman at the Board meeting Sunday showed me a list of Senators and pointed out that the Democrats in Anchorage had pretty much their same seats*, but some of the Republicans had had their seats split and suggested there was gerrymandering.  Particularly she complained about Cathy Geissel's district changing so much.  I pointed out that the Board had four Republicans and one Democrat and she said that they weren't really Republicans.  So, perhaps there could be a challenge from, say,  the Tea Party Republicans.

And Sealaska seems to have some concerns as mentioned in this Juneau Empire article:

“This very much impacts our Southeast communities,” said Jaeleen Araujo, vice president and general counsel for Sealaska. “There is no cultural and socio-economic similarities between our rural and urban areas in Southeast.”
Two Tlingit lawmakers representing Southeast communities lost their seats in 2012 after proposed district map was allowed to be used for the election. Representative Bill Thomas lost to 23-year-old Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins of Sitka by 32 votes. In the same election, redistricting pitted incumbent Senators Albert Kookesh and Bert Stedman against each other. Kookesh lost that race after redistricting separated him from most of the smaller communities he’d previously represented. .  .  .

"This whole process has been very disheartening,” Araujo said. “We believe very strongly that the viewpoints in our rural and urban communities are very different.”
Araujo said that Sealaska is still examining the new redistricting plans and maps.
“We’ll do what we can in the next couple of weeks to see if there are any legal arguments to pursue,” Araujo said. “If there are, we will definitely follow up on them.”

I'm not sure why every time someone talks about Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins they have to mention his age.  Is there some mystic connection between the 23 years and the 32 votes?  I would imagine that mentioning he's a Yale graduate is more significant than his age. In 2010, Peggy Wilson and other SE politicians put forth a Constitutional Amendment to expand the legislature so that rural Alaska (including SE) wouldn't have to lose legislators after redistricting.  But Alaska voters turned it down.

In any case, Haines, Bill Thomas' home town, is no longer in the same district with Kreiss-Tomkins.  Instead, the Board cited people  from Haines who testified at the public hearings in Juneau a couple of weeks ago, who said they should be in the downtown Juneau district and that's where the Board put them.  Downtown Juneau is probably the most Democratic district in the state, so that would make it even harder for Republican Bill Thomas. 


*I know this is confusing if you haven't been immersed in it.  When they paired the house districts to make Senate seats, in some cases, the districts were pretty much intact.  In other case they got paired very differently and as much as half the district had new constituents. 

Photos From Last Redistricting Board Meeting

I posted my rough notes of the meeting just after it ended at 1:30pm.  Here are some photos.  And video sometime tomorrow.  Oh, there's no guarantee this is the last meeting.  If they are challenged in court there could be more meetings. 

This picture was taken after the meeting was over.  I'm sorry about the shut eyes I got in some of these. 

Board members (l-r) McConnochie, Holm, Torgerson, Green, Brodie after meeting

Here's the Board at the beginning of the 30 minute meeting.  In addition to the Board members (in the previous picture) there's Michael White and the stenographer (who's name I didn't get).

This is some of the audience - a couple more were behind me and a few others came after the picture.

Randy Ruedrich (left) was the head of the Republican Party and was at many of the Board meetings.  He also was the spokesperson for AFFER (Alaskans For Fair and Equitable Redistricting).  Tom Begich (middle) a Democratic political consultant and strategist, was a consultant for Calista.  Marcia Davis is Calista's attorney for redistricting.

In the end, the Calista map and the AFFER map were mostly the same.  Calista's Fairbanks was different and their Matsu didn't split the Borough.  AFFER's map splits the Kenai Borough twice.  The Board went with splitting Matsu twice and made their own Fairbanks map.

Above is the signed Proclamation Plan.  Chair Torgerson said that there was a typo in the signature page - a 'e' was left out of someone's name - so this wasn't ready immediately.  He didn't say, "And we'll add "adopted by unanimous vote" while we're add it.  I suspect they knew in advance.  In fact, when they get to the votes, I know I just have to type 5-0 because that's all they ever do.  But it would seem to me pretty obvious that even if they don't have more than two Board members meeting outside the public meetings, they have found a way to poll the members off the record on various things.  So they could type up "adopted by unanimous consent' before hand.

Here's a link to the Board's findings.

And another link to the Board's website page that has most of the documents for the new plan.

I've got some post-meeting videos that I'll try get later.

Here's The Map The Redistricting Board Approved Sunday Compared To The Old One

The Alaska Redistricting Board Sunday (July 7, 2013) Approved this Conceptual Map for Alaska.  They were working from the Calista Option 4 map, but then did their own adjustments to different parts.  Jim Holm worked with the Fairbanks area and made changes there.  Anchorage, according to what they said at the meeting yesterday, was left pretty much alone.  (I haven't checked to be sure, though.)

For now I'm going to give you

1. A comparison of the 2012 Alaska Interim Plan (Amended Proclamation Plan) used for the 2012 election and the map the Board approved in concept Sunday for the 2014 election.
2. A comparison of the 2012 Anchorage map and the Board's approved concept map for Anchorage.  I also added the Calista Option 4 plan - developed by the Calista Corporation and which the Board used as a starting point.  

I've saved these as pretty big maps so you can double click on them to see them bigger.  But you can also get the PDFs for all these maps and see them in street level detail.

Proposed 2014 Alaska Election Map
2012 Alaska Election Map

Proposed 2014 Anchorage Election Map (Inset in the Alaska map)
2012 Anchorage Election Map

The Two Alaska maps - 2012 election map and the new map for 2014.  (The Board still has to finally adopt this and then it has to survive any court challenges.)

And here's a comparison of the 2012 and proposed 2014 Anchorage maps.  And the Calista Option 4 map that the Board used as a starting point. 

Sorry, Please change 2914 to 2014 and add an 'a' to Calist

 One thing I see that appears to be significant are the Senate pairings.  In 2012 Bettye Davis was put into a new Senate district (M) had an Anchorage house district (25) and an Eagle River house district (26.)  This time it looks like both Eagle River districts are paired to make a Senate seat.  Does this mean that Fred Dyson (R) will be running against Anna Fairclough (R)?  I'm not sure, but it's possible. 

Also, Cathy Geisel's (R) Senate district included a South Anchorage house district  a North Kenai house district.  Now the South Anchorage district is paired with a Muldoon house district.

Those are some obvious changes.  Given how many Republicans are in the Alaska House and Senate, it would be hard to make changes without impacting Republicans. 


Here's the page with the old maps - there are separate maps for different parts of the state in great detail. 
  

Board Finishes Up "In Concept" - Schedules Sunday July 14 at 1pm To Formally Adopt New Plan

[Sorry, I had some interruptions here so I missed some parts.  I do have a list of
Senate Seats
The Districts they are made up of
Whether they are two year or four year.

But I don't have a map.  And I missed the final truncation list but I think there were just four districts - the new C, F, G, and P -  truncated.  They ruled that any district with 75% or more of the same population as before would not be truncated, so that kept District B,  at 77%, from being truncated.  The other four were near 50% or below. 

The GIS guy, Eric, will go through the maps again and check for any holes or errors and as long as he doesn't change a district by more than ten people, he can do it on his own. [Would they know if he did 20?  I doubt it.  But my sense is that Eric is a straight shooter and they can trust him.]  He's also going to do the metes and bounds.  Here's my June 13, 2011 post that explains Metes and Bounds.  (This is so much easier the second time around.)

OK, here are my very rough notes.  I probably should review them one more time, but  I haven't had lunch - it's almost 5pm here in LA - and I'm getting cranky.  But during all this I did get my mom onto Hospice today which is great.  That means the care-giver will have a support system behind her and she won't be sent to the hospital for minor things like last weekend.  The Hospice folks who came out were terrific.

You can see, there was still a bit of confusion among the Board members.  Even after the break.  Since I wasn't there, I'm not exactly sure what they did on break and who consulted with whom, but they were much more organized and had their motions pretty well prepared and got everything approved 4-0 (Board member Holm had an flight to catch and left before they were done).  But unanimous is pretty much how every single vote has gone.  I somehow seem to remember a time when there was a vote that wasn't 5-0, but I'd be hard pressed to go through my notes to find it. 


3:50pm Call back to order
PeggyAnn McConnochie; I’d like to get one thing off the table so we don’t have to deal with it, if less than 75% they have to be truncated and B has 77% so it does not have to be truncated.
Green:  second
Torgerson:  That has 75% the same.
Roll call:  Holm absent.  4-0 and one excuse 75% and above not truncated.  Brings us to actual senate pairings and terms.
is there a solution to the 4-2-4-2
PeggyAnn McConnochie:  I’m going thru individually on each district and tell you whether they will run or truncate and two or four year term and proposing a couple of lettering number switches that won’t affect pairings, but only the lettering that allows us to have good 4242


Concept Plan A - running anyway in 2014 - four year term
B - not truncate, has two years left - run for two year term (wouldn’t run now)
Torgerson:  for four year.
C - truncated - then four year term
White:  three four year terms
Torgerson:  no
D and E - propose flipping them
D would have - new D - two years remaining and E four years
White:  Is D running again?
PeggyAnn McConnochie:  No, yes,
D becomes not running and two year
F.  truncated. running
Torgerson: Already up, so not truncated
G truncated because 50.9 - then four years
Torgerson:  P?
PeggyAnn McConnochie: will be two year.
Sen that are 100% of previous  I and J flipping
I two year and
J four year
Old H and I not running? 
K running, for four year
L has a four year term.  two years left
M  has to run 2014
N truncated and two year
Torgerson: Not truncated, up for election
O is out and running anyway for four year
P truncated, running anyway for two year
Q anyway because out of years
R has two years left
S is truncate and running for 4 years
T running again for two year term.

did I do that right.
White H and I again.
PeggyAnn McConnochie:  H and I flipping, whole purpose so have 424242 all the way.  Flipping I and J so the letters allow a sequence of 4242
Concept I and J
Talking about concept plan district (or not?)
White:  New I, former J, two year term, but not running this time.
Green:  That’s the new J.
White:  The new I, is running this time?
PeggyAnn McConnochie: Yes
No
Yes
White:  New I running now for four year term?  I see 14 that need to run this time, 6 people on four year terms, not running this time and all two year terms?  or randomly split?
PeggyAnn McConnochie:  random in that have 42424 - so no confusion who will be on four year and who on two year term. 
Torgerson:  Eric can you make a clean sheet?
I understand 42424 still start with A and changed some lettering to around so it works
Marie:  D and E  I and J. 
4;02[they’re talking to themselves I think
I hear people talking softly.  It’s like they are informal now.  ]
4:04 - Still not really speaking in the mikes, I guess they’re each looking at the charts trying to figure them out.  If they had someone in the office who could use the website, they could post the list and the latest map, but they don’t.]

[I got interrupted at this point and missed the final truncation plan, but I did get the gist and Ill go through it.  I also saw that Mary at the Board was able to email me the Senate pairings list which I’ll check against what they did below.  I imagine that since they changed some of the letters that it will be a little different.]

[I'll try to put this into a table and replace this if I have time.  A will run next time for four years, B for two years, C for four years, D for two years on down the line until T which will run for two years. What I can't tell is how these relate to the old Senate seats.  I know from the discussion that some - like the new R was mostly N before.  This is Kodiak which now goes to Cordova.]

Eric
A   House districts 1 and 2   - 4 years
B   House districts 3 and 4  2 years
C 5 &6
D 7&8
E 9&10
F districts 11 &12
G 13& 14
H 15 and 16
I   17 and 18
J   19 and 20
K  21 and 22
L  23 and 24
M  25 and 26
N  27 and 28
O 29 &30
P 31 and 32
Q 33 and 34
R  35 and 36
S  37 and 38
T 39 and 40

Vote:  4-0  Senate pairings adopted

[UPDATE 8:20pm: Below is the table I promised]

Senate Seat	House Districts	Years Next Term
A	1&2	4
B	3&4	2
C	5&6	4
D	7&8	2
E	9&10	4
F	11&12	2
G	13&14	4
H	15&16	2
I	17&18	4
J	19&20	2
K	21&22	4
L	23&24	2
M	25&26	4
N	27&28	2
O	29&30	4
P	31&32	2
Q	33&34	4
R	35&36	2
S	37&38	4
T	39&40	2

Term of office

PeggyAnn McConnochie:  Accept in concept in term lengths as board 4242 down the list A has 4 years to T with two years. 

Vote:  4-0  board has adopted term of office and truncation all taken care of and who will be running in 2014.  I believe that gives us a complete conceptual plan
Regionally all of Alaska
Senate pairings and Truncations and terms of office.

I would like someone to make a motion to let Eric make changes to the map for contiguity purposes and any holes, up to ten people per district.
PeggyAnn McConnochie: I will move Eric Sandberg our GIS extraordinaire to make any changes up to ten persons per district, if more, needs our permission.
Torgerson:  Last time there were a couple and that threshold worked well.

Vote:  4-0 authorized GIS expert to proceed

Last thing on my agenda is to discuss and adopt schedule to be completed with final plan, as well know here, for those who don’t know, the Board scatters to the wind on Monday and we don’t have them back until next Sunday.  I want all of us here for that.  Earliest time all 5 is the 14th.  Reconvene next Sunday.  Report from Eric if any anomalies and we’ll adopt it all in its entirety. 

If on teleconference I will be here and any member who needs to come or teleconference.  I anticipate a pretty short meeting.
Brodie:  What time?
Torgerson:  Good question.  I like ten.
PeggyAnn McConnochie:  10:30?
Torgerson:  11?
Green:  That’s when i’d be arriving.
Torgerson:  how about 1?  Brodie?
Brodie:  I’ll check with my wife.
Torgerson:  I probably should check with mine.
Convene at 1pm on Sunday July 14.  I anticipate that will be our final action, adopting, whatever we’re going to call this - Seconded Amended Proclamation.
Vote:  4-0 Board has adopted their completion schedule. 

PeggyAnn wondering if reason for the schedule go to court?
White:  We will notify the Court where we are and the schedule.  Eric, you going back tonight?
Eric Tomorrow morning.
White:  Will do Metes and Bounds from Juneau?  I have four days blocked out for Michael to write his stuff up.  We’re a week away.  Should have enough time.
Brodie:  Given the vagaries
White:  Court order said adopt a plan by the 14.
Pending something extraordinary we plan to meet that day and adopt our plan. 
Torgerson:  Good question I thought about something like that.  Ok.  anything else we need to do?
White:  No I don’t think so.
Torgerson:  Time is 4:35 We’ll adjourn Thanks for sticking through this.  Stand adjourned until next Sunday. 

Board's Reasoning Ability Truncated

The Board's getting tired.  As they tried to figure out the truncation and then which half of the terms have two year and which half have four year terms, their brains turned to mush as they got so hopelessly confused that Randy Ruedrich actually jumped into the discussion from the audience to suggest - what I was thinking here - that one out would be to change the numbers and letters of the districts so they didn't require almost everyone to end up with another set of two year terms. 

I tried to explain truncation two years ago at this post - what it means and why they do it.

Real brief:  if a new seat is substantially different from the old one, it means that the majority of voters in the new district did NOT elect that Senator.  Therefore, to have someone represented by the voters of the district, that seat must run again in 2014, regardless how long that term was before.

Part two has to do with staggered terms.  Half the senate runs in one election and the other half in the other.  That way they never have everyone running at once and half the senate at least has some experience.  Now they are adding geographic staggering (so not all of Anchorage or Fairbanks Senators would run in the same year) which makes sense.  But someone said contiguous districts, which probably would be impossible because several districts may be contiguous. 

This is what they are trying to figure out how to do.  And since this is the second redistricting plan in two years, it looks like a large number of senators may be forced to run every two years for two or more elections in a row, contrary to the four year terms  the Constitution assigns for Senators. 

Without their chart and their maps it's impossible for me to have any idea of what the implications are for specific districts and Senators, except Gary Stevens who Brodie names.  Since I'm on line, I don't have the new map or the list of truncations. 

They've recessed for twenty minutes.  They're due back already, but this will take them more than 20 minutes to figure out.  It sounded a lot like the Abbot and Costello "Who's On First" routine.

Here are my rough notes, while they are on a 15 minute recess, to figure out what they are doing. 



Calling meeting back to order.  It’s 2:38.  During the break to let the individual members to look at ????.  Also handed out the truncation report on the districts that changed and percentage they changed.  Struggled understanding.

Eric:  Board concept senate turns
Senate seats in new plan, second column,  third column largest % of Senate seat

A - 97% of old Senate B

Assignment of term lengths is from the old districts, so you can see from the current ones.

PeggyAnn McConnochie:  I read from two middle columns?  Thank you.

White:  Looks like 8 senate district that are clearly truncated, down 50%.  Q, old P is 97% the same, but that’s the one that didn’t get truncated that time, so should be ready to run this time or would be

77% one, that’s in that gray area, do you require it or not.  That person ran for 4 years seat last time.  How you map out two and four year seats is different from truncating.  You’d have ten and ten and make two and four based on that.  those who have to run now would be four.

Torgerson:  Sounds simple, but it isn’t back to Eric’s list.
staggered 4-2-4-2
PeggyAnn McConnochie:  A is 4 B is 2
Proclamation go ABCD, the 2-4 out of whack, but next column.
Torgerson:  Q has to be four year?
White:  He hasn’t run since 2010 so has to run. 
BEFGNOPand F  I suggest to you, they need to run in 2014.  If 2 year term anyway.  P is up now anyway.  If assign two year or four year.

C is a four year so shouldn’t run until 2016, but truncated so has to run in 2014.
A was a four year

B fro m concept plan - 70% is within the Board’s discretion.  The rest are under 50% so they have to be truncated.

F - 4 year but only 50%
R doesn’t need
Q needs to run this tie anyway
P needs to be truncated because 4 year but 50%

G only 50%

Brodie:  In our haste, in the third column concept N and O, we have a duplicate N -
Eric:  Both have majority from old one, District R went to new Sen P, cross tabs, New concept N and O get from old N
Torgerson:  for those on tele

White; Sure truncate

C - 4 year, 46%
G - 4 year about 50% the same
P - 4 year only 51% the same
S/F?  - 4 year only 54% the same

The only one’s I see that have to be truncated.
Torgerson:  Assuming the one with 70%

We know A is two year time this time
D is two year and needs to run again
F needs to run only two year, 40%
N needs to run
Brodie:  J and K two year terms, M, N,
White:  Now we’re over 50%
Brodie:  Go left to right
 N and O scheduled and have 50%
Q is scheduled
P
White:  12 districts that would be up for running with truncation,
Brodie:  I got 14
White:  You’re talking about two year terms. 
PeggyAnn McConnochie: 
White:  We assigned them two year terms last time, don’t have to change.  Up to us.  At the end, there have to be ten four year terms and ten two year terms. 
You have five, regardless to 2012 that need to be truncated and need to be run in 2014 and ?? that have to run in 2014 because term up,

Brodie: 
C
D
P
S
Two to go, that’s five
and ten scheduled with 0 time left to go.

15 up for election.  Ten on normal schedule up and five truncated.
Of those, two year and four year.
Torgerson:  If ran on two years, we can’t give them another two years. 
White:  Assignment different from truncation. Five need to be truncated.  Have to run this time again.  Were on four year terms.  Either pick 5 more to go four or pick the five truncated and give them four year terms. 
Torgerson:  Need to end up with ten and ten. 
White:  J and K are 100% the same.  But on two year terms.  Have to run again, but could assign a four year term.
Torgerson:  Are you saying if term expired we can give them another four years without an election?
White:  Not what I’m saying
Torgerson:  Ones with two have to run.  The ones with four but are truncated.  Matter of where we want to start.  four or two,
PeggyAnn McConnochie:  We could go with ones on 2 year, and make them four.  Then go down the percentages. 
Brodie:  Put 15 numbers in a hat
PeggyAnn McConnochie:  have to do truncated first.
Brodie:  Those five get four years.
PeggyAnn McConnochie:  Ones we have have to run.  all the truncated people had four year terms.
Torgerson:  Sen B two years,
Make A  a four year - if you go two-four-two-four  - I don’t know how that would work. 
Brodie:  We could pull out of a-hat.
Torgerson:  That won’t work.  Always did A, B, that would be ?? that would have 2 year terms. 
Brodie:  Fairbanks should probably be alternate, not all at the same time. 
PeggyAnn McConnochie:  If running other times would always have people who knew something.
Torgerson:  I always saw these as 2-4-2-4  If the A was four, the B was two. 
PeggyAnn McConnochie:  I agree it needs to be that way. 
Torgerson:  Otherwise the Board could say everyone in Anchorage was up at the same time,  Mr. White is that right?
White:  One more time
Torgerson:  No, I’m not saying it again.  I’m almost certain you have to stagger A-B-C-D
Brodie:  Then it gets tricky, potentially we could end up truncating everybody.  If someone has two years to go, and ends up on the wrong side of the flip.
Torgerson:  That’s the way it falls.  We could go down the list and see what happens. 
PeggyAnn McConnochie:  We could start with drawing a hat - 2 or 4 and then go from there.  They need to be staggered through the districts.
Brodie:  Some are tied geographically.
White:  We know these four need to be truncated.  Then, there are four four year terms that have to run this time.  Then five other two year terms, four of them are truncated, so they are up.  Q needs to be up this time.(on 2 year term)
PeggyAnn McConnochie: Bottom line:  need geographical don’t have two contiguous seats not running he same term.  Flip a coin and then flows up or down.  Then ten on two year and ten on four year.
Brodie: I think I have it based on what Mike said.
Starting at bottom - S and T up.  R has two years left to go - put 2 opposite him.  Q is up.  P, our rotation has two year term and truncated. N is truncated and up for election, so two.  L has two years to go, not truncated.  Put two for him.  J and K - off here,  I and H.  Start at R, L and I stay in four year rotation and every other.  Only person cut short is H.  Others stay on even/odd. 
H stays and I gets changed.  Is that right? 
Torgerson:  If 4-2-4-2  the whites on the sheet will all be the same.  Does that work out? 
A was two years and now four.  Let me think this through, boy. 
C would truncate, but be on four year
E four
R two year
T truncate but on four year.
I said T but G, would be four
PeggyAnn McConnochie:  reading them too fast for me
Brodie:  Just the opposite.  whites have two years to go, but not all.  If we make all the white two year and all the beige four year.  I guess I was off.
PeggyAnn McConnochie: Read beige is four, white is two
A=4
B =2
C=4 all the way down and T is

White:  Assignment of election for this plan.  If map didn’t have to be redrawn there would be ten and ten.  But because changed, there are four people who need to be truncated.  GPBand F need to run.
That means the other two year up - ten of those.  Some we already know can stay because being truncated.  And five more of them.
PeggyAnn McConnochie:  more people running this time than will ever have to run than ever again. 
listing of people whose terms are over with.  One time until we’re back on schedule.
Torgerson:  We’re saying the same thing.
Brodie:  Anomaly with translation.  Current Senate district R.  It’s not there
Eric:  Majority of current senate districts
Torgerson:  In conceptual plan all are there, not in Proclamation plan
Brodie:  What was R last year, now becomes P according to this he had two years to go, but he had a two year term.
White:  But he wasn’t truncated.
Eric:  This sheet wasn’t designed for what you’re doing.  Maybe easier to look at old one cross. 

Old A - 4 year and now  this one causing you trouble
PeggyAnn McConnochie: Need to be sure Senate from old one was R, what happens to him today.
Eric:  Elected to two year term in 2012.  Up to run now.  Most of his district went to the new P.  Reason it didn’t show up, because P got more from old O than R.  R was western Alaska, underpopulated district. 
New N has breaks pretty evenly between Proc. N and M, Concept district O broke evenly between proc N and O, but majority from Proc N.  That’s why N is listed twice.  Concept P is mostly from O
PeggyAnn McConnochie:  But a lot from R and few from N. 
Brodie:  I think
PeggyAnn McConnochie:  Sen R will no longer exist.  That person has to run in the new senate seat
Brodie:  And already due to run.
PeggyAnn McConnochie:  Has a new letter, I don’t know who it is.
Brodie:  Lost in translation - we can go from old letters to new for determining the term.  If old R is now Assigned concept P, it shows he has two years to go, when he doesn’t.  Gary Stevens elected two years ago for a two year term.  His new district will be P.  It shows the new P with the old showing he was
Torgerson:  The old P was elected for two years.
Brodie:  But he was a different guy.  If all the Proc districts, two N’s instead of an R.  That lets us build our plan.  Then we assign the new letters to them.
Suggest:  Take a recess  [Ruedrich?]  In the process of relettering creates uncertain.  100% to two years and the sen who ran for two years is extended for four years.  Maybe a numbering problem.  If change the 1,2,3,4 locations, then A would be back and it would become straightforward.
Torgerson:  We’re not extending anyone on a two year seat.  They have to run again.
Brodie:  I agree with what you said.  But because of our lettering it seems to indicate two years when they don’t. 
PeggyAnn McConnochie: I don’t see that.
Brodie:  Proc -there is no R because Eric assigned from where they were in last election.  If go to concept P, it indicates he has two years left.  I think we need to drop the concept letters and use the current ones and then we will be more able to tell.
PeggyAnn McConnochie: Don’t we still have the problem about what happened to N and P?
Brodie:  Sure, but he’s artificially being given two extra years.
Torgerson:  He still has to run
White:  no under 50% the same, so truncated.  How much of R is the same as the district he is in now?  Not sure, truncated based on incumbent or on the district?
Torgerson:  Pretty close because he had Lincoln Pen last time and not Kenai.  We’re not extending anybody.
PeggyAnn McConnochie: Whoever occupies P has to run again.
3:25, take a 15 minute recess.  Come back at 20 to 4.