Redistricting - Waiting On The Judge. What MIght He Say And When?

[This post meanders far more than I intended.  If you want to get to the meat of things, skip down to the conclusion at the end.] 

Judge Michael McConnahy's August 28 order  included a "Briefing Schedule" requiring that parties:

"must file a motion for summary judgment regarding all such concerns within 15 days of the date of the distribution of this order.  The Board shall have 10 days to file its opposition.  Replies, if any, are due 3 days thereafter. "

Fifteen days from August 28 gets us to Sept. 15
Ten more days gets us to Sept. 25
Three more gets us to Sept. 28.


There is also a section just called "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"

Ninety days gets us to November 28.  That would have everything resolved by Thanksgiving.

On September 25, the judge set a tentative court date of November 7-15.  He wrote:

"Various motions are pending before the court.  It is not clear whether an evidentiary hearing will be needed on any issue.  The court will make that decision after the pending motions are ripe.  At the time the court will issue an omnibus order addressing all pending issues and note what, if any, issues require an evidentiary hearing.

For planning purposes the court has reserved full trial days [8:30 am to 4:30 pm] from 7 November 2013 through 15 November 2013.  The court expresses no opinion at this time whether such an evidentiary hearing will be necessary or that any such hearing would require all the allotted time.  The omnibus summary judgment order will address those details, including any time limitations on specific issues.  The intent of this order is simply to allow the parties to plan their schedules accordingly."

"Ripe" in the legal sense here would mean, I guess, when all the motions have been filed, but I'm not sure.  They should have been filed September 28.

But on October 3, the judge issued another order.  This one responded to a request by the Board to postpone the trial until December because of their attorney's illness.  The other parties had no objections and the judge set a new date:  December 9-16.  He also said:

‘The need for a hearing and on what specific issues will be addressed in the omnibus order on the summary judgment.”

 I originally read that to mean that the judge expected there to be a hearing on some of the issues.  It sounded a lot more certain than the previous "it is not clear whether an evidentiary hearing will be needed on any issue."

On Monday (tomorrow) there will be three weeks left until the tentative starting date of the December trial.

What exactly might the judge rule?  (Remember, I'm not an attorney.  I'm just applying lay logic to what I've been reading. Winging it might be more accurate.)

• He could make a summary judgment on all the issues before him, none, or something in-between.  
• If he makes a summary judgment on all the issues, there would be no need for a court hearing.  (Though one or both parties is likely to appeal to the Supreme Court.)  
• If he makes summary judgment on some issues, but not all, as I understand this, the parties would argue their points on the remaining issues in court. 

• He could rule everything for the Board or everything for the plaintiffs, or some for each.  
• If he determines any of the issues for the plaintiffs, he could order the Board to fix things or he could send the resolution of all this to a master. 
 

How likely is the judge to send it to a master?  There have been calls by the Democratic Party and an editorial in the Anchorage Daily News seeking this option

The Alaska Constitution is vague on this.  It (Article 6 §11) says:

"Upon a final judicial decision that a plan is invalid, the matter shall be returned to the board for correction and development of a new plan. If that new plan is declared invalid, the matter may be referred again to the board. [Amended 1998] "

The original plan and a second plan have already been sent back to the Board.  The language says that "the matter MAY be referred again to the board."

It doesn't say what other option that Court has if it doesn't refer it to the Board again.  The Alaska Rules of Civil Procedure - and I'm now treading on topics I know little about except what I can find online - give a Superior Court the ability to appoint a master or masters.

[Rule 53] (b) Powers. The order of reference to the master may specify or limit the master's powers and may direct the master to report only upon particular issues or to do or perform particular acts or to receive and report evidence only and may fix the time and place for beginning and closing the hearings and for the filing of the master's report. Subject to the specifications and limitations stated in the order, the master has and shall exercise the power to regulate all proceedings in every hearing before the master and to do all acts and take all measures necessary or proper for the efficient performance of the master's duties under the order. The master may require the production of evidence upon all matters embraced in the reference, including the production of all books, papers, vouchers, documents, and writings applicable thereto. The master may rule upon the admissibility of evidence unless otherwise directed by the order of reference and has the authority to put witnesses on oath and may examine them and may call the parties to the action and examine them upon oath. When a party so requests, the master shall make a record of the evidence offered and excluded in the same manner and subject to the same limitations as provided in Evidence Rule 103(b) for a court sitting without a jury.

(d) Report.
(1) Contents and Filing. The master shall prepare a report upon the matters submitted to the master by the order of reference and, if required to make findings of fact and conclusions of law, the master shall set them forth in the report. The master shall file the report with the clerk of the court and in an action to be tried without a jury, unless otherwise directed by the order of reference, shall file with it the original exhibits. The clerk shall forthwith mail to all parties notice of the filing.

Conclusion?

The judge is expected to offer his "omnibus ruling" fairly soon.  There are only three weeks left before the tentatively scheduled trial.  The attorneys and the Board all need to make their travel arrangements, should there be a trial, to get to Fairbanks.

And, the attorneys would need to prepare for their arguments in court.

But, if the judge has decided that he has sufficient information to make a summary judgment on all the disputed issues, there would be no need to have a trial.  He could actually meet his 90 timetable, set in August, if he ruled on all the issues by November 28 (which is Thanksgiving day.) 

But if the judge rules parts or all of the plan unconstitutional, will he send it all back to the Board or will he appoint masters to finish off the process?  Appointing masters would say that the constitutionally established process failed and given the time constraints until the next election and the Board's performance so far, he sees no option for a constitutional plan except to now by-pass the Board.  That's seems like a step that a judge would be reluctant to take unless he felt he had no choice. 

The Case That HD 5 Was Gerrymandered - Part 2

In Part 1, I offered some background information on where things stand now and on redistricting and gerrymandering in general, including four major ways to manipulate districts.  I also included a section on "The current partisan redistricting facts in Alaska" as I see them.

In this post, Part 2, we start looking at the maps to understand in excruciating detail (yet still not enough) why the plaintiffs are challenging the plan.  This post focuses on House District (HD) 5, though the plaintiffs challenge other districts as well.

I thought I'd finish this post (Part 2), but there's definitely more left over for Part 3.  Also, I realize I started all this in an earlier post - Alaska Redistricting Board: Compactness And Fairbanks Districts 3 and 5 - Part 1.  That one looks at the concept of compactness as discussed by different students of redistricting. It's good background for this post.


Some Maps

Let's go from the theoretical to the hands-on and look at some maps.   The Board's map of HD 5 makes it hard to actually see

Note:  House Districts are numbered and Senate Districts are lettered so on maps 5-C means it's HD 5 in SD C. Senate Districts have 2 House Districts.

all of HD 5.    The inset, lower right, shows the whole district, but it's much to small to understand what's really going on in this district. It doesn't show you how much of the district has no population and where there are actually people.

[All the maps except B and E should get much bigger if you click on them]

Map A - whole district in two parts

I  enlarged the inset to better see the whole district.    I've colored in the populated areas in yellow.  I don't know Fairbanks, so there may be a little more area to the left of Chena Ridge that has population along the road, but as I looked at the maps, it looked sparsely populated at best.

Map B - With populated areas in yellow

The populated parts of the district are a small part near the top left (to the west of the City of Fairbanks), a little bit southwest of Fairbanks, and then the part that has been called 'the anvil' to the east of the City of Fairbanks and more connected to North Pole.

Most of the district is what was called 'the bombing range' by the Board.  Actually, it's Tanana Flats Training Area.  The right (below) is a map of the Tanana Flats Training Area - part of Ft Wainwright and unpopulated and inaccessible to the public without a permit - and you can see an amazing resemblance to HD 5. Basically, there's a tiny populated part on top and then the Tanana Flats was tacked onto HD 5. 

Map C:  Comparing HD 5 map to map of Tanana Flats Training Area of Ft. Wainwright

But this map also helped me understand what I hadn't understood before.  On the Board's maps, there are diagonal lines going through HD 2.  They are like the lines shown in most of HD 5.  Looking at the map above I realized that the little 'turret' on top of Tanana Flats is Fort Wainright. (People who know Fairbanks would, of course, have realized this.) And it's right in the middle of HD 2.  The brown outline in the top picture (see below) was in the original.  I added it in to the bottom image to make it easier to see.

Map D: Locating Ft. Wainwright - top map from DODPIF site

Military Bases and Redistricting

Tanana Flats Training Area is technically part of Fort Wainright - a contiguous part. Early in the redistricting process the Board got a letter from the Lt. Governor asking them to keep military bases intact as much as possible. It's something they mentioned frequently when working on Anchorage. The purpose was to not have precincts that overlapped the base and off base. It would be hard for civilians if they had to get onto base to vote and they didn't want to make military have to go off base to vote. It seemed to me at the time that military go off base all the time for other things so going a little off base to vote shouldn't be that difficult, but that was the rationale. Now, in this case, as I understand it, there is no population living in the Tanana Flats other than bears and moose and other wildlife. No voters anyway. So the Lt. Governor's rationale doesn't apply here.  But the principle of keeping military districts intact is reasonable and would have been a good rationale to have the unpopulated Tanana Flats part of HD 2.   Keep this in mind for when we get into the discussion of which district Tanana Flats was put into.


Let's go back and look at the populated parts of HD 5.  I've isolated them in this image so you can see them clearly. (Again, I'm not sure how much population is to the west of the section on the left, but if there's more it doesn't affect my point.)

Map E:  Populated Parts of HD 5 isolated

Contiguity

One of the constitutional requirements for redistricting is contiguity.  That means that all parts of the district are connected to all other parts.  If you live in the small part of HD 5 on the right/east (above), you are among 800 people in HD 5 who are separated from the other 16,900 people of HD 5 who live on the left/west side. The City of Fairbanks is between the two parts - including Ft. Wainwright and HD 1 and HD 2.   But you're in bed with folks in North Pole to the right.  (see maps above) 

Technically, these two parts of HD 5 are connected by the Tanana Flats Training Area.  But, from what I can tell online and asking folks, you need permission from the military to go on that land and there aren't any roads to take you from what I'm calling "East Pakistan" to "West Pakistan" through the Flats.  Instead you have to go through at least HD 2 and possibly HD 1 too.  Or maybe kayak along the river.

I've been told that the Alaska Courts have allowed districts to have isolated communities that are not connected to other communities by road.  But I'd wager that those decisions were made about roadless rural districts, not about urban districts.  If I were arguing this case, I'd be pointing out that this district, for all practical purposes, is NOT contiguous.  Not in any way that is meaningful to the people in it and that this lack of contiguity is not required by geography or lack of population or roadless wilderness.  This is an urban area where the population is dense enough and the census blocks numerous enough, that a few computer clicks could put these 800 people into HD 2 or HD 3 (or half in one and half in the other.)  Then a few more clicks could add 800 more people back into HD 5 and a few more clicks could get HD 2 and 3 within reasonable deviations from the ideal sized district of 17,755.  A few more clicks and all the impacted districts would be fine.  Maybe 30 minutes for someone who's been using the software a while.

The folks at the Board will talk to you about census blocks and ripple effects, but if you sat down with someone who knows the computer program, you'd see it can be done.  That same argument was made in the last trial.  They swore that changing a protrusion from one downtown Fairbanks district into the other would cause endless ripple effects.  A little later, the plaintiff's GIS expert showed the judge just how easy it was to do without causing any ripple effects. These are excuses, not reasons. 




The Anvil and Compactness

The plaintiffs didn't make a contiguity argument in their motions to the court.  Instead they talked about compactness.  And they pointed to what they called 'the anvil' sitting there on the east side jutting into the community just above North Pole.

Let's look at this 'anvil.'  As you'll see, when I tried to find a visual for it, I found another visual that seemed to fit the shape a little better than the anvil.

Map F:  The Anvil in Context

Now, back to compactness with the anvil in mind.  I posted about compactness in relationship to HDs 3 and 5 in October.  That was the conceptual post and there was supposed to be a second one that looked at maps.  I guess that's this one, except I added one more in between.   You can look at that October post to learn a bit about compactness.  Or you can read this explanation which I'm borrowing from All About Redistricting.

• Compactness Almost as often as state law asks districts to follow political boundaries, it asks that districts be "compact." 37 states require their legislative districts to be reasonably compact; 18 states require congressional districts to be compact as well.
  Few states define precisely what "compactness" means, but a district in which people generally live near each other is usually more compact than one in which they do not. Most observers look to measures of a district's geometric shape. In California, districts are compact when they do not bypass nearby population for people farther away. In the Voting Rights Act context, the Supreme Court seems to have construed compactness to indicate that residents have some sort of cultural cohesion in common.
  Scholars have proposed more than 30 measures of compactness, each of which can be applied in different ways to individual districts or to a plan as a whole. These generally fit into three categories. In the first category, contorted boundaries are most important: a district with smoother boundaries will be more compact, and one with more squiggly boundaries will be less compact. In the second category, the degree to which the district spreads from a central core (called "disperson") is most important: a district with few pieces sticking out from the center will be more compact, and one with pieces sticking out farther from the district's center will be less compact. In the third category, the relationship of housing patterns to the district's boundaries is most important: district tendrils, for example, are less meaningful in sparsely populated areas but more meaningful where the population is densely packed."
  

Using the standards from All About Redistricting (above), we can see that each one raises

Map A - whole district in two parts

a red flag for the HD 5.

• Contorted Boundaries - There's no question that HD 5 has contorted boundaries.  If you just look at the whole district (Map A inset) without knowing where the population is, it doesn't look bad.  But when you know that a tiny percent of the land in the district has any population (Map B) and that population is separated into two non-contiguous parts (Map E), it's clear there is something fishy here. 
• Dispersion - The central core is west of the City of Fairbanks and then you have is 'East Pakistan" ('the anvil") not only sticking out from the center, but for all practical purposes, it's not even connected to "West Pakistan."
• Housing Patterns -  The anvil is clearly a district tendril which the description above says is more problematic in urban areas than rural areas.  Fairbanks is the second biggest urban area in the State.  There's no need for HD 5 to have an 800 person orphan neighborhood separated from the rest of the 16,900 people by two other districts. They could easily pick up 800 people from neighborhoods current split into HD 4 or HD 1. 

Also, this district does not pass the California test mentioned, because it passes up nearby folks to get the anvil people off by North Pole.  

Redrawing the lines outlines two ways to measure compactness - visually and mathematically.  The first is just to look and see if there are any odd shapes or protrusions.

• "If the districts drawn are too irregular-looking, it may become a signal to the courts that the lines may have been motivated by a desire to engage in race-based redistricting, which may be held unlawful."

This was what I meant when I said in Part 1 that compactness (or contiguity) can be a proxy for, in our case,  political gerrymandering.  And the "too irregular-looking" anvil is one reason this plan is in court.

• "a mathematical formula may be the best way to measure compactness. There are various methods for calculating the compactness of a district including looking at how the population is distributed within the district, measuring the borders of the district, or evaluating the area of the district."

The Board did give the court a list of statistical tests for compactness with scores for each to show that the district  (and district 3) is compact.  But I looked up the tests and what the scores mean.  (The Board just gave raw numbers without interpretation.)  For some tests, the districts in questions scored ok.  For others they were on the suspicious end of the scale.  Which is one of the problems with the tests - different tests tell you different things.

The other problem I have with the Board offering statistics to the court is that I never heard any mention at the Board meetings of using the statistical tests as a criterion to see if their districts were compact.  This is an after-the-fact justification by the Board which wasn't considered by the board while making the maps (at least not in public meetings) and doesn't really tell us whether the districts are compact or not. 

Is the anvil necessary to keep Fairbanks deviations low?

The Board tells us that they needed the anvil so the deviations would work out - that is, so that the populations of all the Fairbanks districts would be the lowest deviation possible from the ideal district size of 17,755.  I would point out that in the previous plans, urban deviations of 1% and even 2% existed.  

But this time around, low deviation became their new mantra and they got Fairbanks deviations down to below a 1/2 %.  Without the demands of the Voting Rights Act (a significant portion of which the US Supreme Court struck down last June), the Board says they can make the deviations much lower.  But why?  One or two percent is already well within legal and common sense range.  In my mind they've gone extreme at the cost of other important values.  Or they are just using the low deviations to justify creating anvils. 

I'd also note that when the Plaintiffs argue that they could configure Fairbanks Senate districts so that their deviations are even lower, the Board thinks the difference is too minor to matter.  I tend to agree with them on that, but I also think the increased deviation that cutting this whole eastern annex out of HD 5 might cause is no big deal either as long as it's still under two percent.  

But the deviation is just one of a cascade of factors, all of which fall the wrong way for the Board.  It's the totality of all these factors that should cause eyebrows to arch when looking at the Fairbanks districts.  And that's where I'll go in Part 3. 

But, before ending this post I do want to point out that there are some legitimate reasons for there to be some odd shapes. 

• Geography - there might be mountains or rivers or other natural features that the district line follows and that make sense on the ground, but look suspicious on the map. 
• Population - to get the right number of people into a district, the mappers might have to stretch out to capture a small distant community.
• Odd Census Block shapes - The smallest unit the Board can deal with is a census block.  As I understand it, this is because they have to use the census data for population.  The smallest unit the census data has is the block.  So if a census block  has a weird shape - most likely for the above reasons - the map maker can claim her weirdly shaped district is a result of the census block.
• Governmental Units -  a district line might follow an irregular city border.  

But the first thee are all more likely to occur in rural areas than in urban areas.  And when they do occur in urban areas, there's enough population so that you can usually adjust some adjoining census blocks to smooth out any bad bumps.  The last one doesn't apply to HD 5.  It's not the city borders that are irregular, it's the district borders.


I'm going to end this post here.  It's already way too long for most readers.  There's more to be discussed.  I hope readers remember that I'm only focusing on one House district here (and that will spillover a bit into HD 5's Senate pairing in the next post).  There are so many little details here that it's easy for either side to say what it wants and most observers won't be in a position to know who's blowing smoke.  (They could both be.)  I'm hoping this post might help some people understand the what's happening here. 

Coming up in the next redistricting post(s) are things like:  

• Why put the Tanana Flats in HD 5?  
• The plaintiff's offer to drop the case if the the Board changed the Fairbanks senate district pairings and why the Board said no. 
• Reviewing all the factors that are wrong about HD 5.
• A peek at the other districts challenged in the court case.  

[UPDATE 4:47pm:  I forgot to include this in the post.  It's the legal description of HD 5 that was part of the Board's Proclamation Plan.  It doesn't mean a whole lot to me since I don't know Fairbanks at all, but it might mean something to people in Fairbanks.  Note that in some places it's a bit vague like "north along the boundary to a levee near the Tanana River, east along a non-visible line to the end of Rozak Road."

House District 5–Senate District C–Chena Ridge/Airport

House District 5 is bounded by a line beginning at the intersection of the Mitchell Expressway and the boundary of the City of Fairbanks, south then east then north along the boundary to a levee near the Tanana River, east along a non-visible line to the end of Rozak Road, north along Rozak Road to the Old Richardson Highway, northwest to Durango Trail, north along a non-visible line to Lakloey Drive, north to Bradway Road, east to Benn Lane, south to Ownby Road, east to Woll Road, north to Marigold Road, east to Badger Loop Road, to the intersection of Badger Loop Road and Repp Road, southwest along a non-visible line to the end of Willeda Street,southwest along a non-visible line to the northwestern-most corner of the boundary of the City of North Pole, southwest along the boundary to the eastern bank of the Tanana River,southeast along the eastern bank to the intersection of the Tanana River and the boundary of the Fairbanks North Star Borough, south across the Tanana River to the boundary of the Fairbanks North Star Borough, west then north along the boundary to a jeep trail near the Old Nenana Highway, east along the jeep trail to the Parks Highway, northeast the GVEA Powerlines near Rosie Creek Road, north then northeast to the Parks Highway, north to Townsend Lane, north to Goldhill Road, northeast to Ester Road, east to Tanana Drive, south to an unnamed road near Noatak Drive, northwest to Koyukuk Drive, east to Sheenlek Drive, north to a non-visible line extending west from Kuskokwim Way, east to Kuskokwim Way, east to Tanana Drive, north to the intersection of Tanana Drive and Farmers Loop Road, east along a non-visible line to the headwaters of Pearl Creek, east along a non-visible line to College Road, east to the boundary of the City of Fairbanks, southwest then southeast to the point of beginning.]

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.]


 

UAA Redistricting Panel and the Disappearing Panelists

Click to enlarge significantly

First, I expect that the Board's attorney, Michael White, who has asked for postponement of the redistricting trial because of his serious illness, will be replaced by Nichole Corr his associate on this project.   [UPDATE 10pm - I was delighted to see that Mike White did show up and while he has some trouble talking because of the surgery in his mouth, once he got going, we had a lively exchange of ideas. I'll put up a link to the podcast UAA made when it's available.]

Second, I learned yesterday that Albert Kookesh, will not make it to the panel.

That leaves the blogger, who is still planning to be there, and is taking good care of himself to increase the odds that nothing untoward happens to him on the way to the panel this afternoon.

So, Today - Tuesday Nov. 5 - 

from 5-7pm

Redistricting Panel

UAA Bookstore

*Free Parking for this.  Coming from Lake Otis on 36th/Providence turn left at the first traffic signal.  Turn right into the parking lot and the bookstore is the big mirror glass building.  The panel will be upstairs in the Mac store on campus.

You can ask all the questions you want about redistricting and we'll try to make sense out of this  But let me warn you, it doesn't totally make sense to me. 

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.

Redistricting Board Asks Court To Push Trial To Early To Mid January

There's a motion before the Court dated 30 October 2013 from the Alaska Redistricting Board asking the Court to further delay any necessary trial until early to mid January.  It turns out that the Board's lead counsel Michael White's radiation treatment schedule will take longer than what he originally understood.  I'll give you the wording directly from the filing, the judge's response, and then some of my thoughts at the end. 



From the Board's motion: 

“As the Board previously explained, Mr. White is required to undergo a series of 30 radiation treatments as part of his treatment plan.  Mr. White had discussed these treatments with his team of doctors at Virginia Mason Hospital and believed the radiation treatments would commence as soon as he returned home in mid-October, concluding by the end of November.  The Board and Mr. White relied upon this radiation schedule when it filed its Unopposed Motion to Continue Trial on September 27, 2013 and asked for a continuance until early December. 

Mr. White returned home from Seattle on October 12, 2013, and met with his local radiation oncologist on October 14, 2013 to schedule the radiation treatments.  Mr. White’s local radiation oncologist explained that he would have to undergo several pre-radiation appointments over the following two weeks before he could actually begin treatment, thereby postponing the previously understood radiation schedule.  In this regard, the radiation oncologist works with a physicist to create a mesh mask of Mr. White’s face and digitally map his face to focus the radiation on the affected areas thereby improving the efficacy of the treatment.  This complicated process takes several weeks.  Accordingly, Mr. White will not begin his radiation treatment until October 30, 2013.  He will undergo thirty daily treatments, five times each week, except for Thanksgiving and the Friday after, completing treatment December 12, 2013, which is during the currently scheduled trial.  Mr. White’s doctors have informed him he cannot leave Anchorage until the radiation treatment is complete, and that he will need at least two weeks after concluding radiation to recuperate sufficiently to participate in any legal proceeding in this case. 

The Board previously requested a continuance of trial so that Mr. White, the Board’s lead counsel, could participate.  Given the recent discovered change in circumstances, the Board requests the Court grant another short continuance until early January so that Mr. White can, in fact, participate in trial.  The Board understands the tight time frame within which the Court and the parties are operating in this matter, and does not make this request lightly.    The Board met on October 24 and discussed that it would be greatly prejudiced if its lead counsel was not permitted to participate at trial given his extensive knowledge of the facts and unique legal issues involved in this case."

They go on to point out that

“A trial may not even be necessary should this Court resolve the issues in its omnibus order on the currently pending summary judgment motions.” 

The judge knows this.  And by now I'm sure he knows if he's going to call for a trial.  Given the wording of his last continuance, I assumed he thought that at least some of the issues will need to be heard in trial.

The Board finally says that Mr. White will be medically unavailable until early January 2014 and asks that the Court reschedule until early to mid-January. 


On October 31, 2013 the judge ordered:

"On 30 October 2013 the Board filed a second motion to continue trial.  The plaintiffs shall have until 1 November 2013 by noon to file an opposition.  The Board will have until 4 November 2013 by noon to file a reply."

What Does This All Mean?

There are a lot of issues swirling around in my head.  Foremost is a sense of the uncertainty of human existence and I want to take this chance to send my best wishes to Michael White and my hopes for a speedy and full recovery.  Over the last few years  covering the redistricting process, I've been treated in a fair and forthcoming way by Mike as have other members of the media.  He did this while also working vigorously on behalf of his client, as is his duty.


Some Issues That Scream Out At Me

Michael White's role in this case.  I don't think this can be overstated.  Michael White has been with the Board from early on and attended just about every meeting, watched every step of the way as the maps were prepared.  I doubt there is anyone who has as comprehensive a knowledge of what the Board has done.  His ability to talk about the case and recall the smallest detail is amazing - whether it's the state law, the federal law, a court case, or the redistricting process itself.  Plus he knows all the players.   Without White representing the Board, the Board's ability to defend its actions is greatly compromised.

White's co-counsel, Nichole Corr,  has been to a few meetings and I'm sure that she's been doing a lot of work on briefs all the while.  I'm guessing she's doing a lot of work now so that she can handle some or all of the work if it comes to that. 

That said, the Board's gone into the courtroom with an advantage over the plaintiffs whose attorneys have worked extremely hard, but who simply cannot know the details the way White does. 

Timing

a.  Timing of the Redistricting Process

Originally, the Board set up a fairly leisurely schedule and planned to have their third Plan completed by January 2014.  The plaintiffs challenged that pace arguing that there wouldn't be time for all the possible legal appeals if they waited until January 2014 to present their plan and the Court agreed telling the Board to get moving.

Basically the plan has to be finalized and in place by the end of May so that candidates for the August primaries will know their districts and so the State can prepare election materials.  May is cutting it pretty tight for those involved in the election.

The Board's original January target date would have given the appeals process four months to work itself out.  The current process proves the plaintiffs' point and vindicates the judge's decision to force the Board to move much faster.

The current Plan was finalized July 14, 2013.  It is now November 1 and the Board is asking the trial to be postponed until January - six months after the Plan was completed.  That's two months more than they said was necessary last year.  And if the judge has problems with the plan and tells the Board to make changes?  How long will that take and how long will the appeal of the new plan take?  The Board's original plan was declared unconstitutional by the Alaska Supreme Court and they approved an interim plan because there wasn't enough time to make a new one in time for the election.  No one wants another interim plan.  No one. 

b.  Timing of White's Treatment

White's expectation of when his radiation treatment would be complete was wrong.  Skeptics might question why his Seattle doctors were two weeks off in their estimate of the time of the radiation.  Or why, if White learned about the extra two weeks on October 14, it took another ten days for the Board to meet about this, and six more days to inform the Court.  I do not see any game playing here at all.  White has gone through a life altering experience - physically and emotionally - and I give him lots of slack on processing this information and conveying it to others.  Looking online, I found an oral cancer site and a cancer research site that both said a mesh mask could be made pretty quickly, so it is very reasonable for his Seattle doctors to assume that and for Mike to find here a doctor who is using a more complex mask and procedure.  The Mike I have come to know over these last couple of years is a bulldog.  I'm sure that before he accepted this delay he researched and questioned his doctors and tried to find a way to be ready by December. I wouldn't be surprised if he was still arguing with the doctors when he met (telephonically) with the Board and they gave him a couple days to be sure before he asked for the postponement. 

c.  Timing of White's Recovery and the Case

It sounds to me Mike is taking the optimal recovery time in his request for a delay.  What if he has a normal recovery, or a slower recovery?  The surgery was in his mouth and I assume the radiation will be as well.  Even if his mind is totally back to normal, what about his speaking ability, and his energy level?  How will a week of court time affect his recovery?  And what happens if he needs more time?

The case may not be settled in January.  If the Court has serious problems, the Board will no doubt appeal that to the Alaska Supreme Court.  And, of course, the plaintiffs could appeal if it went against them.  We'll be in February by then.  What if changes will have to be made to the maps?  Can they be made and appeals be done in time for the 2014 election?  It could be tight, but I expect that any changes would be to specific districts and, despite the Board's ripple affect arguments, could be done without changing the rest of the map.  The Board made just such surgical adjustments to a few districts and was able to leave all the rest unaffected in 2012.

And Nichole Corr, and possibly another attorney at Patton Boggs, has had a couple of months now to get up to speed on this.  They've got six more weeks to cram before the currently scheduled December date and about a month more if the trial were postponed until January.

If the Board were to ask for another delay, I'd expect that the probability of the court appointing a master to fix the map goes way up. 


[I really am working on a post about District 5 and possibly 3.  It's just complicated. I'll try to post it soon.]

Redistricting Board Back - To Close Meeting

11:34  Call meeting back to order.
Torg:  All present.  Met in Exec. Session on litigation issues with attorney and we have no actions based on that.  Comments from members?
Brodie:  Happy to have Mike back and at work
Green:  Thanks for getting us together and update and having Mike back.
Holm:  I concur.  Happy Halloween.
Motion to adjourn.  Approved.
Torg:  Thanks to you all and Happy Halloween. 

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.

Alaska Redistricting Board: Compactness And Fairbanks Districts 3 and 5 - Part 1

[Note:  The Board is Scheduled to meet in executive session today - see details at the bottom of this post.]

There's a legal challenge in the Superior Court in Fairbanks to the Alaska Redistricting Board's most recent Proclamation Plan which sets the boundaries for all the legislative districts in Alaska.  (These are State House and Senate seats only, because Alaska has only one representative in the US House.)

These challenges have been filed and the various parties have responded to each other and I've written some posts on these.  But I really haven't scratched the surface.  I've been trying to

1. understand all the various documents themselves (When I started working on this, new documents kept coming in and I was traveling and while I read them, I had trouble taking notes and comparing in detail what everyone said about everyone else's filings.)
2. organize the material so that readers can make sense of it

I've written up notes.  I've looked at maps, tried to make sense of them, and cut and pasted new maps so they were easier to see.

I even considered chucking the whole project and just waiting for the judge to outline those points he can make a summary judgment on and those that need court time to clarify enough to judge.  I think for much of this that may end up happening, but I'm going to make a stab at discussing the issue of compactness in two districts in Fairbanks - 3 and 5 - that the plaintiffs have challenged.

And while I don't know as much as I'd like to know on this, I probably still know enough to make people's eyes glaze over.

So, in this post, I'll talk about compactness and its importance in determining fair districts.

COMPACTNESS

The Alaska Constitution offers several criteria the Redistricting Board needs to meet:

• Compactness
• Contiguity
• Socio-economic integration

Contiguity is probably the easiest - all parts of the district have to be connected.  Even that seemingly simple definition gets ambiguous when you deal with a state that has the coastline of Alaska and so many islands.  Contiguity over water has been accepted by the Supreme Court, but it helps if there are regular ferry and/or flights between those parts separated by water.  Land transportation (roads) is also not required in areas where villages are scattered and no roads connect them.

Socio-economic integration is probably the hardest to test for and in some ways the Courts have simplified this in urban areas (or given up?) by saying that any district within a borough boundary is socio-economically integrated.

Another important federal and state criterion is one-person-one-vote which gets boiled down to deviation.  That means every district should have as close as possible to the same number of people.  That way, each representative and each Senator have very close to the same number of constituents.  The term deviation will come up in relation to House Districts 3 and 5.  

The fight over the Fairbanks districts is focused on compactness.  (This is also an issue for some other districts in Mat-su and Kenai, but that's more than I'm ready to write about.)

ESRI, the company that makes the software that the Board uses to do its mapping defines compactness this way:

Compactness is having the minimum distance between all the parts of a constituency. The most compact districts form either a circle, square, or a hexagon.

There are a number of data quality checks contained in Esri Redistricting Online that allows you to measure whether a district plan adheres to certain standards.

 Basically, they are saying the most compact area is a circle.  The more you deviate from a circle, the less compact you'll be.  But, of course, geography - mountains, lakes, rivers, etc. - means that people don't live in perfect circles, but that's the ideal.

Redistricting The Nation offers this diagram:

There are lots of ways to calculate Compactness that go beyond just eyeballing. The ESRI site lists different mathematical techniques:

• Polygon Area Test compares the areas of each district. The area is reported in square miles.
• Perimeter calculates the perimeter of the district, including inner holes. The perimeter is reported in miles.
• Reock Test calculates the ratio of district area to the smallest circle containing the district.
• Area / Convex Hull Test determines the ratio of the area of the district to the convex hull area of the district.
• Grofman Test calculates the ratio of the district perimeter to the square root of the area.
• Schwartzberg Test is the ratio of the perimeter of the district to the perimeter of a circle of an equal area to that of the district.
• Polsby Popper Test calculates the ratio of the same area of the district to the area of a circle with the same perimeter.
• Holes determines the number of holes (geography clusters that are fully enclosed) within each district.

The Redistricting The Nation site points out that these different techniques yield inconsistent results and suggests we ask:

"Should compactness be a requirement in the redistricting process?"

They immediately respond:  

While geometric compactness measures may appear to be neutral, combined with geography and real-life patterns of population distribution they may produce reliable political outcomes. One study* concluded that a compactness requirement reduces the representation of racial minorities. Other scholarly work** identifies a variety of biases inherent in automated redistricting and compactness standards, including favoring the majority political party. Clearly, other important components of the redistricting process, such as aggregation of "communities of interest" [this would be Alaska's socio-'economic integration]  are not necessarily well served by examining only compactness.
A number of scholars have suggested that compactness measures are best used not as absolute standards against which a single district’s shape is judged, but rather as a way to assess the relative merits of various proposed plans. Above all, compactness is most meaningful within the framework of an institutional redistricting process.

I think that means you have to consider compactness as one of a set of criteria.  And here's an example of what the Board says when they are challenged on compactness.

"Such narrow-sighted redistricting that fails to consider the map as a whole is unworkable."

But the plaintiffs also made arguments that one factor.  They most often seem to focus on the Board's emphasis on very low deviations, and say low deviations are the only factor to consider.   You have to balance different factors.

These criteria are important because, as hard as determining compactness is, it's easier than knowing the intent of the people drawing the lines.  So if districts look peculiar and there isn't a reasonable explanation for it, then lack of complexity can be a proxy for gerrymandering.  Said another way by Redistricting The Nation:

One of the "traditional" redistricting principles, low compactness is considered to be a sign of potential gerrymandering by courts, state law and the academic literature.

So, instead of arguing about gerrymandering, the plaintiffs and the Board are arguing about compactness.  But really it's about gerrymandering.  In the next post on this, I'll look specifically at what the plaintiff's and the Board have both said about House Districts 3 and 5 regarding compactness.

And by the way, today at 11 am, the Board is meeting.  Mostly, judging from the agenda, it will be in executive session and they aren't likely to talk for the record afterward.  I think I'll just call in.  From the Board's website: 

• Alaska Redistricting Board Meeting October 25, 2013 at 11 AM. View Agenda

The meeting will be teleconferenced at 1-855-463-5009 and streamed at AKL.TV.  Here's the Agenda.
 

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 net work and call back in for the executive session.
5. Reconnect to the teleconference network.
6. Board action if necessary
7. Adjourn

In addition to the actual legal issues they need to discuss for the upcoming trial (if they have one it's scheduled for early December in Fairbanks), they also have an attorney who's recently had surgery for serious skin cancer inside his mouth.  It's not certain when he'll be able to talk again.  The chemo, according to his letter to the court, should be done by around Thanksgiving.  

Battling My Way Through The Forest of Redistricting Motions Before The Court

The Redistricting Board website has a page called Pleadings which lists the motions filed with the Superior Court since mid-August.   I counted 51 separate documents since September 13, 2013.  I finally decided I had to copy and paste the list and then go through the documents and note what they are about.  Some are just procedural and won't matter in the big picture, such as the documents arguing for or against the Alaska Democratic Party being allowed to file some motions late.  (The judge accepted them so the motions to accept or not accept them late really don't seem like they could have much future impact on the case itself.)

Basically, what I understand them to be doing is asking the judge to make a 'summary judgment' on this or that.  Wikipedia explains 'summary judgment' this way:

"In law, a summary judgment (also judgment as a matter of law) is a judgment entered by a court for one party and against another party summarily, i.e., without a full trial. Such a judgment may be issued on the merits of an entire case, or on discrete issues in that case. Today, summary judgment is governed by Federal Rule 56 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, derived primarily from the three seminal cases concerning summary judgment out of the 1980s. .  .

"A party moving (applying) for summary judgment is attempting to avoid the time and expense of a trial when the outcome is obvious. A party may also move for summary judgement in order to eliminate the risk of losing at trial, and possibly avoid having to go through discovery (i.e., by moving at the outset of discovery), by demonstrating to the judge, via sworn statements and documentary evidence, that there are no material factual issues remaining to be tried. If there's nothing for the factfinder to decide, then the moving party asks rhetorically, why have a trial? The moving party will also attempt to persuade the court that the undisputed material facts require judgment to be entered in its favor. In many jurisdictions, a party moving for summary judgment takes the risk that, although the judge may agree there are no material issues of fact remaining for trial, the judge may also find that it is the non-moving party that is entitled to judgment as a matter of law."

As I'm going through these, I think that I've already posted the main arguments being made by the Riley Plaintiffs and the Alaska Democratic Party (ADP).  I think.  Actually, I  there are some more ADP motions I didn't cover yet.  I'm still checking.  What I know I haven't adequately done is go over the Redistricting Board's responses and then the Riley and ADP responses to the Board's responses.  Confused yet?  I am.  


So, what seems to be happening is that the Riley Plaintiffs and the ADP are saying to the court,

"Look there are all these problems with how the Board did the plan.  We want you to rule (summary judgment) that these districts aren't compact, economic/socially integrated, etc." 

 And then the Board files a motion saying,

"They're wrong.  We did this carefully and there was no other way to do it.  We want you to rule (make a summary judgment) for us and against them."

Of course, there's more detail than that and I'll try to pull it out soon. 

The only decisions that I see that the judge has made so far (since September) have been on accepting the late filing by the Alaska Democratic Party, setting dates for a hearing if that's necessary, and accepting the Board's request to postpone the trial.  No summary judgments.  But he has talked about an 'omnibus

Redistricting Board's Attorney's Health Problems Delay Court Date Until December 9 - 16

Michael White, the Alaska Redistricting Board's attorney, had significant surgery in September, according to a motion filed before the Superior Court, and so the Board has asked for any trial date to be delayed beyond the scheduled November 7 - 15 dates the judge reserved.  Judge McConahy originally set these dates should a trial be necessary. 

He made it very clear in that September 19 order he hadn't decided if a trial was needed:

“The Court expresses no opinion at this time whether such an evidentiary hearing will be necessary or that any such hearing would require all the allotted time.”

 The new order, dated October 3,  responding to the Board's motion (with no objections from the plaintiffs), sets the potential court time for Dec. 9 - 16.   Compared to the "no opinion at this time" language above, this time the judge hints that there will be a hearing.

‘The need for a hearing and on what specific issues will be addressed in the omnibus order on the summary judgment.”

I'm not an attorney so I can only use the rules of standard English to evaluate whether that sentence means the judge has decided there will be a hearing.  He doesn't say "If" in that sentence, but I guess when he addresses "the need for a hearing" he could say there is no need.  But this language is significantly closer to there being a hearing than the language in the previous memo.

The motion to continue the trial went into far more graphic detail about White's health issues than I thought needed to be public.  Again, I don't know what's normal for this sort of thing in court, but I don't think an attorney should have to reveal that level of detail about his health to the public.  If I were running things I'd allow the ill attorney to share the information with the plaintiffs and the judge and then have the those details kept out of the public records.  For those with a legitimate medical interest in those details, they are in the motion.  For others who are just nosy, I've rigged the link to destroy your computer if you click on it.  

Weather Note:  It's a good idea to take serious cold weather gear if you go to Fairbanks for the trial in mid-December. Weather Spark gives a lot of weather information; from what I can tell from their graphs, the weather is very likely to be 'frigid' (below 15˚F
[-9 ˚C]) most likely in the range of 0˚F [-17˚C] and -15˚F [-26˚C].  And so close to the solstice, sunrise to sunset in Fairbanks will be less than four hours. In the past, the Fairbanks hearing was available online or by phone.  I better check with the Board's staff to make sure they'll do that again in December.  I'm not headed to Fairbanks in the middle of the Anchorage International Film Festival. 

Blogging Note:  This procedural stuff is much easier to write about than the substantive issues in the motions.  On those I'm falling behind, but I'm hoping to catch up and get something posted before the judge writes his omnibus order.  I was hoping, now that the motions and the objections to the motions are in, to write something that compares them.  Maybe that's too ambitious.  I need to print them all out.  My laptop screen is just too small to compare them.  Plus, most of these are pdfs that I can't cut and paste text from.  Plus I'm in LA spending being with my mom, taking care of paper work and other household repairs for her. Fortunately, she has a great caregiver and they get along well.