Court Sets Nov 7-14, 2013 Aside In Case Evidentiary Hearing Is Necessary

 Judge McConahy set aside a week in early November for an evidentiary hearing in the Alaska Redistricting Case, but says it's just in case there needs to be one. 

"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."

To show how far behind I am, this Order was dated September 19.  I was busy all day, so this short post will have to do.  Mark your calendars.  The hearing, if there is one, will be in Fairbanks, though the last time they had court hearings in Fairbanks, they were accessible by phone. 

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

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

Summary of the challenge

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

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

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


Going through the motion, step-by-step

I.  Introduction
II  Facts (pp. 2-3)

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

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

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


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

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

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

Map of Basketball Conferences and Districts - click to enlarge

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

VI.  Conclusion (p. 14)

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





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

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

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

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

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

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

The point he made at the end was:

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

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

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

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





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

Redistricting Board Challengers Claim Political Gerrymandering In Court Filing

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

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

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

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

I.  Summary Judgment Standard

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

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

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

You can read the original document HERE.


The Gerrymandering Claims

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

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

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

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

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

A little later they write:

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

This leads to footnote 94:

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

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

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

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

This part begins around page 35 of the document.

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

Rejected Settlement Offer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 IV.  [Again, this should be V]  TRUNCATION

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

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

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

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

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

They also point out that in 2012

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

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

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

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

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



V.  SENATE DISTRICT B AND UAF

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

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

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

Driving Outside, Some Light Reading In The Mean Time

We're driving to Seattle today.  We're almost ready to go, but there's always last minute stuff to take care of.

We did this trip three years ago.  Then we left September 20.  So the stories and photos should be pretty similar.  Here's Anchorage to Tok.  There are a couple more posts from that trip at this link:

Meanwhile there has been a flurry of documents filed with the Superior Court in Fairbanks on the Redistricting Plan.  Below is the Riley Plaintiffs motion for Summary Judgment.  It came during the Yom Kippur holiday and right before we are leaving so I haven't had a chance to look at it.  There are other filings listed at Ernie Weiss' website.  And the Redistricting Board has posted some filings as well (their own from what I can tell.)  So if anyone wants to read all this a write up a guest post about it, that would be great.  I'm not sure how much of this I can read in the car on my laptop battery. 

Corrected Copy of Riley Plaintiff%27s Memorandum in Support of Motion for Summary Judgment

Meanwhile, in an attempt to not have anything left to do before we leave in the morning, I'm up until 2am and I still have some things to finish up. So we probably won't be leaving at the crack of dawn.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The 2001 Board's Truncation Process

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


2001 Board Had Elegant Solution

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

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

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

The 2011 Board's Truncation Process

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

I intended to explain the process this 2011 Board used.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Step 3:  Adjourn for about half an hour.

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

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


The Consequences

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

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

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

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





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

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

Court Sets Out Issues And Schedule For Alaska Redistricting Court Challenges

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

 

I.  Introduction

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

II.  Consolidation

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

III.  Amicus Curiae

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

IV.  Electronic Filing

Details for filing electronically.


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

V.  Summary of Issues 

Fairbanks

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

Mat-Su

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

Kenai

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

Rural Alaska Districts

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

Truncation

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

VI.  Briefing Schedule

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

VII. Scheduling

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

So, What Does This All Mean? 

Administrative Issues

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

Substantive Issues

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks to  EW.  

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.