Anchorage to Seattle Day 6: Lac La Hache to Bainbridge Island

He was comfortably resting by the porch when I showed up, then ambled up to the picket fence where he just wanted to be petted and get some attention.  This was on the main street of Clinton, BC, which happens to be the highway.  We stopped here for gas and it seemed so much less spoiled by strip malls and chain stores that we walked around.  I'm going to do a whole photo portrait of Clinton.  This is just a preview.

We began after breakfast at the Provincial campground at Lac La Hache.  We're clearly getting into civilizations.  The campground bathrooms had flush toilets and and granite counter tops.

Compared to three years ago, Thursday (Day 5) and Friday (Day 6) went much faster because there was less traffic and almost no interruption due to construction.  And this last day was mostly sunny and warm - about 20˚C I would guess.

The landscape was getting more arid.  We were passing what almost looked like semi-desert, with these bunches of yellow flowers topping gray-green foliage.  I don't know what they are, but they were everywhere. 

And then we got to the Fraser River and Canyon.  We followed this passage for several hours.  The train seemed endless and was there whenever we looked.  One side of the canyon was dry and the other side lush with evergreens. 

At this point we're closer to the water.  We couldn't see the end of the train in either direction. 

And there were lots of tunnels along this route.  Most, so well lit up, I didn't need to take off my sunglasses. 

Along this route we got to Devil's Gate, where we had lunch and took a short hike in the beautiful weather, which I'll do a separate post on. 

Eventually we got out of the canyon and onto a freeway - Canada Highway 1.  At Abbotsford we got off the freeway and headed south a couple of miles to the US border.  I just checked now and found there's a cam at the border you can check online to see how crowded the customs line is. 

Crossing into the US here was easier than when we crossed into Canada in the relatively remote Beaver Creek crossing into the Yukon.  Then we were back on small rural road heading west and then south into Bellingham where we caught the I-5 to Seattle.  It was here, in the middle of five lanes of southbound traffic, as it was getting dark, that it started pouring.  But by the time we got to the ferry terminal, the rain had ended.  Below is a view of some of the Seattle skyline as the ferry took off for Bainbridge Island. 

This is a great road trip and I wish we had more time to poke around, hike, and just enjoy the beautiful country.  Driving through Canada does require us to think differently - the signs are in kilometers and the gas comes in litres.  The dollars are pretty close to equal so that's relatively easy.  It's generally good when the things we take for granted get skewed a bit and we have to think about them and realize our world is not the only possible world.  (Just not too much at once.)


Our grand daughter has grown a lot, is crawling and pulling herself up to a standing position, and picking up bits of food and stuffing them into her mouth.  She's also a lot more cautious about straying far from Mama. 

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.

Anchorage To Seattle Day 5: Hazelton to Lac La Hache

Day 4 got us from the northern end of the Cassiar Highway all the way down to where it connected to the Yellowhead Highway (37).   This is what it looked like Thursday morning.



We'd begun at the Seeley Lake campground which was a lovely spot with nice campsites, but right up against the highway with lots of trucks going by all night.

Seeley Lake

I put up a picture of the Skeena Bakery, a few miles from the campground, at the end of yesterday's post.

Once off the Cassiar, we're out of the wilder country and coming into more civilized territory.  There are still lots of trees, but the forest areas are broken up by lots of small towns and farmland.  We saw lots of timber trucks and here and there stacks of dead trees.

It's hard driving and taking pictures so this isn't too representative of the land we passed through.  We stopped for lunch at Burns Lake.

Burns Lake

Reading the local paper in the New Leaf Cafe, we saw that there's lots of local opposition to the Enbridge pipeline that would take oil to the British Columbia coast.  

Trips like these run well with audio books.  We'd listened to Eowyn Ivey's The Snow Child out of Alaska and into the Yukon and Cassiar.  I hate to be churlish - anyone who actually writes a whole novel has my admiration.  And an Alaskan first novelist who wins international awards is something I want to support.  But I felt somewhat like this commenter at the Guardian:

"The descriptions of landscape are good.
I liked the way the women in the book were described which was not stereotypical.
But the actual story became boring because it was so obvious what was going to happen at each stage. Also the interpretation that wove myth and reality was often clumsy. Needed more hard thought how to make it work. It was a good concept but the author needed a bit of help and editing support."

The blending of supernatural and real is tricky.  And as the next book began - Walter Mosley's The Gift of Fire - I thought I had an example of an experienced writer doing this much better.  And that was true at first.  He didn't fuss trying to explain things - he had confidence that the reader would figure it out.  And it's much, much shorter.  But it too seemed to struggle to hold together what it started.  Both books though had lots of good insights into human beings and how they tick.  And a number of reviewers had much more positive things to say.  For many Alaska was an exotic setting.  For me it was home, though nearly a century ago and in harder times.

I realized yesterday that many readers have no idea where the places I've been writing about on this trip are.  The map below started in The Milepost and I've added white stars to mark Day 4 and bluish ones for Day 5.  Day 4 began about 60 miles south of the junction between the Alaskan Highway (also known as the Alcan) and the Cassiar Highway. Day 5 has us rejoining the red line from the Alcan at Prince George.

I saved it pretty big and if you click on it, you can see it a little better.

 

We were trying to make it to Lac La Hache to have dinner at the Edelweis restaurant which I've written about in a previous trip.  But when we pulled up at 7:30pm, the closed sign was already up.  But we did have this great sky to console us.  And a full moon came up a little later.  And it felt much warmer than it had been.   

We made it to Seattle this evening and I'll do more on today's trip later.

Anchorage To Seattle Day 3[4]: Cassiar Highway - Boya Lake to Yellowhead Highway

[Update:  Whoops, I lost a day there.  This is really Day 4] Boya Lake campground is 60 miles onto the Cassiar Highway junction with the Alaska Highway.



 From Whitehorse south the fall was not as well advanced as it had been the first two days and there are a lot more still green trees.  But as we walked briefly along the shore of Boya Lake there was a fair amount of color

We had clouds, some rain, sunshine alternating all day long.  The road is completely paved now, a big difference from when we first drove down the Cassiar and it was mostly dirt and mud.  More traffic too now.  



And there is still construction, but we didn't have much delay yesterday. 

We had a sunny lunch break with some heated up spaghetti.






























It was raining ahead, and soon we were in it.  Then it was over again. 

We saw eight black bear today in four encounters - one was a mother with three cubs.  But none were conducive to photography. 

There putting in these huge power poles along the southern part of the road.  Everyone should have access to electricity, but these are so obtrusive along the highway, such an assault on the natural landscape. 









We got down to the Yellowhead Highway (Between Prince George and Prince Rupert) and camped at Seeley Lake and did a short walk along the lake at dusk.

The campsite is right along the highway and pretty noisy, but I slept well anyway.

It's great to be out in this beautiful country and away from everyday things.  We listened to The Snow Child on CD which was good for driving in the north, but it did go on and on and on.

Here's a glimpse into Day 4:  We're at the Skeena Bakery in Hazelton, a short distance from the campground.  We discovered this on our trip this way three years ago.  Like Bridges Cafe in Whitehorse, they have a public service function too - here they work with special needs adults. 

Anchorage to Seattle Day 3: Haines Junction to Boya Lake

We were at the library at Whitehorse so I could post and then went to lunch nearby.




 
 Bridges is a small cafe with healthy food and they also take in youth from a nearby development/training program to give them job skills.  We had a great black bean soup - part was pureed but she left in some of the whole beans to give it more texture. 

 Back to the library to get the van and off down the road. 

 This metal bridge made a racket as we crossed over from Teslin, Yukon.  Below is a shot of Teslin and the bridge.

The trees are quite in full fall colors here yet.  Just starting.  




This is one of three salmon signs at the Teslin lookout point. 

 As we headed southeast toward the Cassiar Highway cutoff (just before Watson Lake) we began to get blue sky and great clouds.   We ended up at Boya Lake campground, about 60 miles from the junction of the Cassiar and Alaska Highways. 

 

 We've passed about six bicyclists with well loaded panniers.  Three in one group, a single, and a pair.

Doing this quickly in Dease Lake, BC at the learning center.  Sun's out again. 

Anchorage to Seattle Day 2B: Into Canada, Sunshine on a Cloudy Day

There was road construction between the US Customs station and the Canadian Customs station.  But what an incredible background.

The birch and aspen and other plants were so yellow and golden and even red, that despite clouds it was ‘sunny’ everywhere we looked. 

White River, I think

These are both at Kluane Lake.  Lots of low hanging clouds, some rain, and snow higher up.

 

The swans are headed south.  We saw maybe a dozen, but this pair was close to the highway at a place where we could stop.  Trumpeters.



As the title says, it was cloudy, but the bright fall colors made it look sunny.  And toward 7:30pm (we lost an hour entering Canada) the sun did come out just past Haines Junction at Paint Rock.  We camped near by at Pine Lake Campground.