Two People Chatting Doesn't a Conspiracy Make

Here's an interesting picture of a well-connected Democrat and the head of the Republican Party having a chat during a break at Friday's Redistricting Board meeting.

Tom Begich and Randy Ruedrich during break Friday May 27

It's always good to remember that just because two people talk to each other and you can't hear what they are saying, it doesn't mean there's a conspiracy going on. 

BTW, Anchorage Daily News reporter Lisa Demer has a good overview of the redistricting board in today's paper.

Boundary Setting And Terminology Around Minority Districts

[The doings of the Redistricting Board are not impossibly complicated, but there are lots of details that make it hard to grasp.  I wouldn't claim to grasp more than a small portion.  But in this post I've attempted to explain some of what is going on.  At the end I've posted some communications made to the Board as they got close to approving a map of the Native districts.  They should make a little more sense after you read the first part of the post.  I didn't go to the Saturday meeting and have heard they did approve a Native plan.  If they did, I can't find anything about it on the Board's website.  It would be nice, but I do sympathize with the staff and all the demands on them.]

Friday at the Redistricting Board Meeting, there was more pushing and shoving of pixels here and there in attempts to get nine Native districts that would meet jello-like criteria for standards whose names have also morphed since March.  There was one plan that Board members PeggyAnn McConnochie and Marie Greene worked on.  Another was created by Executive Director Taylor Bickford.

We began in March with the terms 'Majority-minority' and 'Influence' districts.  Majority-minority means districts that have a majority of Native voters in the belief that this would insure that Native Alaskan voters would be able to elect the candidate of their choice in those districts. 


Influence districts were ones that had enough Native Alaskan population that they would likely be able, with enough non-Native cross-over vote, elect candidates of their choice.

At the beginning of this process, based on the 2001 redistricting process, Majority-minority districts had to have 50% or more Native Alaskans.  Influence districts needed 35%.

Well, that wasn't all.  There's Total Native Population and Native Voting Age Population.  Somewhere during the process it was clarified - I think - that the key number was going to be Voting Age Population, known affectionately as VAP.

Think you've got it now?  Well, there's more.  Which Natives on the Census tabulation do we count?  People who just identified themselves as "Native?"

No.  (Actually, I'm not sure what exact label the census forms had, but at the Board they use "Native.")  But there are also options to mark off more than one ethnicity - recognizing mixed ethnicities.  So, there was talk for a while of just counting "Native plus White."  Then the term "Native plus One" meaning someone who chose Native plus one other option.  And then there are those who chose Native plus more than one other ethnicity.

So the private plans that came in, lacking specific guidance, used different terminology and different configurations of what made up a Native.

Then the Board had a phone discussion with Voting Rights Act consultant Lisa Handley after she'd analyzed the data from Alaska.  New guidelines emerged.  Majority-minority was out.  Effective was in.  She said that - and a lot of how the Department of Justice thinks about these things comes from Southern states where the minority population is mainly African-American - a minority could have a majority in a district, but depending on socio-economic conditions, that majority wouldn't be enough to 'effectively' chose the candidate of their choice.  So now the key word was Effective Districts.  And she said a better name for influence district is now Equal Opportunity District. 

And, here comes the kicker, you don't have to have 50% minority in a district to be an Effective District.  Well, what percent do you need?  Hah!  You don't think she's just going to give a number.  Of course not.  "It depends."

It depends on the results of the voting analysis she's done.  Was there block voting?  Did Natives tend to vote in a block for a particular candidate?  Did the non-Natives vote in a block?  Did the blocks vote for the same or different candidates.  If the whites in the district voted for the same candidate that the Natives voted for, then we have Cross-Over voting.  This is good if you're trying to set an acceptable Effective District because you need a lower percentage of Natives because the Native voters get significant help from the non-Native voters.  But if they vote in blocks for different candidates, then you have polarization.  This is bad for the board members because they need a higher percentage of Natives for a district to be Effective or Influence. (Though VRA consultant Handley was pushing Equal Opportunity over Influence, the board has tended to keep using Influence, though they've dropped Majority-minority and moved to Effective.)

Some districts have higher cross-over voting and they need a lower percentage of Natives.  The old District 37 - Aleutians - fit in this category.  The old District 6 - the huge district that loops from the Canadian border over Fairbanks down the Yukon - on the other hand, is polarized, so it needs a higher percentage.

There are more factors.  One is total population in a district.  No district can exceed a 10% deviation in total population from any other district.  That is, the largest district cannot be more than 10% larger than the smallest population.  And that is pushing the what is likely to be accepted under the one person, one vote rule.  And in the urban areas, staying closer to a 1% deviation is more acceptable.  The ideal district is 17,755 people. (The new total population figure divided by 40 House seats.)

As the board tries to make these nine Native districts [the same number of Native districts under the old plan - any less would be 'Retrogression' which is not allowed under the Voting Rights Act] not only do they need enough Native voters to qualify as 'equal-opportunity' or 'Effective' districts, those districts also need enough total voters to be within about 5% of 17,755 people.

But the Native areas of the state don't have quite enough people to get all nine districts up to an acceptable level.  So they need to get people from more populated areas.

So, the image above shows some screen shots of the computer maps changing rapidly as a board member or staffer moves census blocs in and out of districts trying to increase Native population, trying to get the total population high or low enough to stay within a few percent of the ideal 17,755 people per district, while determining if the White population they are moving in to give a Native district enough people are cross-over Whites or polarized Whites.  And Fairbanks has enough people for five whole districts with 8000 'excess' population that can be 'given' to districts needing people. 

And those pink, periwinkle, and green pieces of different districts on the edges of Fairbanks are just a tiny part of the whole picture.    The first Fairbanks maps drawn up by member Jim Holm had lopped off the northwest Fairbanks suburbs of Greenbelt and Ester - known as liberal bastions.  It turned out this put Democratic Rep. David Gutenberg into huge Native influence (now called equal opportunity) district and the old representative of that district (new Republican, Alan Dick) had been mapped out.  That map was being altered Friday.

Friday's justification for people putting the Democratic enclaves into the rural district was, "Since Natives vote Democratic, putting urban Democratic voters into the district would mean these are cross-over voters and thus would lower the percentage of Natives needed to make it an Effective district."

On the other hand, they justified taking a couple thousand mostly White, not Democratic, voters from Eilson on the grounds that only 20% of them vote.   So while they are probably not voting Democratic - and thus would be a 'polarized bloc' - since most don't vote, this too could be used to justify a lower needed Native percentage.  (What happens if Republicans do a serious 'get-out-the-vote' campaign at Eilson?)

Those little pieces on the edge of Fairbanks are just one tiny part of Alaska and the job of the Board.  The maps in the image up above fit inside the red circle on this map that Board executive director Taylor Bickford presented on Friday.

And this is just a big chunk of central Alaska.  I'm writing all this with the maps to give you a sense of what was happening the last several days at the board.  Moving different colored pixels trying to get Native VAP and Deviation percentages lined up among six House districts and three Senate districts, while keeping them in some sense of defensible socio-economic coherence.


I didn't go to the meeting on Saturday.  I just couldn't will myself to do it.  The board's website offers an agenda and an Executive Director's report for Saturday's meeting, but unfortunately, the links both take me here:

 
Hey, I make plenty of errors on my blog and the short-handed staff is making maps, doing the board members' bidding, and all the house-keeping of the website.  That's a lot of work.  But this is sort of important and maybe the Board should have hired someone to make sure the website was both up-to-date AND all the links were working.  I certainly don't blame the overworked staff for this.

But there are three attachments whose links do work.  These lead to PDFs from the Northwest Arctic Borough, the Calista Corporation, and the Bering Straits Borough.

In response to the two Board plans that looked like the most likely to be adopted, the Northwest Borough wrote (in part):

. . . Grouping Northwest Alaska with more urban communities near Fairbanks, tip [sic] the voting balance away from rural Alaska Native voters.  Consdier that the Northwest Arctic Borough by itself has a total population of just over 7,500 people, 6,548 of those voters are Alaska Native or part Alaska Native and only 4,868 people in the Borough ar over the age of 18.  The number of voers that our area is grouped with from a more urban area tied to Fairbanks includes 4,000 people.  Data shows that the communities in Northwest Alaska do not vote as frequently as those in urban areas, therefore the plan prepared by Taylor Bickford may show a majority Alaska Native district in Northwest Alaska, it does not actually represent a majority Alaska Native district . . .

Marcia Davis,  as General Council for Calista Corporation, writes (again, in part):

With regard to the two choices before the board, Calista prefers the Greene-McConnachie [sic] map. It is our understanding that this map places the majority of Calista's region within two house districts 37 and 38. We appreciate the recent change in the map that restored to District 37 the coastal towns of Kipnuk, Kwigilingok, and Kongiganak, and exchanged the high growth areas of Matsu and replaced them with Talkeetna, a slower growth community. It is important to Calista that District 37 remains strong as it is important that our incumbent Native , Senator Hoffman, who has high seniority be able to maintain strong Native support in this district. We also support the inclusion of the Native villages northwest of Kodiak along the coastline as this maintains the alignment of Native coastal communities in District 35. It is extremely important to Calista that the Alaska Native voting population not be reduced any further in District 38 (currently 46.98%) as this district does not have the favorable characteristics that Dr. Handley found to exist in the Bristol Bay Region, now part of District 36, that enabled the effective Native voting population percentage to be in the 38-41% range. In addition, because District 38 picks up some of the areas surrounding Fairbanks, this non-native population could grow and therefore dilute the Native population of District 38 over time, so the Native Voting Age percentage of District 38 needs to start off higher than the minimum needed for benchmarking it as an effective district.    Finally, we support leaving the NANA region and ASRC in the same house district 40.

Finally, Gail R. Schubert, President & CEO Bering Straits Native Corp, writes:

We understand that one of the plans under consideration expands the current District 39 to the South and SE, incorporating some of the middle and lower Yukon villages (Anvik, Grayling, Shageluk, and Holy Cross, among others), and also includes McGrath and Lime Village. This proposed district, while avoiding the East-West stretch BSNC has consistently opposed, has a significant and unacceptable flaw. We understand that it stretches the district to the south to incorporate Kodiak Island, and pairs the Bering Strait district with this southern district for a seat in the Alaska Senate. Given the Native/non- Native ratio in the Kodiak district, and the tremendous differences in subsistence lifestyles, economic scope and development between Kodiak and Bering Strait, BSNC cannot support this plan. We believe this plan threatens the continued, fair representation for the residents of the Bering Strait region, and significantly dilutes the Native population and our vote. We also believe that, over time, the non-Native population in the Kodiak district will grow, further diluting the Native population of District 39, and our Native voice and influence. For these reasons, we strongly oppose any redistricting map that pairs the Bering Strait district with the Kodiak district.

This is way too long and only covers a bit of what's going on.  But, enough's enough. 

Annie McDaniel Abrams In Anchorage - With Video

I got a chance to talk with Annie McDaniel Abrams today while she's in Anchorage for the Neighborhoods USA conference here.  I imagine there are a lot of people in Alaska who have no idea who she is.  In Arkansas, it's a different story.  She's been a force of nature there for almost 80 years. 

She's in the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame whose website says:

Annie M. Abrams was born September 25, 1931 [she told me she's going to be 80 this year, so I don't think I'm posting anything she wouldn't tell you herself] in Arkadelphia, Arkansas. Because of limited educational opportunities for African-Americans in this small rural town she moved to Little Rock, Arkansas, where she finished Dunbar High School, Dunbar Junior College, and Philander Smith College.

Her years of grassroots level activism and civic connections with historical personalities from around the world has made her an Icon in her own right. She has been interviewed by hundreds of local and national media outlets because of her reservoir of historical knowledge of many subjects and her outstanding community service. Ms. Abrams’ boundless energy and commitment for her cause in fighting for justice has caused her advice to be sought by candidates at every level of government. For many years she has also been a much sought after speaker for programs and conventions. For four years Mrs. Abrams hosted her own television show, State Press in Review. .  .

 When I asked about the integration of Little Rock's Central High, she told me that she had been the first black PTA President of Central High. 

Here's a bit of video of our conversation to give you a sense of how she thinks and expresses herself.  You can just imagine her cornering Governor Clinton and letting him know what was on her mind.




A website with a petition to change Little Rock's 18th Street to Miss Annie Abrams Street tells us:

Ms. Abrams has been a very active and vital part of the Arkansas Development. 
In an illustrated history of signal African-American events in the past half century, one person would be always in the picture: Ms. Annie Mable McDaniel Abrams.

She'd be by Daisy Bates' side in a tableau of the 1957 crisis. Presenting Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller a gift of buttermilk in 1971. In Little Rock's Martin Luther King Marade, which she founded in 1986. Whispering into Bill Clinton's ear, as she was in an Associated Press photograph. Whispering into Blanche Lincoln's ear, in another. And Gov. Mike Beebe's, in a third. . .

Sometimes you're just lucky, and I was today, because I got to meet living history, and we had a good time together.   Thanks P for the invite.

Why I Live Here - The Coastal Trail

The impetus for today's bike ride was a post, Have I Nagged You To Exercise Lately?,  on Peter Dunlap-Shohl's blog about a week ago.  He'd written about the importance of exercise for Parkinson's patients.  I'd asked about his exercise routine and he said he does a lot cycling so I suggested we go for a ride. 

I didn't say seeing them was easy, that's Mt. Susitna in the background

We finally got around to it today.  Since the Redistricting Board's meetings are unpredictable - you know when they will start, but not when they'll finish - I decided being outside on a bike would do me much more good anyway.  So after posting with the wifi help of the Westmark, I met Peter at Westchester Lagoon for a ride along the Coastal Trail.  On my way from downtown, I passed a couple of Sandhill Cranes working over the mudflat dining hall.  They're really big and were a ways out there. 

View North

We rode to the bottom of the hill from Kincaid, then locked the bikes and walked the path to a decent place to descend to the beach.  I'd never seen so many people down there. The closest car parking is about a mile away, so you have to want to come here.

And here's a view to the south.  That's a dog in the water.

But we also saw moose.  Actually, other people saw moose and pointed them out to us after we'd passed them.  I think we saw four or five altogether. 

I'm constantly amazed at how animals this big can manage to disappear in the background.

And here's Peter on a break on the way back.  I took the picture because even though I read his blog, I wasn't sure until he mentioned it, whether he could still ride a bike.  Or drive a car.  He said as long as the medication is controlling symptoms, he can. 

I'm normally more vague on the blog about friends I do things with, but Peter has a blog to help educate people - both with and without PD - about Parkinson's Disease.  His comment when I told him why I took the picture was, that he forgets what people know and don't know about what he's able to do.  We rode about 16 miles round trip from Westchester Lagoon


Peter's was interviewed as a cartoonist with Parkinson's Disease in the Washington Post recently.  There are extremely talented and amazing people all around us in Anchorage.  I hope the Board got a lot done this afternoon.  It was a great day to be in Anchorage.

Computer Crash, Board Recesses Quickly Until 2pm, Open Meeting Thoughts

Board member PeggyAnn McConnochie came in at 6 to work on maps, but the computers the board uses to work its mapping software was down and she couldn't tweak her maps. 

This shows some of the problems with public meetings laws for this kind of organization.  This is a temporary board - 90 days - which has a lot of work to do.  By state law, not more than two members can talk about board issues together outside of a meeting.  The intent is to keep them from doing the public's business in private.  And with a board whose job has significant politically impacts, this is important.  But not easy.

They can't meet unless they've put up a public notice - the amount of notice before the meeting isn't totally spelled out, but 24 hours has been their minimum interpretation. 

To meet the law, they've just decided to post that they will meet everyday at 10am.  They convene at 10 and then they meet a while and then can recess and announce when they'll reconvene.  This way they can work in pairs or with staff and then reconvene as necessary. 

Board Comments Notebook Vol. 1

It's a bit of a crimp on their style, and for the most part, I don't think they would be doing anything they shouldn't.  But having the meetings open and available live online, it means that if they make errors or miss something, there's a chance that a member of the public can catch it.   At this point, they were working through things rather than making decisions.  The key is that when they do things that make an impact, they are open about it and the public can see why they made the decisions they've made.  A lot of the board's proceedings have been like that.  A few parts haven't that clear - like what all went into mapping Fairbanks and Anchorage.

After the meeting yesterday, Board attorney Michael White said this redistricting process has been the most open in Alaska history.  I'm sure that's true.  The hallways of the board offices are open to anyone to walk through and meet with members during breaks.  And most board members are available for questions and discussion during the breaks.  Even though public testimony has been cut off, anyone at a meeting can make suggestions during the breaks and the board is still getting emails and letters from the public. 

This is page 1 (of 7) in the contents for this first volume.  There's been more mail trickling in since this volume was put together last week. 

If you double click the image, it should enlarge enough to read the entries.  There are seven more pages.  If anyone wants to see more, let me know.

It's beautiful today and I'm going to bike the Coastal Trail with a friend in an hour.  Probably will miss the 2pm session.  Unpaid has its compensations.

Taking a Break

Image from Make Technology on your own time

I love this picture for so many reasons.  This is supposed to be by Banksy, the British graffiti artist featured in Exit Through The Gift Shop.   First, the idea of 'improving' a classic piece of art forces us to reconsider what we think of as classic and what it depicts.  In this case the hardworking slaves.  Wow!  Why didn't I ever think about this woman sitting down and taking a break before?


And simply taking her outside of the frame into the real world is something we rarely do in art galleries.

And with a bunch of redistricting board notes and video which I haven't posted, I'm feeling a bit like the woman with the cigarette.  Though my labors are all self-imposed.  But I'll try to get something up soon.  It's just that they keep having meetings.  Yesterday they went through Voting Rights Act expert, Lisa Handley's, initial thoughts on the private plans' statistics and then more board member attempts to get the nine rural districts needed to be in compliance with the VRA. 

The image is from a post on Altered Thrift Store Art and there are other examples, but that one was by far my favorite.

US Attorney Threatens to Shut Down Flights Out of Texas

The Texas Senate was set today to pass a bill criminalizing invasive TSA pat downs without probable cause.

The relevant parts of HB 1937 seem to be this addition to the existing Texas Penal Code TITLE 5. OFFENSES AGAINST THE PERSON CHAPTER 22. ASSAULTIVE OFFENSES

(3) as part of a search performed to grant access to a
publicly accessible building or form of transportation,
intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly:
(A) searches another person without probable
cause to believe the person committed an offense; and
(B) touches the anus, sexual organ, or breasts of
the other person, including touching through clothing, or touches
the other person in a manner that would be offensive to a reasonable
person.

 
According to John Dalton in Rep. David P. Simpson's office, the bill was passed unanimously by the House (the journal shows no opposition but a couple excused or absent) and had the support of all 31 Texas Senators until the leaders of the House and Senate received a letter yesterday (May 24) from the US Department of Justice threatening to stop flights out of Texas if the law was passed.

Representative Simpson's press release today says, in part:

Yesterday, Tuesday the 24th, the Texas legislature was visited by federal agents from the TSA and the Dept. of Justice to lobby against HB 1937, my bill to stop the TSA from groping travelers without probable cause.

They delivered a letter from a US District Attorney that threatened to shut down Texas flights, if we didn't submit to the invasive pat-downs for which they have become so famous.

Naturally, Texans didn't take to well to being threatened in that manner.

The US attorney's letter was a little more subtle than that, but essentially does threaten to shut down flights out of Texas.

Click on image to link to pdf of complete letter

This sounds like some flights might be canceled and there would surely be disruption, but the scurrilous practice of automatically patting down grandmothers whose only 'probable cause' is a metal hip or knee, would certainly get a lot more attention. I realize that people who have not been patted down invasively, tend to think this is the price one has to pay for airline security. However, having read the emails Alaska Rep. Cissna received when she refused a patdown, I'm convinced that too many TSA agents are significantly abusing their power.

So, the Texas Legislative website says that the bill was withdrawn today after the letter was received. According to Simpson aide Dalton, today is the last day to pass the bill. He said they are working on getting the Senators back in to pass the bill.

Lisa Handley at Alaska Redistricting Board Video

I'm afraid the video is way too jerky and the sound on the low side, but if you wanted to get a sense of Lisa Handley, here's about three minutes of her analysis of Alaska voting patterns.  This is from Tuesday, May 24, 2011 at the Redistricting Board meeting.




As mentioned in the previous post, you can see Dr. Handley's powerpoint notes on her Alaska Analysis at the Redistricting Board's website. The first part of the power point is here. It covers the Voting Rights Act in general.

Packed Room for Lisa Handley at Redistricting Board

The 10am session went to 1:30. The room had the most people I've ever seen here.  By the time things started, all the chairs were full.

I'll do a quick overview and then try to fill in more in follow up posts.

1. Voting Rights Act Consultant Lisa Handley gave a two part presentation.

• general overview of the Voting Rights Act's Sections 2 and 5 that is applicable nationwide.
• her analysis of Alaska's voting record and VRA  
  [Links to her Power Point presentation on the Redistricting Board Website]

Board Member McConnochie (l) talking to Dr. Handley at break

2.  Presentation of Modified plans by

• The Rights Coalition  (The Democratic and others plan)
• AFFER (Alaskans for Fair and Equitable Redistricting - the Republican Party and others - such as Calista - plan)
• Calista Plan
• AFFR (Alaskans for Fair Redistricting - Unions and Native Corporations)

The Rights and AFFR both presented plans which they claimed met the benchmark requirements for nine effective or influence districts.  (Actually, Handley changed the terminology from what has been used and now calls 'influence' 'equal opportunity.')

I frankly had a hard time tracking the actual plan presented by AFFER.   The most interesting - because it offered a perspective not heard by the board in public before - came from attorney Marcia Davis who presented the Calista plan.  She argued that the board need not focus so closely on pleasing the Department of Justice because in some cases the DOJ has told people (she specifically talked about Georgia) to make changes in their plans and then the Supreme Court shot down the DOJ supported plan. 

The meeting will readjourn at 3pm.  The Native Caucus presentation is yet to be made.  You can listen online here.   Even if a lot of it doesn't make sense, Alaskans should at least try five minutes to get a sense of the issues they are wrestling. 

This Picture's Been Haunting Me for Three Days Now

I've had this picture on my computer a few days now.

image from My Modern Met

I like things that make us question what we know, that turn things around from the way they're supposed to be so that we have to go, "Wow, it never occurred to me to do it that way."  Sometimes it doesn't work well.  Sometimes it's not particularly insightful.  And sometimes it's amazing.  Like the work that Alexa Meade does.

This is not a painting.  Well, it is a painting and it's not.  This is a real man painted to look like he's a painting - his face, his clothing, everything.  Instead of copying something real in a painting, this artist makes the real thing look like a painting.  If I understand this right, the other people are real, and this almost cartoon human is among them.

There are more pictures and discussion of this artist at My Modern Met.


The Alaska Redistricting Board is trying to imagine new ways to map the state's legislative districts.  Today they came up with a map that violated a premise they've had from day one - to leave the North Slope Borough in tact.  It's taken them 60+ of their ninety days to do this.  It's not the same as painting humans to look like paintings, but it is a step beyond the  boundaries they had set for themselves.

Humans grow when they go beyond their self imposed limits and do things they always thought they couldn't or shouldn't do.  Or never even thought of doing.  It doesn't always work.  Sometimes the consequences are bad.  But thinking past our limits has to be a good thing.