Are Anchorage Incumbent Pairings Unavoidable or Gerrymandering?

[The Alaska Redistricting Board has shown a fair amount of restraint.  But their Anchorage map, conceptually approved Saturday, still includes one pairing of two Democratic Incumbent representatives, and one pairing of a Democrat and Republican in a new more conservative looking district.  There are also two Democratic Senators in Districts close enough to tempt the board to pair them, even though there are Senator-less house districts nearby.]

Redistricting has two components.

The first is to technically get districts that meet the legal requirements.  In Alaska's case, that includes getting 40 house districts that are as close to equal (17,755 being the quotient when you divide the new Alaska Census total by 40 districts) as possible.  The absolute maximum under extreme conditions would be a 10% deviation from biggest to smallest districts, but in urban areas the expectation under 1% deviation.  Alaska also has requirements of the Voting Rights Act to meet - namely to make sure that Alaska Native voting effectiveness is not diminished.   Given Alaska's large geographic size, low population density in most places, and the movement of Natives into urban areas in the ten years since the last census, this isn't an easy task.  The Redistricting Board has specially made software to help, but it's like doing a gigantic jigsaw puzzle where the pieces are changing in color and size all the time.

The second component is politics.  How the maps are drawn will impact who gets elected.  The word gerrymandering comes from the redistricting process.  Traditionally, in the United States, the party in power gets to draw the maps and they tend to do it in a way that advantages their own party.

An interdisciplinary team at the University of Southern California has created a redistricting game you can play to get a sense of things I've been trying to convey here for the last couple of months. Here's their intro video (used with permission):

Click to go to the video at the Redistricting Game Website 

[Tech note: I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to shut off the auto start on this video.  I tried the normal ways, and one google hit suggested it might be built into the video.  But if someone can figure it out, please let me know.  I'll leave it like this a couple of days, and then probably just put up a screen shot with a link.  Listening to this every time you open this blog will get tiring.  But it's a cool video.  UPDATE June 7: I've switched it to a link now.  Click the image to see the short video.]

You can gerrymander different ways.  Matt Rosenberg's About.com post on gerrymandering offers three:

There are three techniques used to gerrymander districts. All involve creating districts that have a goal of encompassing a certain percentage of voters from one political party.
The first method is called the "excess vote." It is an attempt to concentrate the voting power of the opposition into just a few districts, to dilute the power of the opposition party outside of those districts that contain an overwhelming majority of the opposition's voters.
The second method is know as the "wasted vote." This method of gerrymandering involves diluting the voting power of the opposition across many districts, preventing the opposition from having a majority vote in as many districts as possible.
Finally, the "stacked" method involves drawing bizarre boundaries to concentrate the power of the majority party by linking distant areas into specific, party-in-power districts.

Excess vote is a problem that exists already in Alaska due to where people live.  Alaska Natives are highly concentrated in rural districts in the North and West of Alaska.  Even though there is a significant number of Alaska Natives in urban areas now, they aren't concentrated enough geographically to have much power in any particular urban district.




I don't have the software to evaluate whether the board has used these techniques with the Fairbanks or Anchorage districts.  But the Alaska board has another method available.  And it's been used, I'm told, at least in the last two redistricting processes.  This is to draw lines so that incumbents have to run against each other.  I'm seeing two variations of this:

• Ideally, you can pair two 'opponent party' incumbents in a district.  Since incumbents have an advantage in most elections, this takes out at least one strong 'opponent' candidate.
• If that's not possible, you can also pair an 'opponent' incumbent against 'our' incumbent, by drawing the lines to move the 'opponent' into an unfriendly district where 'our' incumbent will defeat him or her. 

My personal sense is that because so many Alaskans, as you can see from the chart below, are registered as 'Non-Partisan' or 'Undeclared,'  it's hard to make entirely safe districts in the urban areas.  Though much of Alaska leans conservative.

from elections.alaska.gov		RECOGNIZED POLITICAL PARTIES						POLITICAL GROUPS
STATEWIDE TOTALS	TOTAL	Alaskan Indepen- dence Party	Demo- cratic	Libertar- ian	Repub- lican	Non- Partisan	Un- declared	Green	Repub- lican Moderate	Veterans Party
(438 PRECINCTS)	489,960	14,476	74,844	9,336	127,408	78,684	178,238	2,367	2,864	1,743

That said, yesterday (Saturday)  the Board adopted, conceptually, an Anchorage map.  Altogether, it's relatively modest in terms of  pairing incumbents.  From what I can tell by looking at the maps, looking at AFFR's map of old districts and incumbents' homes, and talking to one of the AFFR folks, there appear to be two pairings and one potential Senate pairing.  


As for pairing two 'opponent party' incumbents - they've done that in the new district 30.  Democratic Reps. Chris Tuck and Mike Doogan have been paired.  They are currently in districts that don't even touch each other.  (Note:  The board is made up of four Republicans and one Democrat.)

On the east side, Democratic Rep. Pete Petersen has been paired with new Republican Rep. Lance Pruitt in a district that is stretched south and would appear considerably more Republican than Petersen's old district is. 

I've used a screen shot from Saturday's GoToMeeting webinar.  The districts are the colored blocks.  The red lines are the old district lines.  Then in the upper right and lower left, I've added parts of a map created by AFFR from the Board's Option 1 plan.  AFFR put the current district lines on the map and the location of the incumbents.  So I've added cutouts with the location of the incumbents affected with yellow arrows pointing to their districts in the new map. 

This gets much clearer and somewhat bigger if you double click

The cutout on the lower right - one cutout too many? - is the new district isolated.

They haven't told us how they are going to pair the House districts into Senate districts yet.  While they have plenty of options to avoid incumbent pairing, one worries that they might pair new districts 20 and 21 which would pit Democratic Senators Bill Wielechoski and Bettye Davis.  It's totally unnecessary. Districts 20 and 24  and then 21 and 23 could easily be paired.  And it would make complete sense to pair the two Eagle River districts. 

This board plan, dubbed by the Chair as JT1, is an improvement over their original draft plans which had more incumbent pairings.

Now, as I said above - and the redistricting game site makes clear -  this sort of taking political advantage is common across the country.  I'd say what the Board has done so far - even with this Anchorage map - has shown relative restraint compared to other redistricting exercises in Alaska and Outside.

And the board did NOT make preserving incumbents one of its guidelines so technically, they have no mandate to protect incumbents. (They talked about it and decided not to.)  However, as David Metheny said when he testified at a public meeting back in early May, "If anyone is going to fire my representatives, it should be the voters and not the redistricting board."  Put that way, it does seem the board should not pair incumbents when it's easily avoidable. 

Sometimes there may be situations where the board has no choice but to pit incumbents - two Republicans are pitted in SE Alaska where the population decline resulted in the loss of a whole district.  Then the board, after looking for other options as they did in SE, must bite the bullet.

But in Anchorage's case, it is pretty easy to draw lines for compact, socio-economically integrated (what the Alaska Constitution calls for) house districts without pitting incumbents.  The population is dense enough that they have lots of options, which they didn't always have in rural districts.

In fact, board member Bob Brody presented his map the other day which seems to do just that.  I'm not 100% certain.  The map I have isn't precise enough and I don't have the software that maps the information, but it looks like no one is paired.

I saved this large, so double click to enlarge

As I said above, what the Board has done this time round is relatively benign compared to past boards.  Though it's harder to whack the other party when there already aren't that many of them.  In Fairbanks, they appear to have made things harder for Democrats - though this time round  Jim Holm actually mentioned the incumbents and explained the reasoning for how he drew the lines.  I don't know Fairbanks well enough to evaluate.  But at least if the board's reasoning is on the record, people can determine if it makes sense or if it's just cover.

Yesterday (Saturday) when Chairman Torgerson presented his map - the one that was adopted conceptually - he tried to make it sound impartial.  He said that since none of the board members were from Anchorage, they really didn't know the city that well.  True and fair enough.  Therefore, he went on, he decided to start with the map that the Mayor of Anchorage had endorsed.

On the surface that sounds ok.  The map was actually presented to the board by Assembly President Debbie Ossiander who presented the plan "not as an individual, but as a member of the Assembly" along with the Mayor's chief of staff, Larry Baker, and the Municipal Clerk who is, essentially, an employee of the Assembly.  What was left unsaid by Torgerson and other board members who endorsed the idea of using the Mayor's plan, was that Anchorage is pretty split politically with the mayor's seat going in the last election from a liberal to a conservative, and the Assembly just losing its liberal majority by one member in the April election.  Also, there were two Assembly members who publicly rejected the plan, saying they had not been consulted.  Also unsaid is that the Mayor's plan is almost identical to the plan presented by AFFER - a group headed by the chair of the Alaska Republican Party.

I didn't hear any discussion of how the plan impacted incumbents or if this was unavoidable.  Deferring to the 'Mayor's Plan" allowed the board to avoid explaining why they drew specific district lines as they did.  So there was no discussion of whether Tuck and Doogan had to be paired up.  Or whether the Petersen-Pruitt pairing was unavoidable.  

All these people have a right to present their plans.  And the board has the right to use their plan.  It seems to me that a fair and transparent board would present all the facts and then, because they have a majority, they can do what they want, within the legal constraints.

To his credit, board member Bob Brody did raise the fact that two Assembly members had opposed the plan.  The response I heard was to reiterate that the Mayor backed it and to change to the topic.  Brody then voted along with the rest of the Board, including the lone member who was not appointed by a Republican office holder, Marie Greene. 

Political gerrymandering is against the law.  On their Legal Requirements page, the board lists:

D.   No political or racial gerrymandering.

Their attorney, Michael White, told me that no cases charging political gerrymandering had every been won.  I haven't looked that up.  And the Board can point to the SE pairing of Republicans to show that they weren't being biased.

But we know:

• The board is using the Republican plan, renamed and slightly modified as the Municipality of Anchorage plan, and

• It's possible to draw a plan that meets all the guidelines without pairing incumbents in Anchorage because board member Brody seems to have done it.

Probably, it could have been done in Fairbanks too.  Some of the proposed plans did that, though they used other Native district configurations than the ones the Board adopted which impacted Fairbanks. 

The board meets Monday at 10am.  If you can't come in person, you can listen in online and even watch their computer screen through GoToMeeting (webinar link in right column.)

Meanwhile go play the redistricting game.

Listening and Watching Board from Home Now

You can listen in and watch the computer screen.

For Audio click here.

To see their computer screen, click here.   You'll have to register.

People you'll here talking are:

(l-r) Torgerson, Bickford, Holm

Board Chair:  John Torgerson  (Kenai)

Members:  PeggyAnn McConnochie (Juneau)
Bob Brody (Kodiak)

Bob Brody and Marie Green

Marie Greene (Kotzebue)  - she doesn't talk too much, but she's talking now as I write this
Jim Holm (Fairbanks)  He's on via audio conference and is pretty loud

Staff:
Executive Director:  Taylor Bickford
Attorney:  Michael White
GIS expert:  Eric Sandberg
Assistant Director:  Jim Ellis

Attorney Michael White and PeggyAnn McConnochie

PeggyAnn McConnochie and Marie Greene are now talking about their attempts to create 'better' districts in SW - getting the numbers higher so they can create a third 'effective' senate district.

"This is one of those maps, everyone is not going to be happy."




10:25am - They're in Executive Session to talk about the legal implications of the map that McConnochie and Greene presented.


10:50am - they're back online.  Holm is talking about a timer and a Y - he's in Fairbanks and owns a nursery business, so I think perhaps his line came on while he was talking about his nursery stuff.  Yes.  There's Torgerson calling the meeting back to order.

So you can hit the links above to listen in now.

Brodie Plan Gets Eagle River Together in Two Districts, Mostly*

I got to the Board meeting about half hour late.  Which meant I had fifteen more minutes before they broke until 3pm.

When I got there they were talking about deviation.  How much would be ok for Anchorage.  Attorney Mike White was saying that given the strong argument people were making - based on public testimony - that Eagle River people wanted to be together without others - he felt he would be comfortable defending the relatively high urban deviation (+1.8%) the two Eagle River districts would cause.   Yesterday, he played the devil's advocate, and had said that Eagle River was part of the Municipality of Anchorage and that as such, they had no special claim to be a separate area.  Board members cited the testimony.  White said urban area deviation over 1% would be hard to defend.


Bob Brodie's map, which was on the screen, puts downtown center Eagle River in one district and the area surrounding downtown as another district.  No Muldoon.

*I said mostly in the title because it's not altogether clear what 'Eagle River' means.  It's not a separate town or city.  It's legally part of Anchorage.   But it's clearly its own place, just as Girdwood is. But its boundaries are not as clear as Girdwood's. Is it downtown Eagle River, Eagle River Valley, and the area off Hiland Road?  How far up the Glenn Highway does it go?  Is it all the people up the Glenn Highway outside of Anchorage to the border with Matsu?  Is Chugiak part of the mental map of Eagle River or do those folks think of themselves as different from ER as ER feels itself different from Anchorage?

Because they were only able to create the two Eagle River districts by taking about 1000 people on the Anchorage side of Peters Creek and joining them with a Matsu district.

The blue is the new Eagle River district 19 and the pink is the new Eagle River 18.  The black lines are the current (2001) district lines.  So district 19 is pretty much the same as the old central ER district.

Going north, district 18 goes to Peters Creek (if I understand that correctly) except for that little tongue of green which is, on Brodie's map, would be part of Matsu district 16.

Looking south, district 18 has Fort Rich and the boundary on the east side of Anchorage is Fort Rich.  So the Muldoon neighborhoods between Muldoon and the base are NOT in the Eagle River district in this map.  [So I didn't clearly understand the issue with the bases yesterday.  I'll check more on what that was about.  I know they said they needed to split the bases, which they've done, but since the referenced the Lt. Governor's letter to the board, I thought they were also trying to keep the bases separate from the non-base districts.  It turns out Elmendorf and Fort Richardson combined are about 3,000 people short of the 17,755 needed for a separate district district.  (Most of the pink in district 18 is uninhabited land in Chugach State Park.)

This map enlarges a lot for much more detail

This is the rest of Anchorage on Brodie's map.  Again, the black lines are the current district boundaries.

This picture shows the deviations for districts 18 - 23 on Brodie's map.  18 is + 1.82% (324 people over the 17,755 target number) and 19 is +1.78% (317 people over the target.)  Could they add another 500 people to those going to the Matsu district to get the deviation under 1%?  Is that a better solution for the people involved?  Who knows? 

This is not the final Anchorage map.  Other board members and staffers are working on maps today and the board reconvenes at 3pm.  You should be able to listen in here, and watch their computer screen with the maps here.

10am Today: Carving Up Anchorage (and Probably Tomorrow)

The Alaska Redistricting Board Meets at 10 am this morning in their Sunshine Mall office (411 W. 4th Avenue, Suite 302).

You can also listen online.
And watch pieces of Anchorage get moved around at GoToMeeting. 

Here are the maps that were passed out yesterday.

The two above are the "Municipality of Anchorage" (MOA) maps that were presented at the public testimony by Assembly Chair Debbie Ossiander, though later, two other Assembly members said they were never involved in the map.   I've been told that it is almost identical to the AFFER (the group led by Rebublican Chair Randy Ruedrich).  The map below was not labeled - I didn't notice until I got home.  But I think it might be the AFFER map and you can compare it with the two MOA maps above.

 AFFR (above and below) is a coalition of Union and some Native groups.  Yesterday the board was talking about using the AFFR and MOA plans as they map out Anchorage.

The one below is the Rights Coalition plan. (It too is unmarked, but I asked.)  This group is basically the Democratic party group.  

Except for the MOA map, you really can't tell where the lines are drawn.  I'm hoping the board will make the lines clean for the maps they are seriously considering, before they approve them. 

You should get as good a look at the maps as anyone will have if you listen to the meeting online AND connect to GoToMeeting.   It begins at 10am today.

Board Gets Testy Thursday Afternoon Trying to Set Border Between Matsu and Anchorage

[This one was supposed to go up late last night, but I apparently didn't hit the publish button, sorry.]

The Alaska Redistricting Board, after approving conceptually, districts for the rest of the state, is now getting down to Anchorage.  Board Member Bob Brody had tried to get the board to work on Anchorage sooner on the grounds that, "We've spent 90% of our time doing 25% of the state and we aren't going to have enough time to get Anchorage right."  But the others on the board all agreed that because of the Voting Rights Act requirements, it was critical to work on the Native districts first and get them set.  Then they could work on the urban areas knowing where the borders needed to be to get the Native districts right and avoid getting the plan thrown out by the courts.  Brody suggested back then that we could get the urban areas set and that would just as equally set the parameters for the Native districts.  [While I think the Native districts had a lot more factors that had to be balanced, and the density of Anchorage means it's easier to make equal districts, it also meant that if left to the last minute, as happened in the draft plan stage, the public would not know the district lines until after the board approved them.  It would be an easy way to gerrymander the districts.  That's not to say they would do that, but, if they were, that would be a good way to do that.]

Well, they say they are going to be done with the plan by Saturday or Sunday.  (It's almost Friday as I type here.)

Today, they spent about three hours trying to figure out the border between Anchorage and Matsu and how to deal with the impact on Matsu district and the Valdez district. But there were a lot of other issues below the surface which came up in the discussion.  I'll try to outline them and then I'll put up my notes of the discussion.

1.  Where exactly should the border between Anchorage and Matsu be?
They had decided it should be Peters Creek.  But in as they began drawing the Anchorage lines - using the MOA map and the AFFR map - they had problems because the MOA (pretty much the AFFER map) and AFFR map used a different boundary between Anchorage and Matsu.  They'd made the maps before Peters Creek had been decided.  But the Board saw the two maps - from politically divergent players - were pretty similar, including having two Eagle River districts.  In AFFR's case two Eagle River districts that kept Eagle River together.  There was a white chunk of nothing on the two maps because of the different borders. 

So the Chair asked Taylor Bickford to play with the boundaries and see what he could do.  Bob Brody also had a map to show.    The two map makers, when they came back for the afternoon session had split the white chunk in two different ways.

The green is a Matsu district and the pink an Anchorage district.  The dividing line is basically Peters Creek, except for the part that sticks out.  As I understand it, that was the white chunk in the AFFR and MOA maps.  The green part that sticks into the pink (yellow on the inserted map) was the part that Bob Brody had given back to Matsu and Valdez.  The red in the insert is the part that Taylor Bickford had given back. 

2.  Making two wholly Eagle River districts.  Or not. (This is spelled out in more detail in the previous post with Bickford explaining it on video.)
Taylor Bickford offered two options:
A.  Make two wholly Eagle River districts - but with higher deviation (I think about 1.8%)
B.  Give part of Eagle River to another district which includes Muldoon - with lower deviation.

3.  Lt. Governor Treadwell had sent a letter to the board asking it to keep the military bases separate from the civilian population as much as possible, because security needs meant civilians couldn't vote on base.  Thus military would have to go off base where a precinct overlapped, raising another obstacle to military voting.  Thus, the Eagle River area was caught between the bases and the mountains without much wiggle room.  (I'm not sure it really has to be either/or for the bases, but that's how the board was reading it.)  [UPDATE Friday, June 3:  After seeing Bob Brody's map of Anchorage with the bases split, but with Fort Rich in his proposed Eagle River district 18 and with Elmendorf in district 20, I clearly didn't understand the issue here.  I'll check to get clarification.]

4.  Deviation - (This too is explained in detail in the previous post.)  Urban areas, board attorney White has been telling the board since the beginning, should have the lowest deviation - below 1% if possible.  Board member Holm questioned, today, why urban areas should have lower deviation than the rest of the state.  White has explained this several times.  In rural areas with low density population and the various requirements to get 9 Native districts to comply with the federal Voting Rights Act means that it is harder to achieve ideal deviations there.  But urban populations, with their denser populations, make it much easier to achieve compact districts with little or no deviation.

5.  Should Eagle River get a higher deviation so they can stay together?  All the testimony at the public hearings - from both Eagle River and Muldoon - said, resoundingly, yes.  But attorney White, citing the Supreme Court in the last Alaska redistricting case, said that all parts of a single borough were considered to be socio-economically integrated, and that Eagle River is not a separate city, it is part of Anchorage, and so it shouldn't get special treatment.  That urban districts should have below 1% deviation.  Board members PeggyAnn McConnochie and Bob Brody argued that the residents of Eagle River had strongly stated their preference to not share a district with Muldoon and meeting their needs was also important.

6.  This all seems to negate what they did in Matsu.  At one point, Chair Torgerson said there was a third option.  ". . .leave Matsu and let Anchorage absorb the extras."  Bickford calculated how that would affect Anchorage deviations:   2400 people divided by 16 districts is close to 1%.  But, Bickford continued,  that raising the deviation in Matsu and Anchorage negated the whole reason they were not making five whole districts in Matsu. (Matsu has enough population for five whole districts within Matsu's boundaries.  But because of Native districts needing more population, they'd agreed, and the mayor of Wasilla (I think it was the mayor) had agreed they could share part of a district with some of the northern Anchorage suburbs, leaving them 4.5 districts instead of 5.  


7.  Why Muldoon and Eagle River?  At one point, Chair Torgerson, a bit testy as were others by then late in the afternoon, said something like, " It’s gone from a boundary to a Muldoon issue."  And the vote they took was specifically NOT about the possible Eagle River districts.  It was only about what the Matsu/Anchorage border would be.  When the first draft plan came out - the maps had, contrary to what was requested in the testimony, added even more Muldoon into Eagle River.  Just enough to put two Democratic incumbents (Pete Petersen and Bill Wielechoski) into a more conservative districts where they would have much more trouble getting elected.  Are any of the people who are arguing for the Eagle River - Muldoon district, still thinking about Petersen and Wielechoski?

So, you can see there are a lot of undercurrents flowing above and below the surface.

Below are my notes from the afternoon. As always, be warned! These are quick and dirty rough notes.  They can give you a sense of the discussion, but there are errors and gaps.


June 2 Afternoon Session:

Look at Boundary of Peters Creek v Chugiak

Two Taylor approaches and one Brody approach

Taylor Bickford:

Peters Creek boundary and chunk here. Started by looking at Matsu districts. added their deviations together - 450 people short about.
Valdez district - 12 - about 350 people short so that’s about 800 people
How far can we bring it beyond that? about .4 deviation and 2% for Valdez. With those combined. Took it to zero and ??? - that’s the amount I decided to take - the distance I decided to go across the PC boundary - about 1000 people. The maximum you could take out without messing up Matsu and Valdez. Reluctant to move Matsu to over 1.5% because we worked hard to keep them down to make Peter’s Creek boundary.

So what do you do with 19? Because boxed in by military base and the mountains.
1. (didn’t make Valley adjustments on the computer yet, but the numbers will work out.)
1. Share between the two or
2. Move it down this way and what you push down gets shared with all the districts.

I took SFork Community Council. Don’t know if this is considered ER, you have 3 ER community councils. Least likely chance to be considered purely ER. Moved that SW. You get a lot of unpopulated mountains. So it looks like it goes all over, but there are no people there. Deviations for 19 and 20 are <.4% basically ideal. The downside is you moved this SFork area and combined it with Muldoon and Basher. Different what we heard in our public testimony. There we heard about a small chunk of Muldoon into ER. Here we have small chunk of ER (about 800 or 1000) and moved it to Muldoon and S Anchorage.
Working off MOA map - which included this whole area. It is so densely populated, you’d have to take this chunk off. This was MOA district 21. If you wanted to recreated this district, you’d keep Muldoon together.
White: taking excess partly to Matsu - bar is keeping Matsu districts ideal and Valdez under 4?%.
Brody: I think the numbers aren’t right. - add 645 and 580 you get net +389
Taylor Bickford: I don’t understand. I did the math, the numbers worked. I didn’t smooth out the districts . . .
Brody: You end up with 389 people surplus is Matsu and Valdez
D. 17 585, D16 - plus a negative = surplus of 389 people
Torgerson:
Taylor Bickford This isn’t starting, I’ve already taken the excess
Brody: Isn’t that reflected?
Taylor Bickford: Then you spread it across everything. When you start, you start with a minus before. . .
Brody: Is that already in.
Taylor Bickford: Numbers I’m describing what was already there.
Brody: Those numbers there, are they reflected on the map? yes My point is. Matsu was at what %? You said Valdez at 2% and Matsu and .2 or .5.
I don’t think you’ve taken enough people because when you add up the plus and minuses you have 389.
Torgerson: Numbers had Valdez at .57. You said you didn’t spread any population in Valdez. You started with wrong baseline. That’s the wrong map.
Taylor Bickford: We didn’t add anything to that district so it doesn’t matter.
Torgerson: We did to 12. We wanted to see something that showed how the population went through all the districts.
Taylor Bickford: If I had four hours I could have done that.
Torgerson: Well, maybe we’ll have to give you four hours.
Taylor Bickford: Bob, I was walking you through and you’re looking at the numbers at the end, not at the beginning.
Brody: ARe those end numbers?
Taylor Bickford: yes.
Brody: OK
Torgerson: We’re only looking conceptually at 19 and 20
Taylor Bickford: Only impact is taking SFork and moving it this way.
Brody: Amount in that unclaimed zone - had exactly two districts in that area. Didn’t have to take Basher in.
Taylor Bickford: But only took half. You have to do something with the leftover.
Torgerson: You’re splitting the unclaimed zone? Half went North and the other half is going South and that’s why you’re doing this with SFork.
Taylor Bickford: Only reason why you don’t see the same numbers as this morning is I didn’t have time.
Brody: Not talking about numbers, Just the total.
Torgerson: OK, let’s look at option 2.
White: Can you take all of them and spread them south?
Torgerson: He’s trying to spread 2000 people in 8 districts instead of 5. This is what I was talking about earlier. .57. You have a little room.
Taylor Bickford: You have about 3.5% you’re spreading among these districts - Matsu under 2%, Valdez. . .?
I came along the right side of the highway, seemed logical and exact number of people I needed to move to Matsu. Here you are keeping SFork area that we moved in Option 1, here would stay in ER area. Only thing that changes is boundary between the two ER districts.
District 19 about +4% and 20 split the difference. Advantage = keeping area unified, not taking SFork out, disadvantage = higher deviation - about 2% in ER and a little higher in Anchorage.
Torgerson: If you had more time could you get 19 and 20 down to zero deviation?
Taylor Bickford: No, I guess you could take 22 . . .no that’s on the base.

PeggyAnn McConnochie: Can we see the line in ER where they separate.
Torgerson: Looks the same as it was.
PeggyAnn McConnochie: I like this better than the first one. Basically the two districts. Makes more sense to have the two ER districts together.

Torgerson: Let’s get Bob’s loaded up. Need a break? 15 minutes.

3:41pm

3:45

Bob: This is the deadzone. We identified this from the two maps and came up with @ 2400 people. Divided among five Matsu, Valdez, and 2 ER = 200 each. Took 600 people out and built two ER districts. Got these two as slightly under - took 300 more, about 900 total. That leaves about 1500 to spread among the other six.
Left the ER intact as it was. 18 and 19 can be split in half however convenient for ER people. Now it contains the Base and all these people here. Kept the Muldoon border with Anchorage clean, and less than 1%. Original ER district. If we want to split that the way the others did, we could do that.
Then came down with Elmendorf. This is Muldoon, came down here. Others close. Take the roads off?

Worked ourselves into classic corner. We have four hours to do 16 districts.
400 and 300 census districts - hard to tune that district. Scrambling to balance 30-31-32.
PeggyAnn McConnochie: Go back to ER.
Brody: All we have to do is agree how many to move and then we can do all the others.
Torgerson: Can you overlay Taylor’s over this one? All I want to do today is fix the Peters Creek boundary. Then tomorrow we can focus on Anchorage districts.
[He took the opposite half of what Taylor Bickford took from the Chugiak chunk]

Taylor Bickford: Your 12 doesn’t reflect Jim’s 12?
Brody: No, I didn’t have that on my computer.
Torgerson: We made those corrections this morning.
Brody to Eric: Did you import that into my computer?

Taylor’s writing on the board

Now divide that by 17755. comes out to 17 - about 1.09% change. that’s if we take Bob’s. Spreading . Sorry, I can’t keep up with this.

Taylor Bickford : Bob, your 18 and 19 are ideal. I’m not sure how your numbers and the AFFR/MOA numbers can match each other.

Torgerson: It seems we either come down the right or left side of the road. Try that calculation.

Second Version

102
109
-114
987
-165
-282



PeggyAnn McConnochie: The largest city in the state should have the smallest deviation.
Torgerson: You have more options to draw the boundaries to keep it smaller.
Holm: The more people per district, the more diluted your districts. Why?
White: Last time they said urban areas but only dealt with Anchorage. Prior, anything under 10% was ok. but our court said not a safe harbor, especially in urban areas, it should be lower.
Higher % of deviation in Anchorage, the more likely to be attacked.
Taylor Bickford: The trade off was taking ER that way.
Torgerson: That was the trade off because that’s how you drew it. If we move 1400 out, you have tighter deviation by 500 people.
Brody: .6% for Matsu and Valdez. Take a few more people from Matsu and Valdez, we can make them closer.
Torgerson: If we do any more, it stops what you did.
Holm; My question is, counsel can tell us, how do you argue it is more appropriate to do some areas than others. It’s ok to overpopulate Wasilla, but not Anchorage. Over 1% in Wasilla but not Anchorage. How does that make sense?
White: If you drew 1% in Matsu, the fact that Matsu is overpopulated, you are well within your bounds. Matsu is faster growing area. No dispute. actually taking population out.
Holm: This is not Matsu, it’s ER.
White: You’ve taken Anchorage population to Matsu. Carved out for Valdez, that was necessitated by Voting RA, we had to do that to Matsu for that.
Holm: That’s a fine justification. Trying to get my arms around why you’d do that.
Torgerson: You’re only raising the deviation of two districts - I take your word for it - because there is no place to push them off to - military bases and mountains. Spreading them over 16 is easier pill to swallow. Can we spread them over 16.
Taylor Bickford: Yes
Brody: But spreading them, you end up with more awkward ER. Into Muldoon.
Taylor Bickford: Not mutually exclusive. ONly difference they lost 1000 people on South end.
Torgerson: Spending too much time from our issue. Do we want right side or left side of the road.
4:11pm: Recess to get new battery for recorder.

Break: Torgerson: Too many deviations

Back on record:

PeggyAnn McConnochie: Show me the ‘white area’. OK, What is the population of the area you took.
Brody: I took 900 and Taylor took 900. We took the same amount.

Taylor: Bob”s version as 1500 out and my version has 1000.
Torgerson: Bob, do you agree?
Taylor: If you take the bigger number out - 1400 - from Anchorage to Matsu, then on your option, the impact is 1% over in Matsu.
Option 2: If you take 900 out.
2 OPtions:
1. Leave ER whole - don’t remove any ER and combine with other part of Anchorage. Have a 1.5% deviation in two ER and .6% in Matsu
2. Remove a portion of ER - 1000 - that results in 0% deviation in ER. Instead of 1% deviation in Matsu you have a .6% deviation in Matsu.
We’re at this point now because we did a whole process of lets combine an Anchorage/Matsu district. If we go this way and bring Matsu districts up, then what’s our justification.

Torgerson: Third option is leave Matsu and let Anchorage absorb the extras. 2400/16 is close to 1%. My only point is if we raise deviation in Matsu or Anchorage, then we’re back at square one to make Matsu 5 districts.
Brody: We can leave ER as it is and have deviation at 1%. Make a decision - 1% or less.
PeggyAnn McConnochie: or 3rd option, keep the Peter’s Creek option
Brody: That’s defeats what we like about having the two districts in ER. We’ve talked ourself into a box.
Taylor Bickford: Once you’ve crossed that bridge, you taken away the reason that you drew 4.5 districts in Matsu. We could have left Matsu at five. But we wanted to bring the deviations closer by combining a Matsu district with Anchorage. But if we raise the Matsu districts from 0 to 1%, then why are we doing this. Lose our proportionality argument.
Brody: Valdez people need how many people? 4000? If we’re going to make Matsu whole, take the people from Chugiak. Same people going to a different place.
Torgerson: We’re changing the record of why we adopted other districts. Let’s play the tape back then we’ll all know. We’re being careful about proportionality. We have 2400 people. We pushed 4000 into Matsu earlier. We don’t have a .5 deviation. We have .07 if do whole Matsu.
Taylor Bickford: No, higher - ???
Torgerson: Anchorage has 4400 excess.
White: No, 8000.
Torgerson: Really?
Brody: I move we use Peters Creek as our boundary and move people to Matsu, where Peter’s Creek meets the highway.
PeggyAnn McConnochie: You’re saying Peter’s creek boundary, . . . Our plan is the only one that follows PC boundary.
Brody: I want to have it include 1500 people out of ER area . . .
PeggyAnn McConnochie: That’s Chugiak.
Torgerson: Doesn’t adopt a boundary, but takes 1500. We have six people doing maps tonight. As long as they take 1500, it doesn’t matter where. Base in Matsu is 1.09%
Brody: I think you’re wrong only because, the 1500 are already added in. When you add what is excess int hat area, it comes to 1%.
Torgerson: Instead of making it the base, it will be blended. Taylor’s is before us. Spread it in Matsu or spread it in Anchorage. A while ago we said right side or left side. Left side takes more people. Bob’s option.
White: Difficult conceptually to follow. You can’t look at what you like unless you see the complete map drawn Each person draw how they want it and a third person come up with another plan.
Taylor Bickford: Mike, I think the problem, my intention is the boundary. I don’t have a plan in mind that goes with this.
Torgerson: I appreciate you said that. Not trying to get into a district issue.
PeggyAnn McConnochie: I understand, but here’s the thing. I’ve drawn enough maps. It’s not about taking 1500 people and just throw them somewhere.
Torgerson: I understand, Bob knows what I mean.
Holm: The boundary we’ve already established. We’re going to take 1500 people and keep the boundary conceptually at PC.
Torgerson: This whole exercise changes that. Whichever side of the road we take, it’s all this side of PC, so you do change the boundary.
Holm: yes
Brody: We can take the 900 or 1500. Eric can give us the discrete description of what it looks like, but it will give the numbers. I like this because it gives us the 1% everywhere. Maybe .8 or .2??? Everyone can start at the same drawing point.
PeggyAnn McConnochie: I need to know what I need to do, what Anchorage and Matsu looks like. I need to know exactly what the outcome will be. Not five districts, but actually looks like in each district.

Torgerson: Motion to move 1500 people out of ER into D15
Torgerson No, PeggyAnn McConnochie No Greene: No Brody Yes; Holm: Yes

[Lot of long pauses before voting.]

Torgerson: reason I voted no because this ??? doesn’t give us a boundary, just says 1500 people??? not sure if that’s what he said.]

PeggyAnn McConnochie: Taking look at numbers.
Taylor Bickford: Losing a part of ER
Brody: Combines with Muldoon.
PeggyAnn McConnochie: That’s how it is now right?
Taylor Bickford: it’s all in the borough
White: You can do any lines you want as long as it’s compact.
Eric: Boundaries - Knik Arm, Glen Highway, streets on the bottom.
Taylor has: Knik Arm, Glen Highway, PC, Bob connects through a couple streets here, the one taylor showed connects through Parks Creek? Both have fairly identifiable boundaries.
Torgerson: How long will it take to print off a map of that area.
Eric: 10 minutes
Torgerson: it’s 20 minutes to five. Recess until ten to five.

4:55
Eric: My Autobound has fallen apart.
Torgerson: No longer webinaring? What does that mean?
Eric: The plan I was working on, I put on hard map and now it won’t let me reopen. We’ll have everything. Bob goes south on Parks Highway - [I’ll post the map]

Anchorage population south of Peters Creek is 286,127/ 16 - 17,886, about 130people over per district.

Brody: I move we retain PC boundary and remove 900 people from Anchorage and put into Matsu area.

Problems with the audio conference, Bob came in.
Holm: Should we wait?
Torgerson: I don’t think it matters.
Holm: for discussion I’ll second.
Brody: The reason we did this
Torgerson walked out. Brody stopped talking
Whole point of our exercise
Torgerson: That you Brian? Hello? Too big an echo. Have them dial back in we’re getting a huge echo. Go ahead Bob.
Brody: We’re all tired and running out of patience. We like the map drawn by MOA and AFFR:
LIA called into for audio stream.
Brody: It treats the people
More interference from phone
Brody: of ER nicely. Keeps two discrete district there. Keeps all our deviations within 1%. If we adopt the PC boundary, we have to take the discrete Anchorage people and stick them in ER. We had a lot of testimony that they don’t like that. We can treat the people of Alaska more fairly to do that.
Torgerson: OK, but you don’t know where the 900 is coming from.
Brody: We seemed to have trouble describing that exactly - inland from Glen Highway up parks creek to voting block border north near Hollow street, east to Little Peter’s creek til it intersects with Peter’s Creek. Is that specific enough.
Torgerson: You wouldn’t take it all the way over
Brody: Amend it to , , ,
Holm: Essentially what Taylor did, right?
Taylor Bickford: So everyone knows what they are voting on. 2% deviation in ER.
Holm: If we don’t how much.
Taylor Bickford: If 900, it will be 1.8%, but if you take that small part to Muldoon, it will go to zero percent. Not trying to make it more difficult, just want people to know. There’s that small trade off taking that chunk out or higher deviation.
White: If you do that, then different options can be drawn in Anchorage. Your motion is to keep the district as they are.
Brody: To keep ER discreet. I think with 1500, we could do it with low deviation, but that was voted down. So now I made it 900.
PeggyAnn McConnochie: more comfortable with 900 or 1000 than 1500. More realistic split than other side.

Torgerson: I don’t understand why the trade off. If leave as it is .07. If we take 900 out, we’re . . . It’s gone from a boundary to a Muldoon issue.
PeggyAnn McConnochie: We can argue, but ER is Anchorage.
Torgerson: It gives us more options. We could spread over Anchorage. Just saying a district we could use. We aren’t adopting an ER plan now.
PAM: We’re just saying this is our intent so we can redraw Matsu and Anchorage.
Torgerson: I’m going to vote yes. We were supposed to have deviation in Matsu of -1%, only reason I’m supporting this because we aren’t setting ER and Muldoon. Should give us better options on redrawing the other 16.

Motion is to: Oh Man - adopt right side of glenn highway parks creek intersecting with little peter’s creek as described.
5-0 yes, board has adopted that description of Northern boundaries of Anchorage. Anything else for tonight? Anything else to show us?
Tonight we can all start drawing Anchorage again. Changing our maps. See where we’re at tomorrow at 10? You’ll be calling in tomorrow? [Holm: Have to meet payroll. Thanks Bob] OK, it’s all about Anchorage at this point. Have to run that 900 people in Matsu.
Adjourn: 5:14, reconvene tomorrow at 10.

Taylor Bickford Explains His Eagle River Options

The Alaska Redistricting Board has approved, in concept, the Native Districts, Southeast, Fairbanks, Kenai, and Matsu.  Now it's time for Anchorage.  They set the border between Anchorage and Matsu at Peter's Creek.  But it turned out the numbers for Eagle River weren't quite right.  So board Executive Director worked on a map during the lunch break (as did board member Bob Brody).  Just before the meeting reconvened, he explained to me what he'd done.  Here's  some context before you listen to the video.  He's really explaining it pretty clearly, if you've been around the board meetings and you understand the special terms they're using.


Deviation:  The amount above or below the 'perfect' district size of 17,755.  This number comes from taking the new Alaska state population from the 2010 Census, and dividing it by 40 (the number of State House seats.)  Since each district has one representative, a district with, say 18,000 people has the same single representative as a district with, say 16,000.  This would violate the Constitution's one man, one vote rule.  So the maximum deviation between the highest and lowest districts has been set at 10%, but that is only if there are special circumstances that make it difficult to be lower.  Some rural areas have a very low population density so keeping the compact and equal size is hard.  For urban areas like Anchorage where the population is pretty dense, it's much easier to have compact districts that are equal size. The goal for urban areas is districts with less than 1% deviation (either above or below 17,755.)

Negative Deviation:  In the video Bickford says that Matsu and Valdez have a 'negative deviation' of about 400-500 people.  That means that Matsu, as a whole, with five districts, is about 400-500 people below where they should be for all the districts to have 17,755 each.  The 'Valdez' district (just one) is by itself that far down.  So they want to take about 1000 people from Anchorage - near the Peters Creek border with Matsu - and give them to Matsu and Valdez to get them closer to 'zero deviation.'

Overpopulated:  He says District 19 is overpopulated.  Yes, you've got it right if you're thinking they have more than 17,755 people. 

He's come up with two option:
1.  Keeps all of Eagle River in two districts.  This is what Eagle River residents asked for at public testimony.  It's what Muldoon residents (some of whom are currently in a district with Eagle River) said they wanted.  BUT, their deviation is closer to 1.8% this way.  Well within range in general, but high for an urban area.  But as he points out, this area is trapped between the military bases and the mountains.  There's little wiggle room.  (The Lt. Governor sent a letter to the board asking the bases be as separate from civilian districts as possible because civilians can't go on base to vote for security reasons, so this forces military to go off base to vote.  To me that sounds like something to try to do, but not something that should cause other severe problems.  Besides, not all military bases have 17,755 people.  So they'd have to be in a district with civilians.)
2.  Make the Eagle River districts closer to zero deviation, but then you'd have extra people who would have to be joined with another district.  Bickford's option is a little bit of Muldoon and Stuckagain Heights.  Less deviation, but taking an option both Eagle River and Muldoon residents told them not to do.

Note:  The map he's pointing to is of Anchorage/Eagle River, but it doesn't have any of the proposed boundaries on it.  Those are census districts (I think that's what he said.  They're a step up from the lowest census blocs.



The afternoon session got a bit testy and I'll try to outline the issues (the ones here are part of them) in the next post. 

Eagle River and Muldoon folks, this is the time to let them know what you think about having wholly Eagle River districts with a 1.8% deviation or if it's better to get the deviation closer to zero and not have any of Eagle River mixed with Muldoon.

Senators Coghill and Thomas Paired in Fairbanks as Anchorage and Fairbanks Worked On

[These are pretty rough notes, so recognize that there are errors and gaps.  Use this as a guide for questions, not an authoritative record of the meeting.]

Overview:  Holm presented his Fairbanks map - I have several minutes on video so you can get a sense of what it was like.  Sens. Coghill and Thomas were put in the same district.  Then they looked at Anchorage maps.  Key problem is what to do with 1700 people in Chugiak? [They said Chugach] - spread them out in Matsu or in Anchorage.  They're working on that during break.  

Alaska Redistricting Board, Thursday, June 2, 2011 - Morning session, 10:00am to 12:55pm
Working of Fairbanks and Anchorage districts
All Members Present: PeggyAnn McConnochie, Bob Brody, Jim Holm, John Torgerson, and Marie Greene
Staffers:  Taylor Bickford (Executive Director); Michael White (Attorney), Eric Sandberg (GIS), Jim Ellis (Asst. Director)

Executive Director:
1.  Transcripts of public hearings some are up, not of meetings.  Audio up.  Transcribers having trouble figuring out who is talking.  Discussion of whether to have transcriber at meeting, could they go back and id voices (White:  yes). 
Torg:  Recorder has transcribed this,
White:  Yes, we can id who the speaker is.  I know from experience - last lititagion involved board meetings where they didn’t go back and do that.  It was a mess.  People wouldn’t admit, when it’s obvious who is speaking but person didn’t admit it.
Torg:  Sounds like we can put one person do that. 
2.  I would say, for those on line and Webinar - we have the Anchorage maps available.  We’ll look at Matsu and Fairbanks , they aren’t current;y up, but we’ll put them up when on recess.
White:  Reviewing the reading file, comment by Bob, not sure if he was misquoted. one of the Kodiak reports - Senate seats had to be socio-economically integrated and compact, and that’s not so.  ONly have to be contiguous.  House seats have to be s-e integrated and compact. 
Torg:  Easy for someone to be confused on that

Board Discussion of Final Plan Development

Fairbanks plan that Eric has cleaned up - based on Holm plan. 

No copies:

Subject to a little clean up
PeggyAnn McConnochie  - can we go to the deviations please? 
HOLM:  Tried to keep deviations as close as I could .68% [Not so, I got it wrong]  Not enough population in Ft Wainright, had to go to HotSprings    ….Bennet Road to Nordhill Rd  to Pipeline Access to Slough

[Stopped typing to do Video of Holm describing Fairbanks districts]



Even 12 is close.  Don’t kow how to get more people into 12 without taking them out of 7, but that minimizes Fairbanks .
Taylor Bickford:  Does this minimize the Matsu side of 12?
Holm:  Yes, you can roll that down there.  [That part of Matsu is still

I think Sen Thomas lives up here, so he’s here in 7. Same with Sen. Coghill and Tammie Wilson, they are now in 11.  The only problem we had before , I went all the way to Tanana River, not a lot of people there, it ust makes sense to clean it up.  Whenever we get around to pairing, we could do it however we want.  At least 2.5 pairings. 

Torgerson :  City of FBI has its maximum.  FBI/STB have 5 seats in Borough boundary. 
A little less than excess population and rolling it into 12.  And a little into 38. 
Holm:  Gives an additional possible Senate pairing. 
Torgerson :  Any legal issues?
White:  Other than what we talked about before.  Coming into the B twice, and VRA.  Coming in all from one direction.  Some concern about compactness.  REason for doing that.  NP and Eilson together.
Holm:  NP people are lots of military.  Moose Creek and NP are really integrated.  Eilson really.
White:  The rest is just to get people.  Not a lot of people where 7 and 11 .
Holm:  Not on the right side, but I had to get people here to get enough in the district. 
White:  Any other comments on this or just based on your 60 years [H: 65] living in that area? 


….
Holm:  I think it’s about the population having more value in 12.
Torgerson:  Were they already there?
Holm:  Redline - they are currently split 3 ways.  Show you what 11 used to be.  Used to be up in 7.  Most rapidly growing area in the Borough.  Had to be carved up.
RB:  Whats the Population in Steese and North Pole.
Holm:  Population right along here.
Taylor Bickford :  How many people?
Holm:  ??A bunch??
Taylor Bickford :  You could have brough 11 across but you needed pop for 7.  In city I couldn’t go to …
Taylor Bickford :  You have to take all of that.  Have to bring it up a little bit.  Make the shape look nicer.  All or nothing.
Holm:  Same as 8, it looks a little goofy because of the census blocks.  No one lives here.  Part of the base. 
Taylor Bickford :  Can you go there under the RR.  Any population there?  All farmland.
Holm:  All farmland, not many people. 
Go down to Cowpie avenue.  How do you like that for a name?  It’s all farmland.  You’re talking about widening this?  You could use the old Valdez trail and roll it down a bit,
Taylor Bickford :  Just thinking out loud.  You’re saying it’s all farmland.
Torgeson:  I’m happy with this.  Between farmland and military base, it all makes sense.  At least half of it was an existing district.
Holm:  Yes.  There aren’t many people.  Don’t remember but uner 300.  I was concerned.  We’re already 2.3% underpopulated in 12.  I don’t think we want to do that.
Taylor Bickford :  If you don’t take Eilson here, where would it go?
Holm:  Into 7.
Taylor Bickford :  Whats the connection?
Holm:  Not a lot.  And then you’re in a box.  This is much more compact.  You recall the original one I had 11 all the way down into here.  We took those people out and shited everything east for the extra population.  All the people in 7 here are essentially the same.  Similar lifestyles.  East Farmer Loop. 
White:  Mostly rural?
Holm: Used to be all the farming area.  Still a lot of truck farming.  All developed druing the state thing - the barley project between this area and here in Delta.
White:  In the 30s?
Holm:  No, in the 80s when we had lots of money and did silly things.  Not really happy about ???.  ONce poplation to certain level, then it’s just playing with numbers.  You know how we’ve been nipping at corners.  This whole thing gives FBI 5 good seats.  Potential 6 potential Senate ??
My guess is 8/12  7/11 and 9/10.  Kind of the reason I picked up all this here - no folks there, but might as well have them all in one district.  Goes all the way down to Denali b but absolutely no folks in there. 

"Bugle" district

Holm:  Couldn’t get rid of the bugle.  900 people live in this area.  Looks like a little snout. 
White:  Same reason for little horn in 10? 
Holm for population.  That’s college road.  Follows the slough.  They didnt want to be in 7 they are part of the city.  Originally in 10, now in 9 because we needed the population.  And this is in 10 and now in 9.
Taylor Bickford :  I’d suggest this compactness in general will be part of staff analysis and make a list of how to change. 
PeggyAnn McConnochie :  If that’s going to be done.  I like it except.  I’ll go ahead to get it on the record that we adopt the plan in concept and have staff look at it for inconsistency in boundary. 
Holm:  Yeah, we’ve got a lot of them.  Eric’s looking at it.
Torgerson :  Second? 
………..
Torgerson :  Call 10 the root canal district.  
All voted yes.  5-0 for. 

"Root Canal" district Fairbanks

10:46

Torgerson :  Anything else to look at?  What’s next?
Jim Ellis Matsu.
Cleaned up.  Made minimal changes

[Sorry, while they were going through details of the Matsu map, I was trying to find more room on my sound cards.  A big concern I heard was the relatively high 2+% deviation in some cases.  They’ve been working on that and got them down mostly below 1%]

This map also seems to take more of Matsu - Fishhook Road area - for District 12, the one that goes to Fairbanks  and Valdez. 
11:03

11:17am - they approved the Matsu map in concept.  Torgerson asked if they needed a break before going to Anchorage maps.  PeggyAnn McConnochie said no, but now two of the members are gone as they start on the Anchorage maps. 

Torgerson: 

[On the screen it says “Western Alaska Map”  but it’s clearly Anchorage they are looking at, so I’m not sure where this map is from.  There are five maps that were printed out:
AFFR = 2 (macro and micro)
MOA = 2 (macro and micro)
Unlabeled = 1 very large scale

They are looking at how this map relates to what they’ve done with Kenai and Matsu.

they used a previous district overlay and then a community council overlay.]

[Later:  turns out this is the Rights Coalition map].

PeggyAnn McConnochie: Whether we should pay attention closely to Council boundaries.
White:  Last time tried to justify AFFR plan in Anchorage based on Community of Interest, included Com Councils and areas of people together with like minds.  Court said not a good reason for deviations.  Deviations were 90%???  Northern areas underpopulated and southern areas overpopulated.  It was clear it was based on Democratic and Republican districts.  Court said Communities of interest not justification for deviations that high.  Not illegal to break Com Councils into as many districts as you want.  We’ve heard testimony to keep them together.  But no reason to keep them. 
Torgerson:  District 23 is divided by 7 community councils?  This one here -30- divided by five community councils?  Not sure any plan can do it?
White:  Can’t  be done.
Torgerson :  Next plan?
Taylor Bickford :  Municipality of Anchorage.  The only thing inconsistent with our boundaries is that white chunck there.  Anchorage plan and AFFR plan you could bring 19 to Peters Creek or shift some of 15 back in.
Torgerson :  Didin’t we set the boundary with Matsu as Peters Creek?
Taylor Bickford :  Yes, population wise it doesn’t matter.  In both of these I was trying to show they work within our plan. 
Torgerson :  Can we see the old district overlay?
Taylor Bickford: didn’t ER say their old district was no good?  They had the base before.  Do these boundaries define ER? 
Torgerson:  Add community council boundaries.  [Laughter when they show up]
Taylor Bickford :  Add house district. 
Torgerson:  Looks like MOA split ER
Taylor Bickford:  CC districts for ER went way outside these lines. 
Torgerson: Bases are split.  I guess that’s logical.  But Military established boundary right?
??:  Government Hill? 
Brody:  Muldoon didn’t want to be divided.  Has a lot of military housing. 
Holm:  Being connected with 20 is a good thing?
Brody:  Weren’t happy with be connected to ER.  [Almost everything east of Muldoon is in 18 - I just saw the maps they handed out have different numbers on some of the districts from what’s on the screen.  RR just told me they were done before the changes in the Old D6 and related changes.]
Holm:  Now they have two legislators instead of one in their community council.
Brody:  What are those ears sticking out into the base?
Holm:  That’s where we have ships coming in.  Port of Anchorage, Govt. Hill. 
Taylor Bickford: That alleviates the Lt. Gov’s problem of pockets of city on the base.
Brody:  Question whether this is official MOA or not.
Torgerson:  Got a letter from the Mayor.  Official officer.


NEXT AFFR:

Eric:  They have Whittier in their S Anchorage, but we have it in our PWS, but we can work with that.
Deviation:  all under 1%
Eric:  Add this to 18 a little over deviation, but there’s a creek here to Glen Highway, if you put it back into 15 you can get the deviation back.
Taylor Bickford:  Is that white chunk similar to MOA?
Eric:  Yes
PeggyAnn McConnochie: ??
Eric:  AFFR used Peters Creek except the white chunk.  Similar to MOA here.  Fort Rich and Elmendorf divided.
Taylor Bickford: 18 and 19 identical to MOA?
Holm:  Still have half of ER split in two?
Torgerson:  What’s the boundary splitting ER?
Eric:  Meadow Creek to ER loop, down through neighborhood to old Glen Highway.  I think same boundary MOA used
Taylor Bickford:  19 the same too? 
Eric:  Keep it in Chugach State Park.
PeggyAnn McConnochie:  Mine says 16 and 17 on MOA plans . .
Eric:  I had to swap out because of what we did with our plans.
Torgerson: Not trying to cook the books are you :)
Taylor Bickford:  Looks identical
PeggyAnn McConnochie: diffierence between 21 and 25.  Between MOA and AFFR it looks different - 25 upper is part of 19 in MOA mpa, right?
Torgerson:  so they’re quite a ways on the base. 
PeggyAnn McConnochie:  is that hard to change?
Eric:  Probably grabbed more of Muldoon.  21 further out of Muldoon
. . . 

Torgerson: Is there another one?
Eric:  I have an AFFER map
PeggyAnn McConnochie:  Are there maps for that?  [no]
Eric:  Similar to MOA and AFFR in the north, Ft. Rich and Elmendorf divided
Torgerson:  How hard to do an overlay of the  - it would help me if overlaid the MOA, AFFR, and AFFER.
Taylor Bickford:  five minutes to do that.  Recess for ten minutes because Eric’s five minutes is really ten. 
12:00 noon

Eric:  AFFR on the new map is fill colors.  MOA and AFFER white boundaries with white numbers.  I’ve changed the numbers to match what we’ve done. 
Taylor Bickford:  They took that pink and chunk of Muldoon that Anchroage takes into Matsu - AFFR keeps in Anchorage. 
Torgerson: 
PeggyAnn McConnochie:  I thought we had a lot of testimony from ER folks that they want to be together and this aspect of wanting to be kept whole.
Taylor Bickford:  I don’t think they all wanted to be in the same H district, but they were saying don’t take us to S Anchorage.  It’s not a governmental entity.  There is an ER CC and ERValley CC, you could not put all of ER and ERValley into one house district.
Torgerson:  Is the white line a Chugach, Birchwood boundary?
White:  No, MOA boundary.
Taylor Bickford:  Make the CC line blank.
Brody:  White is in our plan.
Taylor Bickford:  You an add all the white into 18 and shift it all down.  Or into 15 it also works. 
Torgerson:  That the MOA boundaries?
Taylor Bickford:  MOA plan district boundaries.
PeggyAnn McConnochie: Back to my ER question.  Both plans:  AFFR and MOA have ER in seperate districts ?
Taylor Bickford:  Yes and they are wholly in those two districts and they potentially have a Senate district in that.
Torgerson:  19 identical? 
Taylor Bickford:  sliver of Muldoon.
Torgerson: 19 is the same
Eric:  tiny difference - AFFR went a little further on ER
PeggyAnn McConnochie:  who has lower deviation?
LOL
PeggyAnn McConnochie:  Hey, I’m trying to protect deviation.
Torgerson:  I’m with you. 
Taylor Bickford: Elmedorf only difference is, you could make them the same if brought green all the way to the water.  Population wise 95%.
Torgerson:  I don’t think it’s a magic bullet that we can combine the two. 
PeggyAnn McConnochie:  Trying to move things along.  If we could look at Chugiak options Eric has, not a motion, just figure next obvious move, make an agreement - I don’t know whose numbers these are - smilar enough, we will take these in concept and worry about the rest?  I don’t know.
Torgerson:  Possible.  Bob has a plan.  Eric, you have something to take care of Chugach population.  Can you run thru that and show how it changes deviations in 12 and Matsu.  Bob, you might have the same issue, but you used what we adopted.  We have to decide if that moves north or south.
Eric:  AFFR has big white area.  I went to Peters Creek.  That put 18 over 9, then I went back to Parks Creek.  This neighborhood surrounded by creeks and mountains and highway and thought it more natural to put this in Matsu and south into Peters Creek.
Brody:  Why are we changing this?
Eric:  What we’d have to do to fit it in with our changes. 
Torgerson:  MOA and AFFR used different boundaries.  Just wondering what would happen if we used their boundaries.
Brody:  To keep our boundaries, then our map is good.
Taylor Bickford: We can either put that population into Matsu or Anchorage.  It makes more sense to spread among 15 districts instead of 5. 
Eric:  Least number of shifts to make the deviations ok. 
12:31
Torgerson:  I’m not sure we have to absorb anything, since our plan used Peters Creek . . . Only, one of the things identical AFFR and MOA they both left out that chunk fo Chugach.  Consider what PeggyAnn McConnochie was talking about - adopting one or two of those as basis for drawing Anchorage. 
Taylor Bickford:  If we did that, where would we move the population?
Torgerson: I don’t know we haven’t done it yet.  How fair of a question is that?
Brody:  Dif philosophy.  Nice way to treat it.  I did it like this first, but had extra 1200 people, but I couldn’t figure out a nice way to get those 1200 out.  Puting them into the base does it nicely.  I would have put them deep into muldoon which was universally unliked.  Our deviation in Matsu were all under.  So adding 200 people is just over 1%.
Taylor Bickford:  But remember we got them even yesterday.
Torgerson:  13 and 17 were over.  One was one over (13) and d17 was ?over.  . . . .
Trying to make sure we understand what that whole region represents.  Go back to your old map. 
….
[Taylor Bickford is talking too quietly for me to hear.]

Torgerson:  We need to go back to an old map of AFFR to see the boundaries.  Peters creek is northern boundary, down to crescent drive.  How many people does that represent?
Eric:  Can we add it to ??  About 1500 people. 
Torgerson:  1700.  That’s 340 people per district if put them into Matsu if you did to five districts.  Too much.  When we finished changing it we were under 1%, doing your suggesting of swapping Valdez.  Eric got the deviation under 1%.
Taylor Bickford: You’re say
Torgerson:  No, you need to take the 1700 into Anchorage
White:  Leave in Anchroage or put them into Matsu.
Torgerson:  Downside of keeping it in Anchorage?
Taylor Bickford:  Wont be able to draw the ER districts - overpopulating the ER districts and they won’t all fit together.  Like a hand grabbing the blocs.  Eric, zoom out, then in so we have the Muldoon ER border.  If you take population out of here - this is all uninhabited
Brody:  Don’t change the slide
. . .
Torgerson:  You’ve started with that already in.  How’d you do it?
Brody:  When you keep the bases together, I kept the old ER district and all the rest was short and I had to come far down here (Muldoon) which is what they didn’t want, but I used a hard line for Peters Creek.
Torgerson:  Should we change the northern boundary?
Brody:  This is good for ER and Muldoon.
Torgerson:  If we move to Matsu, can we do it without messing up the deviation.  I want to see Brody’s before we break for lunch. come back at 3 give staff chance to play with the northern boundary.  2000 people is a lot.
Taylor Bickford: All we have to do is take the five Matsu district and figre out how the districts are short. 
PeggyAnn McConnochie:  I want to see the maps. 

Brody:  I sued the boundary.  Split the bases and wound up with 2000 extra, and so had to come down into North Muldoon.  The pink area was short I had to go quite a ways into Muldoon.  Treating it the other way - these guys did - is much cleaner.  I got everyting less than one percent. 
Torgerson: If we take that 2000 out, we’d be close to close to zero and Matsu close to 1.5%. 
Brody:  The just a matter of adjusting.  Based on those two things we’ve been told - Seward Highway divided E and W Anchorage, tried to keep downtown the same and a few people across the lagoon. 
Here’s the think that spooks them out [Muldoon portion of ER].  Current House districts straddle the Seward Highway.  Also used Minn when I could.
Holm:  Could you overlay the MOA plan?
Brody:  Tried to keep the boundaries together as much as I could.
I started building downtown out to this point (Woronzof).
Torgerson:  Probably take yours out of Muldoon?
Brody:  yes
Taylor Bickford: If do what PeggyAnn McConnochie said, would that work?
Brody:  If I understand you, I’d take this out [Muldoon]
White:  Why is that one district eating the other - 31 - running N-S like pacman eating a pill.
Brody:  No one lives there.
Torgerson:  What about splitting the bases?  We heard not a good idea.
Brody:  No one on the base said it.
Torgerson: When you redraw yours, can you consider splitting the bases?  Do one split and one without. 
Brody:  Splitting with a new Peters Creek one.
Torgerson: Want to look at the impact of that before setting the boundary.  Do you have a quick solution?
Taylor Bickford:  ….
Torgerson:  I understand that.  Is there way to get to a quick resolution of Peters creek issue?
Taylor Bickford:  We can see how it affects the Matsu districts.
Torgerson: shift 1700 north.
White:  Have we looked at how many people actually vote on base?
Torgerson:  We haven’t used that before, not going to start now.  [Actually, this was discussed to jsutify Eilson into 40 if I recall, but it’s been move back to Faribanks.]

Taylor Bickford: If you don’t factor in 12 . ..  If take 12 all the way to 5, you have . .
Brody:  These five Matsu - if we move 2000 people up, then we’re 1200 over in he five districts. 
Taylor Bickford: Whats the number we can move to get to zero - 464. 
Brody:  How many people here?
Eric:  1700
Brody:  we have to move 1700.
Taylor Bickford: We don’t have to move them all.  They need 400.  If you move 1700, you have 1200 too many.
Brody:  Make these 3 and these 2 over and under by an equal amount.
[I can’t keep up with all these details back and forth about moving 1700 people from Peters Creek or Chugach - either to Matsu or Anchroage.
. . .
We built that shared district specifically to lower deviations in Matsu.  We need to define the number that keeps it at zero.
White:  What’s that rationale for overpopulating Valdez?
Taylor Bickford: Keep ER preseverved . . .
White:  ER has no need to be preserved, it’s not a separate identity. [That may be legally true, but not in people’s heads]
PeggyAnn McConnochie:  I’d like to actually see a map.
Torgerson: How long? an hour, and for lunch?
Taylor Bickford: doesn’t matter.
Torgerson:  2:30?
We know there’s a domino effect.  No split between Matsu and district 12.
Brody:  Our highest deviation in Fairbanks is 2.08
Torgerson: I’m ok with 1.5, but not pushing to Valdez.  We ran out of VRA trump cards. Anything else now.  Recess to 2:30.  Time now 12:55.  Nice Discussion.  Great discussion.  Don’t you think?

Excess Population, Palmer and Wasilla = 2 Senate Seats?, Price of a Pint in Cold Bay

This was started between the morning and afternoon sessions, but not finished when the afternoon session began.  And I've dawdled trying to figure out whether I should combine the two or not.  This is mostly morning session.  And less detail than overview of a couple of issues that came up. 

Since they've added watching the meeting via GoToMeeting, I've toyed with the idea of staying home and testing it.  And since the streets were wet this morning, it seemed like a good idea.  Access to the maps on my computer was better than what you can see projected on the screen at the meeting.  And since I've been to enough meetings to know everyone's voices, listening to audio only was pretty easy.

I'd recommend Alaskans try the audio and GoToMeeting, even if it's just for a few minutes, to see how your state is being divided into new political districts.  The links are on their website as I showed in the previous post.  

I'm afraid I'm not going to totally clarify these issues because I don't grasp all the details myself, but I think it is still worthwhile to mention them and maybe the people who do get it can help me understand.

Excess Population and Deviation Anchorage, Matsu, and Fairbanks

1.  How to deal with Anchorage (the Anchorage City and Borough were combined in 1975 to become the Municipality of Anchorage) excess population.  Anchorage has enough people for 16 districts with and extra 7,744 people that would need 10,011 more people for a perfectly sized district.  That's 43% of a district. 

2.  Matsu Borough has 88,995.  Enough for 5.012 districts.  That .012 comes out to 213 extra people for five districts, or about 42 extra per district. 

3.  Fairbanks-North Star Borough has 97,581people.  That's enough for five districts with 8,804 people left over. That's half a district.

Fairbanks' excess people were given to a district to the North and one that goes down to Valdez and slips into the Matsu. 

Yesterday they were talking about taking the excess Anchorage population and dividing it up among the 16 full districts.   You can't do that in Fairbanks with only five districts to absorb the extra 8,804 people.  For Anchorage, it makes sense at one level, but at another level it means Anchorage residents 'lose' almost half a district.  More people will live in each Anchorage district than will live in each Matsu district.  484 people extra per district doesn't sound like that much, but as I said, for all 16 districts in Anchorage that totals 7,744 people or enough for .43 of another district.  Are they better represented by being parceled out among the other 16 Anchorage districts?  Or would they be better off put into a new district or two with people from Kenai and/or Matsu?  Except Matsu doesn't really have any extra people. . .
 
So, a little while ago, the Board voted to adopt Matsu Option 2 map.

double click to focus and enlarge

I'm pretty sure this map is Option 2 because it adds Lazy Mountain and Sutton, and allows giving Eilson back to Fairbanks at Jim Holm's request.  But what does that mean?  Since Fairbanks has 8,804 extra people, where will they go? 

When they took Eilson, they used the justification that they needed to add people into a Native district and since Eilson had about 3000 people, but only 20% voter turnout, the addition of 3000 basically non-Native population would get the district the needed population without diluting the Native vote.    But I didn't hear much argument for putting Eilson back in other than it belonged to Fairbanks.

Torgerson had some questions about the high deviation in Anchorage if they adopted Matsu Option 2.  But they voted for it 5-0.

Should Wasilla and Palmer Share a Senate Seat?

In the just adopted Matsu Plan, Wasilla and Palmer each have their own house district.  As I understand it, that's how it was before.  And Senate districts are made up of two contiguous house districts. (Well, trying to prevent Retrogression has led to the possibility of a non-contiguous Senate district, but that's another story.)  But one of the board members, I believe Chair Torgerson, mentioned that the Mayor of Wasilla requested that Wasilla and Palmer NOT be in the same Senate district in the new plan.  No reason was given that I heard. 

Who does the mayor represent here?  Does he have the support of the council?  Of the population?  Or is he speaking as an individual?  The board has tried to accommodate a number of requests to include or not include certain areas in the same district.  Some have had long explanations of how this affects socio-economic integrity, how the two communities are connected by transportation links, health systems, Native corporations, and a variety of other reasons.  In other cases, no reason is given.

In an earlier plan, when Wasilla was split along the Parks Highway into two districts, one of the staff members said it was because the request was from someone who had candidates in mind who didn't want to be in the same district.  Is that the same motivation for having Wasilla and Palmer in different Senate districts?

Just so you don't think it's all really serious, the Board gets into side issues now and then, like this one:

Price of  Pint in Cold Bay
Some board members are getting fairly comfortable at these meetings and there was a short discussion of the price of a pint in various rural districts. I think someone mentioned having to pay $40.

They adjourned until 2:30pm.