Powerline Pass

My daughter drove our van back up to Alaska after it enjoyed a winter further south.  So after the obligatory dinner at Thai Kitchen, she wanted to go to Powerline Pass at Glen Alps.  There was a brisk, chilly wind.

Normally I try to get a picture without the powerline, but I have a friend who is far more attuned to powerlines than to mountains, so this picture is for him.

Spring is a couple weeks behind what it is down in the city, but there were a few flowers that stand out against the brown grass.

I'm not sure what these little flowers are.  Alaskapi. . .are you there to assist?
[UPDATE June 9:  Alaskapi comes through - see her  thoughts on what these are in the comments.  Thanks!]

I think these are globe flowers, except the Audubon Guide says their range is:

British Columbia to Washington; in the Rocky Mountains south to Colorado.

 The lupine are just starting to flower.

10 = 1: Board Gives New Numbers To The New Districts

I listened to the meeting online today.  The highlights are
1.  New numbering scheme for the House and Senate Districts.
2.  Postponed a scheme for randomizing truncation (I'll do a post on that soon) until they have the report on changes in the Senate districts.  They'll meet next on Monday June 13 to do this task. 

Map with Draft Plan Numbers - Click to enlarge

The map above has the numbers they used in their draft plan.  The lists below in my meeting notes have these draft plan numbers and the newly assigned numbers.  So far, I don't think there is a new map with the new numbers. 

[Below are my running notes of the meeting. As always, be warned.  These are rough notes.  I've cleaned them up a little, but remember:  They give you the gist, but not necessarily everything and not verbatim. ]

June 7 Alaska Redistricting Board Meeting


10:05 call to order.  [Listening online.]
All members are there.  [Holm by audio, it sounds like]

Motion from yesterday that they postponed.  Taylor has a numbering system.  He wanted 1 to be, putting words inot your mouth.
Brody:  I know later the Senate seats will be letters, but for now,
Torgerson:  Look at Taylor’s map - it wasn’t as easy as it seemed.  We had one board member request to keep the rural Native districts the same - 37, 38, 40 - and the Senate numbers the same. 

[10:08  Pictures coming up on the GoToMeeting]


Taylor Bickford (Board Executive Director):  I got the shape files from Eric this morning. You have maps.  It’s also available on line.

Marie requested the rural boards stay the same for continuity.  PeggyAnn said she didn’t care about SE as long as it works for the state.

Torgerson (Board Chair):  I started with 40, 39, 38 . .  [For the most part, the ‘old’ numbers are the numbers they had on their draft plan maps.  They ARE NOT necessarily the old district numbers which, for the most part are substantially changed. These are the numbers from the new district maps they approved, so you need them if you want to see where the new districts are until they put up the final maps with the final numbers.]

I started with Fairbanks. 
So, District 10 (Fairbanks/Wainright) = the new District 1 + 11(North Pole/Eilson) = New District  2  = Senate A

Map has 'old' numbers - Click to enlarge

Holm:  1 is North Pole Eilson - you reversed them.
Taylor Bickford:  I’ll leave it
7 (Farmers Loop/Two Rivers)= D3 +  9 (City of Fairbanks) =D4= Senate B
8 (Chena Ridge) = 5  + 12 (Richardson Highway) = 6    = Senate C
Worked my way down.
 





Matsu
17 (Rural Matsu)  = new 7  paired with 14 (Palmer) = 8   =  Senate D
13 (Greater Wasilla) = new 9   16 (Big Lake)  = 10  = Senate E
15 (Chugiak) = 11  plus 19 (ER/FT Rich) = 12  = Senate F   [Connects Matsu and Anchorage]
















Anchorage
20 (Elmendorf) =13  plus  23 = 14 (College Gate) =  Senate G
26 (University) = 15 plus   27 (Spenard)=16   = Senate H
24 (Mt View) =17  plus  25 (Downtown)  18 = Senate I
28 (Turnagain)  = 19   plus   29 (Sand Lake)  = 20 = Senate J
31 (Oceanview) = 21  plus  30 (Taku Campbell)  =22  =  Senate K
For listeners, the Senate pairings were adopted yesterday, were just numbering them.
32 (Huffman) = 23     plus  22 (Abbot) = 24  = Senate L
21 (Muldoon/Basher) =25  plus 18 (Eagle River Valley) = 26  = Senate M

Click to enlarge

That completes Anchorage except South Anchorage
33 (South Anchorage to Girdwood/Portage) -27    34(North Kenai/Seward)=28   = Senate N
5 (Kenai-Soldotna) - 29  plus 6 (Homer/South Kenai) =30  = Senate O

Kenai done.  to get rural to work 36 to 40, we jumped from Kenai to SE

Southeast



Juneau so we could wrap around
4 (Mendenhall) = 31  plus
3 (downtown Juneau, Skagway/Petersburg) =32  = Senate P
1 (Ketchikan) =33 plus  2 (Sitka) =34 =   Senate Q

(See state map on top for these)
Native rural districts keep their same numbers [though some have changed significantly]:
35(Kodiak/Cordova) =35  36(Bristol Bay/Aleutians) =36  = Senate R

37(Bethel/Seldovia) =37  38(Wade Hampton/Denali) =38 = Senate S

39(Bering Straits/Interior Villages)=39  40(Arctic) =40 = Senate T

Torgerson:  Bob suggests the first pairings  We have truncation to do, but we don’t have the population numbers yet.  In my mind we’ve changed everything around quite a bit.  But I don’t know.  I think we should amend the motion to take truncation out.
Brody:  Divide the motion
Torgerson:  I’m ready to vote on truncation, but I was advised by counsel to wait for the report.  In my mind, except for Juneau . . . truncation we can do on Monday 13th.  Anything on metes and bounds issues Taylor Bickford or Eric bring up. 

PeggyAnn McConnochie:  Amend motion to deal with truncation on Monday 13.
Greene:  Don’t we have an amendment on the floor - was there a second?
Torgerson:  motion is to wait on truncation til May 13.
White:  point of order, is this motion dealing with 2 and 4 year rotation.  I don’t think you can do that because you have to fit them into their rotation.  You’re saying odd gets 2 and even gets 4 years.
You can adopt the numbers and Senate pairings, but you need the report first.  If you aren’t truncating someone, the person may fall into the wrong category.
Taylor Bickford:  If you adopt it now and a person doesn’t fall into the category, then you can . . .
Torgerson:  When can you do it? 
Taylor Bickford: Eric sent the raw data can’t do it today.
Torgerson: I think any reasonable person can look at the districts and see it.
Taylor Bickford: I could do that today.
Torgerson:  If we inadvertantly assign someone. . .we can’t give anyone a six year seat.
Taylor Bickford:  Can we adopt the numbers and the odd even numbers and then if the report requires we can amend if there are exceptions.  Once we have the data, and we say, these two people need to be truncated, except for these two people. 
Torgerson:  We could also truncate everybody.  You don’t think everything hasn’t changed substantially?
Taylor Bickford:  I don’t know.
Torgerson:  Truncation is not a legal issue, a board issue.  Really no criteria.  It’s up to us to do that. 
White:  Only standard you have is the district has substantially changed. 
Taylor Bickford: If you’re going to use the data, you can’t do that today. If you’re going to use something else, whatever that is,  . .  but data is too raw.
Brody:  Every district has changed by 5000 people.  If some districts had 3000 less, means more than 2500 people.  The top ten years ago was   and now we’re at 17,755, so at a mininum every Senate district changed by 5000 people. 
Torgerson:  I see what you’re saying.  Every district changed by more than 25%.
Last board used 90% change.  Wide gap.  Going by historical standards, then it means 10% change.
Holm:  Every house district in Fairbanks changed by 3000, Senate changed by 6000.  I can wait until Monday. 
Torgerson:  Michael’s point is well taken.  The report might affect any truncation.  But I can almost tell you which districts.  We know 40 didn’t change.  39 is substantially different.  I don’t know of any in Anchorage that didn’t change.  Ketchikan, Haines.  Only downtown Juneau, but it has Skagway and Petersburg.  I don’t think I need a change.
White:  You could preliminarily truncate and then make changes when report comes out.  You could adopt due to potential information. 
Torgerson:  What didn’t change?
Taylor Bickford:  Juneau and I think some districts in the Valley.  Juneau for sure jumps out to me. 
Torgerson:  Michael, you think we could adopt this and start over on Monday?
White:
Taylor Bickford:  Independent of truncation, we’re getting a numbering system. 
White:  We know 10 people will run in 2012.
Taylor Bickford:  You could set ten Senators for 2012 and ten for 2014. 
Greene:  Couldn’t we just wait until Monday 13th?  It would be clearer.
PeggyAnn McConnochie:  I’m of the same mind.  Talk about numbering, two years and four years  . . .
Torgerson:  I apologize.  Now that Marie says this, I think it’s appropriate.  We have a motion to bring truncation until Monday.  If maker of the amendment to the amendment will withdraw your motion.
PeggyAnn McConnochie:  withdrawy
Torgerson:  Main motion 1,3, 5, = two years 2, 4, 6  be four year, we postpone that to June 13.  When numbering is done it’s a lot clearer.  Table to June 13.
5-0 yes  Five-Zero motion postponed to next meeting on June 13.
PAM: I’ll make a motion for numbering districts and A through whatever.
Torgerson: moved to adopt Taylor’s numbering system.
5-0  yes  Board has adopted the numbering.

We’ve rolled through my agenda.  Anything else?
Taylor Bickford:  No, the numbering was big, it let’s us do the maps.
White:  Board plan has been adopted and put onthe website and allowed - make sure there’s a disclaimer that the staff is cleaning it up.
Torgerson:  We’ve been putting everything on the web, so I don’t see why we should stop now. 
White:  Just some disclaimer about cleaning up and final adopted on June 14. 
Torgerson:  Discussion with legal before, I anticipate having the proclamation signed by all the members.  Last time only the chair, a board member asked that we all sign, and I think that’s a good idea.  No legal precedence that we all sign, but I think it’s appropriate.

We stand adjourned at 10:43am.

Board Approves Senate Pairings

Continued from the previous post on the Monday afternoon session.  NOTE: All the district numbers they used are subject to change as they try to make the numbers go in some sort of sequential order around the state.

2.  They made their Senate pairings (that is they decided which house districts were to be paired as Senate districts.

Southeast Senate Districts:

Double click to enlarge

Districts 3 and 4.  They decided it made sense that the two districts that have Juneau in them should be one Senate district.   So districts 3 and 4 (I think 3 is downtown Juneau and south of Juneau and 4 is the Mendenhall Glacier area and north.) {Egan}

Districts 1 and 2.  With Juneau paired, you have only one other pairing left.  They mentioned that this pairs incumbent  Senators Kookesh (D) and Stedman (R), but this is unavoidable because they had already put them in the same House district.







Fairbanks Senate Districts

Fairbanks
Board member Holm:

It's a little better if you click on it

7&9 {Pairs Democrats Paskvan and Thomas}
8&12  {empty?}
10&11 {Coghill}

From my written notes:
Holm: Overwhelming reason for two pairings: 10&11 both have military contingent
7 goes out to Bush area, a little different from 9, but fits together well - people in Farmers’ Loop area.
8 really doesn’t have any connection with anyone down the valley, so it makes sense to put it with 12 - (the Valdez district)
Adding 2500 people to Fairbanks changes things. Used to be split.
Still have five districts - 8 connected to 12
Doubles up Thomas, I think, is in seven. Not sure where 8 goes. I think Paskvan is in 9
Coghill is in 11, nobody in 10.
No one in house district 8. Whose the Sen from Delta?
Torgerson: Coghill - 12 and 8 will be a new Senator.
Essentially, two truncated. How did that work.
Torgerson: I’ll point out, 12 is the Valdez district. A little outside of Fairbanks.
Holm: They’ve been paired for a long time.
Brody: We voted not to consider Senators in our discussion. What are the plus and minuses of having a vacant district or each one having a district. [No one picked up this discussion.]
5-0 yes adopted.

Double click to enlarge

Matsu Senate Districts
Matsu
3:57
Torgerson:  Testimony was to put Wasilla and Palmer separate.
15 goes with Anchorage 19 - split district with Anchorage
14&17 - Palmer to rural Matsu
13&16 - Wasilla/Big Lake/Pt. McKenzie
If they want to be separate - overwhelmingly. 
Brody:  Bothers me with the odd numbers above and below Anchorage.  Rational way to hook odd number of Kenai to Matsu?
Torgerson: If rational no.  If a way?  yes.

I'm not sure how this affects incumbent Senators. [Update June 7:  Phil Munger in a comment below says Menard is in 17 and Huggins is in 14.]



Kenai Senate Districts
I'm not completely sure about the Kenai districts.  The maps aren't too helpful.
5 and 6  are paired.  I believe this is Kenai and Soldotna going on down to Homer. {Wagoner}
34 (North Kenai Peninsula and the road all the way to Seward) & 33 (South Anchorage) {Giesel}
I don't know how this affects incumbents.

Anchorage Senate Districts

My understanding is that Chair Torgerson worked on these with the staff.  Using AFFR's map with Anchorage incumbent locations, I'm guessing at the incumbents in each district.  Don't bet on the incumbents, that's speculation.

• 21/18 Majority of Muldoon with Eagle River (dark green) {Davis - ER possibly Dyson?UPDATE: No, I'm told there is no pairing here, just Davis.}

  

  Click to enlarge - names are community councils

• 20/23 - Russian Jack/ Elmendorf  (yellow) {Wielechoski?}
• 22/32 (Abbot Loop Mid Hillside, Huffman/O’Malley (puke green) {Meyer?}
• 24/25 - downtown (blue){Ellis}
• 26/27 Midtown/UMed/Campbell Park (Brown){empty?}
• 28/29 SandLake/Lake Turnagain (pinkish - north and south of the airport){ French?}
• 31/30Taku and Bayshore/Klatt (burnt orangish){McGuire?}
• 33/34 (Hillside-South Anchorage/Kenai Peninsula to Seward) {Giesel}

Native Senate Districts 

39/40 Nome/North Slope {Olson}
37/38  Aleutians West-Bethel/Wade Hampton-Matsu-Denali-Fairbanks {Hoffman}
35/36  Kodiak/Bethel-Dillingham {Stevens}



Here's some speculation on the Senate incumbents who I think are paired:

Southeast:  This one appears unavoidable, at least given the House districts they created. Stedman and Kookesh live in the same district - though people say that Stedman has two houses each in a different district.  With the loss of a House district, this is hard.  Since Kookesh is Native, it may raise issues with the Department of Justice.





Fairbanks:  They've paired two Democratic Senators while there is a vacant Senate seat nearby.  Seems they could have figured a way to work this out if they had wanted to.

Anchorage:  Bettye Davis, a Democrat and the only African-American in the Legislature has been paired with the Eagle River district.  [UPDATE June 7:  I've promoted Stoltz from the House to the Senate - sorry, it was late last night when I finished this - and I was told today that Dyson lives the current 19, so there was no pairing of Sen. Bettye Davis with another incumbent] in I don't know where the Eagle River/Chugiak Senators live, but since Tom Stoltz is from Chugiak, I'm guessing he's in the district paired with Matsu and that Davis is paired with Fred Dyson (R.)  Eagle River has been a pretty safe Republican area.  There is an open Senate district not far from Davis' Anchorage district, though the lines would have had to have been drawn differently to make them contiguous.  I'm assuming the two Eagle River districts were not paired because each has a Republican Senator. 

A lot of Republicans would like to see an end to the even split in the Senate that has led to a coalition majority there.  (For that matter Democrats would too, but the other way.)  These Senate pairings would seem to make it a little harder for Democrats to maintain their ten seats.

Board Approves New Kodiak and Dillingham Districts

I'll try to summarize the outcomes of the afternoon session of the Alaska Redistricting Board.  Part 1 - this post is on the new Kodiak and Dillingham Districts.

NOTE:  All the district numbers will be changed so there is a more sequential numbering system throughout the state.  So numbers given here are related to the maps they were using today. 

1.  They approved a new map of South West Alaska Districts which they believe will meet Department of Justice standards of no retrogression.  The map below is close, but turned out not to be the actual map they created.  They got enough Native population into the Kodiak district so that it could be paired with the Dillingham.

Double Click to Enlarge

To do this they had to find Native areas to pull into the Kodiak district (35) (like Nanwalek and Port Graham) and they had to shed non-Native locations like Dutch Harbor from the Dillingham District (36.)  Actually, they created a district that goes from Yakutat in SE across Prince William Sound to Kodiak.

Double click to enlarge

To get a high enough Native voting age population in the second district for this Senate pair, they had to shed some non-Native population.  Since Dutch Harbor is mostly non-Native, the ended up splitting the Aleutians at Akutan.   And the connected back to the Lower Kuskokwim Delta.  I think St. Paul and St. George are part of this District 37, but I'm not completely sure - the color on the map I have is wrong, but I think someone mentioned that. 

You can see from the video why I didn't totally catch it all.  The maps they handed out weren't labeled right.  The map they were looking at on the computer turns out to be the wrong map. 

Here's board member PeggyAnn McConnochie presenting these new districts to the board before they approved them.





1B - they had to reapprove Kenai Borough because some of it had been taken out (Nanwalek and Port Graham seemed to be the key ones) and put into the Kodiak district that now goes from Yakutat to Kodiak.


They had an hour long executive session before lunch to talk about litigation issues before this plan was presented.  Presumably there might be some questions about House districts not being exactly contiguous.  This comes from the state constitution and means:   "All parts of a district being connected at some point with the rest of the district."  Since the Aleutian Chain is islands, they have to be connected by water, but what about that section on the mainland that includes Bethel, Chefornak and Mekoryuk?  It's not clear, as I said already, if St. Paul and St. George are in D36 or D37.  I think they said the color was wrong on the map.  They could be the contiguous link between D37's Eastern Aleutian section and the mainland section. 

Removing Warts - Board Conceptually Approves Anchorage, Matsu, Valdez, Fairbanks, and Southeast

Sunday, the staff said they spent removing 'warts' from the various plans and today they went through them to explain strange bumps and shapes that for various reasons like following a creek, or a housing development or a census block that had few people but took up lots of land, they left the warts in.  As they went through each area, the conceptually approved them.  Then, before approving the rural Native districts, they went into executive session to discuss potential litigation, which I assume they think could result from their Native districts.  They scheduled to reconvene at two.  I scheduled another meeting I had to do for whenever the break was, so I haven't been able to load any photos to show some of the 'warts' they left in.  It's going on 2pm, so I'm just posting this for the three people who care. 





Below are my running notes during the meeting.  I haven't had a chance to edit at all.  So be warned - this is like an abstract painting of the meeting.  You get the idea, but don't assume anything is verbatim or that everything is there.  I did a little video taping, so there's a gap for that too. 

June 6, 2011

Taylor Bickford:  Spent weekend going over plans, cleaning up little things.  Go over the changes with the board so they know what it is before they approve it

Start with Anchorage:  Chair circled some warts and asked me to see if they could be fixed.  How?  If not, why not?

District 33 - affected 33 and 21 - added tail on hilside.  Without the tail, it follows the Basher Community Council exactly.  Didn’t affect any population.

Chunk of 22 into 23 - couldn’t be changed without fundamentally changing the plan.   REally dense population in neighborhood - 120, 135.  Don’t cleanly break.  No matter how you change it, if you put it back into 23, there’s no clean place to do.  You’re following the Chester Creek boundary

19/20  along base boundary.  No one lives there, but right next to it is a dense block.  Added one empty block in.

27nw corner - nothing severe, something to clean up if you could.    Fix one part, clean boundary along the airport to fish creek.  How would it affect Meets and bounds - good to have easily describable boundaries.  Also makes voters job easier to understand where their district is. 

PeggyAnn McConnochie  asked about another bump -A:  follows the creek. 

30, 31, 32, 33 - boundary RR and Seward Highway.  chunk of 32 past the Seward Highway.  Just looked awkward.  I tried to move things around.  Couldn’t figure out how to get the population back across the highway, wihtout shifting the district.  Huge amount of population.  Also awkward blocks going north - blocks go way up when you click them.  Deviations still good between 31, 32, 33.

10:21

this one followed campbell creek, Lake

32/22 - no way to make this straight - block shape problem, no way to fix, or natural boundary involved. 

10:22 - that concludes our work for Anchorage.  Making sure taken care of in logical way. 

27 yellow 26 25  - following Chester Creek, low population.  I didn’t want to change the district.  We’ve all done this hundreds of times, you know you shift 100 people and then hours later you have changed all the districts. 

Now on MOA Website - they have shape files online.  Pulling them up

PeggyAnn McConnochie:  Can you download current districts over this map?  A:  I can do that.

Almost identical to what we looked at the other day.  Want to point out htat West Anchorage - this whole area is airport and Kincaid park.  You could add it to 29 or 28 and it doesn’t make a difference.  Population is in Spenard, Forest Park, Turnagain, Westchester Lagoon. 

21 - You had Muldoon split 4 ways before and now all one district.

Downtown mostly the same.  Reunites Govt. Hill area, what we heard from testimony, respects the military boundary which other plans did not.    Everyone good on that?  I’ll check if the shape files are good. 

Back to MOA files online.  I think

PeggyAnn McConnochie:  Now that we know this, we won’t use it any more (software) [I think that’s what she was saying]

How many times community councils split.  A lot all in one district.  Some are split.  Some misleading because majority will still be together.  in this area - 22 and 33 -  a lot is unpopulated.

Really big - near airport - only divided 2x.  twice, twice, and a lot that are whole.  We don’t see some of the issues of other plans with seven or eight splits or three

Anything on Anchorage or move on to next region.

PeggyAnn McConnochie:  Move to adopt.
Marie Greene:  second
Torgerson:  Motion should reflect this is final draft plan.  Discussion?
I supposed we should do roll call
5 yes 0 nay  - Anchorage plan adopted as final draft plan. 

Next - Matsu, Kenai, Valdez, Fairbanks

Brody:  In Anchorage plan we didn’t look at ER.
Torgerson:  Good point.  Technically ER is part of Anchorage
Taylor Bickford:  We really didn’t change.  on the west there’s the Bases boundary.  Both ER districts - 18, 19 and a handful were the same in the various plans.  but 18 and 19 were identical.  I didn’t change anything.  I don’t know this area enough.
Torgerson.  We were only looking at anomalies.
TB: Moving into Matsu.  There were some changes.
Starting with 16.  [I took a short phone break.]    I don’t know Matsu that well.  Making little changes that sound like what I got on video
10:43:  That sums up Matsu.  A couple shifts on 12 boundary and 14 boundary.  Trying to respect city boundaries a little more.  You have to pick how far you’re going to bring 12 in.  Good to get Eric’s feedback.  If picking unpopulated districts, then affect compactness.  How far should you go.  Northern end follows drainage, Chase Place boundary until it intersects with another drainage. Trying to make Eric’s life easier [I think because he has to write the written descriptions of the boundaries of each district.]
Deviation from 12 increased, but not because of what happened on Matsu side.  I’d like to jump in on that now if that’s ok.
Torgerson: I think we should adopt Matsu first.  Anymore questions for Taylor? 
PeggyAnn McConnochie: I like that. 
Motion - PeggyAnn McConnochie?  Second:  Holm?
5-0 vote adopted

Go to district 12 next?

Cleaned up lines at Kenny Lake - mostly people got missed.  Helped 38 Native population.  Also Copper Center, mostly Native, a couple blocks had been added to 12 and I added everything back to 39.  Then if you work your way up, none of these other areas are split.

PeggyAnn McConnochie:  39’s VAP went up, right? 
Taylor Bickford: Got it from 66 to 67.  Good because grabbed some racially polarized areas of the state.  Probably some zero lots here - meets and bounds issue, not population. 
They gave us a sheet of criteria and this meets all those criteria.
Torgerson:  I don’t think they included the Matsu.
Taylor Bickford: They have the whole Delta.  That was one of Valdez’ points.  “If you take in Matsu, ok as long as not Pt. McKenzie.”
PeggyAnn McConnochie:  You did great.
Torgerson: Will of the floor on Valdez?
Holm:  We haven’t looked at upper portion.  Did you change anything in Fairbanks?
Taylor Bickford:  No changes.
Holm:  I say we should move to adopt that in our plan.
PeggyAnn McConnochie: second
Torgerson: Discussion?  Vote:
5-0 adopte D12 into final plan.
What’s next?  Kenai, SE, Fairbanks
Taylor Bickford:  No changes to SE.  PeggyAnn McConnochie did that with fine tooth come and they traveled the area, so no changes.
PeggyAnn McConnochie:  Eric said he did some water blocks. 
Torgerson:  Motion to adopt SE into our final draft plan.  Discussion?
5-0  yes

That leaves Kenai and Fairbanks - which next?

Taylor Bickford:  Kenai, no, let’s go to Fairbanks.
No changes.  Jim’s from Fairbanks and knows it well.
Holm:  No.  Looked at moving Eilson a bit, but no changes.  Population is pretty close. 

Torgerson: Motion to adopt Fairbanks into final draft plan.
5-0  yes - adopted

Next is Kenai:

Kenai depends on Native districts and how we do Fairbanks.

Going to Executive Session to discuss lititagion. 

Chester Creek Moose

Besides the exercise, the cheap fuel, the green of the trees. the murmur of the creek, and the free parking spot right at the Redistricting Board's door, biking gives me avian symphonies every day, and once in a while I get to mingle with a moose in its natural habitat. 

 

My ride from the University area to downtown is about 3.5 miles and maybe half of it is on the Chester Creek bike trail.  It is, without a doubt, the best part.  And a moose picture let's me put up a really short post.

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.