Let's see if I can pull back and give a sense of what's happened these first two days. As I've mentioned, there have already been summary judgments that four districts - 1, 4, 37, and 38 - do not meet Alaska Constitutional requirements. So it's up to the Board that devised the plan to make the case that there was no way to draw the lines AND meet the requirements of the federal Voting Rights Act without fudging with the state requirements.
One line of argument they've made is that none of the private parties that have submitted plans were able to meet both the state requirements and the Voting Rights requirements either, so that shows it couldn't be done.
The plaintiffs seem to be trying to make a number of points leading that would eventually prove that, in fact, both the Voting Rights Act AND the Alaska Constitutional requirements could have been met.
1. Packing Districts
Arrington defined packing:
One of DOJ’s criteria is packing. Is there a higher concentration of natives than is necessary for them to elect the candidate of their choice.
Two definitions
1. evil, done on purpose
2. just higher than they need to be
2. Changing Terminology and numbers needed to meet the benchmark
They presented evidence to show that everyone began using the 2002 redistricting terminology. Then changed the terminology for the kinds and numbers of districts when she met with the Board in Anchorage. And then had yet new terminology in her Report in August. And then there were different numbers for how many districts had to be 'effective' even later.
3. There were other issues such as distinguishing among different Native groups and whether they could all be assumed to vote the same way. Reference was made to Florida where Puerto Ricans and Cubans are both lumped in as Hispanics, but vote differently.
The first two points seemed to be setting the stage for saying that YES, districts could have been created that would have met both the VRA requirements AND the state requirements.
1. None of the other groups presented plans that met both requirements because the final benchmark had been changed and changed again, long after their plans had been submitted. So the plans the board got were aimed at different criteria. Had they known the actual final benchmark requirements, they would have been able to meet them.
2. One example of this was packing. There were districts that had much larger percentages of Natives than necessary to be effective. Better use of these 'extra' Natives would have meant that different lines could have been drawn to make more compact districts and certainly Fairbanks wouldn't have had to have been cut up the ways it was. The counter to this is that the Natives live in very concentrated areas that are sparsely populated so it's hard not to pack them.
There are other issues as well, but those were some. There's also the issue of political gerrymandering in Fairbanks. This came up yesterday in the testimony of the two Fairbanks area State Senators and today's testimony by Joe Hardenbrook. But I'll hold off that discussion to a later post.
Observations of Testimony of Leonard Lawson (Monday)
Yesterday's testimony from Leonard Lawson tried to say that if the Board could have drawn the lines differently, particularly in Fairbanks itself, it would have been easy to keep the City of Fairbanks mostly within one Senate district. Defense had challenged Lawson's credentials to be an expert witness. Lawson had been the technical guy who did the mapping for the Rights Coalition which submitted alternative plans. So he knew a lot about how the Maptitude software works and he knew quite intimately all the districts of Alaska because he'd spent many months this year trying to make the districts work. Even yesterday White challenged Lawson's right to stray over from technical comments to policy comments. He also seemed to be trying to raise questions about his credibility because he works for the Democratic Party. My sense was that White came across as pretty hostile to Lawson, and Lawson stayed totally calm and answered the question as though he didn't even notice White's hostility. He knew details and was able to translate fairly complex material into understandable English. (Or maybe it's just that I went to enough Board meetings that I understood the context.)
Observations of Testimony by Dr. Ted Arrington (Tuesday)
Today's first witness, Dr. Ted Arrington, spoke about the kinds of analysis done to determine if the Voting Rights Act (VRA) requirements were met. How do you determine if a district is effective? Effective means that the minority group - in our case Alaska Natives - has the ability to elect the candidate of its choice. It involves things like block voting by Alaska natives, whether the whites in the district cross over and vote for the Native preferred candidate or whether they are polarized, meaning they vote for the other candidate. There's lots of analysis of voting by precincts and extrapolating how much of the Voting Age Population (VAP) is Alaska Native and how they vote and how the non-Natives in the district vote to figure out a minimum percentage VAP Natives in the district needed for it to be an Effective District.
A lot of White's cross examination aimed at getting Arrington to say he agreed with most of what the Board's expert, Lisa Handley, had done. And he did. (They are both working for the Department of Justice on the lawsuit over voting rights issues from Texas.) But Arrington also said he had problems with the terminology Handley used to describe different categories of districts needed by the state to meet the VRA requirements. He also took issue with her statements about the benchmark that Alaska had to meet. The benchmark comes from the last redistricting and is essentially the number of districts that have to have Native effectiveness, as described above. Early on Handley had talked about effective districts, equal opportunity districts, and Native influence districts. This terminology came after initial draft plans had been submitted where people used different terminology from the previous redistricting in 2001-2. Later, when Handley submitted her report, she said there had been even more changes and now there was new terminology. Basically Arrignton testified that the terminology was changed and the number of benchmark districts was changed.
There was also discussion of whether there was packing of districts.
Rough Notes: Normal precautions to take these as imperfect notes as fast as my fingers could go. I did have time to do some spell checking. Again there are different levels here. The Plaintiff's attorney, Michael Walleri speaks very slowly and in disjointed sentences. He starts, then changes his mind midsentence and tries to say the same thing a different way. Lots of pauses. And he stays close to he mic. This makes taking notes much easier.
The Redistricting Board's attorney, Michael White, talks very fast and is often not talking into the mic, so it's much harder to capture his questions accurately.
January 10, 2011 Redistricting Board Court Challenge Fairbanks
Judge Michael P. McConahy, Superior Court
[I haven't been too successful with the Read More After the Break Feature, but there is so much here, this seems like a good place to try to put it. Hit the Read More button - if this works - to see my notes of the testimony.][Update: It works for me on Safari, but not in Firefox.]