Redistricting Board Back on Track

I likened the board yesterday to a graduate student having a meltdown late into a major semester long project.  And today, like such a student,  the board seems to have gotten their frustrations out of their system, gotten a good night’s sleep, and this morning were proceeding with renewed energy and professionalism. They began with timelines for the Board to finish.

1.  Board start work - 3-26
2.  Board Drafts Constittuional Plan   2-27
3.  Plan reviewed by VRA expert - 3-28
4.  Board Adopts Amended plan - 3-30
5.  Board Adopts proclamation - 3-31
6.  Board Submit plan to Court - 4-04


New Love for 3rd Party Plans and The Bethel-Matsu Senate Pairing

The third party plans that were disparaged yesterday were cited today as giving the board possible new options.  Chair Torgerson said that the AFFR’s and (with prompting from executive director Bickford) the Rights Coalition’s pairing of Bethel and Matsu House Districts to get the third Native Senate district looked promising and that he’d instructed staff to see if they could adjust the plans they are working on to achieve that. [I put up a video of AFFR Rep Joe McKinnon talking about this plan in the previous post.  I couldn't figure out the third Senate pairing.  It turns out to be the Bethel-Matsu pairing.]

AFFR Plan

Working On Two Plan Strategy

The Board is now working on two plans to move forward.  One is their new plan that has gone through the Hickel Process mandated by the Supreme Court.  But there have been concerns about whether they can pull off a plan that will get both DOJ approval and Supreme Court approval soon enough for the 2012 election deadlines. 

So, they are also planning to submit a copy of the original Proclamation plan with the two Fairbanks districts that were ruled unconstitutional (HD 1 and 2) cleaned up.  The Supreme Court has given the Board the option of using the Proclamation plan as a fallback for the 2012 election if they can’t get a new plan created and approved in time for the election.  This would allow them to have a fallback in case the new plan doesn’t get approved in time.

Break Until 2pm



The board recessed until 2pm to give the staff time to work on the plan that would pair the Bethel and Matsu districts.  Chair Torgerson also asked them to look at pairing Bethel and Anchorage, though taking precincts like Kincaid or Inlet View as they talked about yesterday seems particularly bizarre to me and others who were watching.

Joe McKinnon Video on AFFR Redistricting Plan

The Redistricting Board is trying to find a plan that will meet both the Alaska constitutional requirements and the Voting Rights Act (VRA) requirements. The initial plan they drew up did get pre-clearance from the Department of Justice (DOJ) on the VRA, but there were districts that didn't meet constitutional standards. The VRA takes precedence over the Alaska Constitution, but if there must be violations of the constitutional standards, they must be minimal.

The Supreme Court said they couldn't evaluate the Board's submitted plan because they had no benchmark against which to measure whether the constitutional violations were the least they could be. So now the board is doing what it can to develop a new plan. They are having trouble getting to one.

 Meanwhile, I know, from talking to people at the board meetings, that there are at least three groups that have developed plans:

•  Calista has submitted one or two plans. 
• The Rights Coaliton (a group which includes the Democratic Party) has submitted a plan. 
• AFFR (Alaskans For Fair Redistricting made up of union and Native Corporations) 

In the video below, Joe McKinnon talks about the AFFR plan.  I've looked at the plan since we made the video and I need Joe to show me the third Native Senate seat.  It's hard to evaluate the constitutionality from the page size maps, but the compactness and contiguity seem to be ok for the larger districts.  For the smaller districts, there's not enough detail to know. 











Joe expresses some concern about the process - the lack of interest expressed by the board for third party plans.

Redistricting Board Hits Low Point In Process

When my grad students worked on their semester long capstone projects, there came a time, not far from the end, when it would all become too much and they'd throw up their hands and want to give up. 

The Redistricting Board seemed to reach that point this afternoon.  They couldn't make the PAM-E plan - that paired Senators Hoffman and Stevens - work  out in any other configuration.  The numbers weren't there.  The time frames for getting a plan before the June 1 filing deadline, what with getting VRA clearance and court approval, just looked impossible to them.

Should they tell the Supreme Court to just use the Proclamation Plan for this year's elections - an out the Supreme Court offered them?  Or should they try something, anything else?  Then board member Marie Green, who doesn't talk much, said she'd like to get more public participation, allow the private groups to submit plans.  The Chair has always been polite and respectful to Marie Green and he was when he said he'd decided to not open things up to outside groups.  And then he went on a rant about the people out there who said they had plans but never gave any numbers.  From my rough notes - not verbatim, but sort of the gist - he said, in part:

  "We have the save the Democrats in Fairbanks plan.  It was introduced to the court, but not to the board.  We’ve had three or four given to us that have been sent.  The ones making noise now haven’t sent us a plan.  They want formal presentation time.  I hesitate to give. If they were that excited why didn’t they send it Jan 17 the day after the court?  I understand they gave us 8X11, but no shape files.  That looks good, but no numbers.  I understand how you feel Marie, but I’m not sure about opening up."

Leonard Lawson, who presented the "Rights Coalition" plan ('save the Democrats in Fairbanks" plan) was sitting next to me and said they'd turned in the shape files (that have all the numbers) to the court and when he found out earlier today that the Board didn't have the numbers,  he brought them in.

Then Marie Green said she had a couple of plans emailed to her and she thought they had numbers.

And then Executive Director Taylor Bickford said that the Rights Coalition plan had come in about 20 minutes ago and it appeared to have the numbers and there was also the Calista plan.

One thing I admire about Chair Torgerson is that while he has gone on a couple rants like this before, he is also able to back up and change course once he gets it out of his system.  He worked through this and at the end when he was saying the meeting would reconvene tomorrow, he said, "Unlike your chair, try to have patience."





I'll try to put up more details on the meeting later and some video.  It was a very interesting afternoon. 

Board Gets VRA Expert Report, Breaks into Work Groups

The Board convened, reported on what they heard from VRA expert Handley, then broke into two groups of Staff and members to work on the Hickel 01 plan and the old PAM-E plan which was found to be constitutional (by the board) but they didn't use it because it paired Senators Hoffman and Stevens and they speculated it would have trouble with the Department of Justice. The key points from Lisa Handley:

• The Proclamation Plan is the new benchmark (The Proclamation Plan is the one they submitted but got turned down by the courts.  The Department of Justice (DOJ) measures retrogression from the last plan they approved.  Since the approved the Proclamation Plan (though the Alaska courts did not) it becomes the new benchmark plan.  So the number of effective native districts and the percentages of Native Voting Age Population (VAP) in that plan become the new norm, the new benchmark.  Though attorney White said he's still checking on this because the language includes "Last legal plan enforceable and in effect" and it's questionable if this plan was ever 'in effect' because the state courts rejected it.  No legal precedent for situation where state courts rejected a plan.  But Lisa Handley's interpretation is the most conservative interpretation.
• If they use the PAM-E plan, the lowest Native VAP would have to be 38%, though it would be better to be higher.
• If they DOJ had to choose between a plan with over all lower Native VAP's or higher Native VAP's but with a Native incumbent pairing, they would choose the latter. 

Then they broke up into two groups to work on the plans.

Here are my notes from the meeting.  CAUTION:  They are very rough notes, good for getting a sense of what happened, but not to be relied on. 

PHOTO NOTE:  Photos are from after the meeting when they were working on the plans.

Board Meeting 3/27/12  

10:02  Open
All there, Holm by phone.

McConnochie, Sandberg (GIS expert), Green

Torgerson: explaining what we are doing.  Eric Sandberg is back - GIS expert  - they will go to work session in two groups.  They will go ahead using the PAM-E plan as the base = put the Senator from Kodiak and Bethel together and Torgerson and ?? will work on Hickel 001 plan.

If ready, we’ll start adopting the new proclamation plan.  Otherwise push to tomorrow.  Exec. Session is listed in case we think we need one.  So far no need.
Approval of Agenda

Torgerson:  Letter from Handley.  Roll back everything a little bit.  Say this again because I’m building a record.  SC sent this back because we failed to follow the Hickel process, because we didn’t just focus on Constitution.  Last couple of days we engaged int hat process.  We adopted Hickel 01 plan and send the files to Dr. Handley, VRA expert, she worked late.  Her expertise is only whether we comply with VRA, not if comply with Constitution.  That is Board decision. 

Received this morning Dr. H’s report.  Handed out.

3 state house districts that meet requirements.
Interior Village - reconstructed HD 6 has NATIVE VAP of 33.3??%  this area needs at least a 50% VAP,   Other short district = Senate R  - Chain plus Kodiak.  her rec is 41.8%, we can come down lower because Chain is least polarized, but Hickel plan was 29.74% which is substantially below.  Conversation this morning, her lowest rec for R is 38%, so that’s our target.  She’d have to do an analysis, but she’d consider that probably ok.   ONe less effective House and Senate districts.  New BM plan is last one DOJ approved.  That’s our new benchmark.  Proclamation plan is now the Benchmark - the last plan DOJ reviewed and approved. 
So, our plan is retrogressive.  Because plans exist that are not retrogressive, it takes away the excuse that it can’t be done.  I believe it doesn’t not comply with Sec. V of the VRA and thus would not be approved.
PeggyAnn McConnochie: If we submit plan that doesn’t meet approval from DOJ?
OK< then back to us?
Torgerson: If you establish a bar at 46% and then come back with 42 you are below the bar.  But Handley said we can come up with lower.  We have a little more leeway.

Board Chair Torgerson and Member Brodie

lowering the #s - ability to elect or not - not any magic number.  Targets DOJ will rely on, but if lower, she’ll have to do new analysis to see if effective or not. 
Benchmark now is the Proclamation plan.  When I looked at that, looked at CFR on cases and asked her to check if that was the standard they use.  she did check, she was taking the most conservative approach.  Last legal plan enforceable and in effect - whether our is in effect.  There is not state plan that has been pre-cleared and State court that had problems under state law.  By doing the approach here, she’s taken most conservative approach.  If retrogressive after proclamation plan, it will surely be retrogressive on 2002 plan. 
Taylor Bickford:  She said if the 3rd Sen district was over 42% no further analysis would be necessary.  If in 38% range, she would have to do another analysis.
PeggyAnn McConnochie: The only way we got R up to where we did - trial court said it was not legal, if court said it was not legal and weren’t able to do that, is DOJ going to say that the plan, can she make an argument that the 38% would work,
Taylor Bickford: yes, it is riskier, but the argument can be made.  If plan at current range that pairs Hoffman and STevens, or plan that does not pair them, but is lower %, the DOJ would prefer the higher %.  The pairing alone wouldn’t hurt.  35% that doesn’t pair them and something like we have that does pair them.  DOJ would not except the lower %, the pairing itself wouldn’t be enough to kill it. 

Brodie working map on computer

Torgerson:  Jim’s Item 5.
White:  She’ll be available after 2pm our time to talk.
Torgerson:  I wanted her minimums, the rest if hypothetical.  We’ll work sessions.  Stay in this room.  Hooked up two projectors, we’ll work independently, but together.  Under open meetings act.  Open process as far as watching, but warn people not to engage the Board members.  Rather not lobby board members during the process.  We will take breaks, and you can talk them. 
Going off the record cause there is no way to have this on teleconference because two teams working.  We’ll come back around 1:30pm.  Or just work through rest of the afternoon and or evening.
Ask board members and staff, make findings as you go along.  If you bring forward a plan, that you have some sort of indication of why you did that process.  SC ruling, because it didn’t follow the process the court couldn’t demonstrate the Constitutional violations were necessary.  So you have to make that trail.  Also conforms to footnote 15 - that board make findings etc.  So that’s what we want to do to make a few notes.  A little more cumbersome than we did in the past. 

10:25  Take a 10:35 short recess and we’ll come back together.  Stand in recess.

Redistricting Board Adopts "Hickel" Plan 001 (With Fairbanks Maps)

Overview of What Happened

Monday they unveiled a plan template and three "Hickel" plans based on the template.  The template had the proclamation plan (the one sent back by the Court) districts - Southeast, Anchorage, North Slope, Matsu, and Kenai - that were not challenged and that people believe to be constitutional.  The rest of the map - interior, Fairbanks, and Western Alaskan and the Aleutians - was blank.

The three plans they presented - Hickel 001, 002, and 003 - filled in the white section with redrawn districts.  In each case the rural districts had excess population that didn't make up a whole district.  The 'whole' district in Hickel 001 was created by taking population from Fairbanks.  Hickel 002 with similar rural districts, took excess population from Matsu, and Hickel 003, with reconfigured rural districts, took excess population from Anchorage.

Tuesday they added Hickel 004 with rural areas similar to Hickel 003 which took the excess population from Kenai and Anchorage.

Then attorney White evaluated the constitutionality of each of these four plans.

• Kenai, no.  
• Anchorage, no.  
• Matsu, no.  
• Fairbanks, yes. 

Then the Board approved Hickel 001 (Fairbanks) as their constitutionally compliant plan to be sent to VRA expert Lisa Handley for her to evaluate whether Hickel 001 will be VRA complaint.

They know it will not.  And then they will start making those adjustments.  None of the printed maps was big enough to see the details of the urban areas, though the shape (GIS) files now available (see one of the two March 27 posts)  to people who had the software programs that would enable them to see the maps in detail.  I did take some pictures of the Fairbanks area from the computer before I left.  They are at different levels of detail so people can see how the district maps were drawn.  You can click on the images to enlarge them. 

 They also have a table showing how the house districts are paired to make Senate districts along with the population and deviation numbers for all the districts.  [I don't see it on the Board's website.  A staff member told me to take the odd number and the next even number - 1+2 - to figure out which seats are paired.]

 Staff confirmed that:

• Goldstream and Ester population were put into the rural district
• 80% of the City of Fairbanks is contained in two house districts that are paired in a single senate district

 Staff was going to send the shape files to Lisa Handley who was going to make a preliminary review in time for the 10am meeting Wednesday and then follow that up with a formal, written evaluation. 

 Below are my rough notes of the meeting as I took them.  USUAL WARNING:  These are rough notes, not at all verbatim, and you should use them to get a rough idea of the discussion, but don't assume that they are accurate or complete.


I'll try to put my notes for Monday on SCRIBD too for those with insomnia. Rough Notes: Alaska Redistricting Board March 27, 2012 You can make the SCRIBD window full screen for easier reading. It's the icon on the bottom left.

Mayor Sullivan Brings Coffee To And Chats With Sidewalk Sitter John Martin

[UPDATE 3/30/12 - Hear protesters describe the Thursday night bust.]

Sometimes you are at the right place at the right time.  As I got off the bus downtown I saw that John Martin had not been ousted by the police during the night, despite the notice posted at his 'camp' in front of City Hall.  [I just posted about this in the last post.] As I said good morning to John, he told me to wait a second and there'd be some good video.

Shortly Mayor Dan Sullivan came out of the Kaladi Brothers across the street with two cups of coffee.  He gave one to John and they chatted a few minutes about homeless policy.  John had told me beforehand that he was lobbying for a homeless camp at 3rd and Gambell.

In the video, it's hard to hear John, though the mayor is a audible.  It's hard with the traffic noise.  Although I've opposed the mayor's policies on occasion, this was not done for the cameras.  I just happened to show up after he told John he'd get him a cup of coffee.

[UPDATE Aug 3, 2018:  Some of my old videos stored at Viddler no longer work.  Sorry.][UPDATE Jan 31, 2019:  The Viddler videos seem to be working again.]




Meanwhile, the Redistricting Board meeting was postponed an hour so I had time to work on this.  But I've gotta get back there.

John Martin Back Camped In Front Of City Hall

Click to Enlarge

[I set the timer wrong for this, it was supposed to be posted earlier.  Sorry.]

After the redistricting board meeting I walked past City Hall and saw a small encampment and John Martin.  I'd videoed John at the Assembly meeting when they passed the law to prevent sitting on the sidewalk downtown because John had been camped in front of City Hall and the mayor didn't like it.

After the anti-sitting-on-the-sidewalk ordinance bill was passed, John said, they allowed him to pitch his tent on the Park Strip, but they took it away recently and now he's back at City Hall.  When I mentioned the law and asked if he could still stay here, he pointed to the notice, which expired March 25.




The video is very short since I ran out of room on my sound card.





We'll see if he's still here tomorrow.

Redistricting Board Attorney Responds to Supreme Court Decision

The Alaska Supreme Court's main decision on the redistricting plan was that the plan had to go back for reworking because the Board drew its plans with a focus on complying with the Voting Rights Act, not with a focus on complying with the Alaska Supreme Court decision.  Each has standards the Board tried to comply with, but the Board's attorney, Michael White, told the Board, early on, that the federal Voting Rights Act took precedence over the Alaska Constitution.  So, while the Board kept the Constitutional requirements in mind, it decided to set up the necessary nine Native districts and then work out the rest of the state.

The Supreme Court (not to mention the plaintiffs) pointed out a section in the 1994 Supreme Court Case Hickel v. Southeast Conference that said

"[t]he Board must first design a reapportionment plan based on the requirements of the Alaska Constitution. That plan then must be tested against the Voting Rights Act. A reapportionment plan may minimize article VI, section 6 requirements when minimization is the only means available to satisfy Voting Rights Act requirements.,,5"

On this basis, the Supreme Court said the Board had to go back and follow the court mandated process.

I couldn't help thinking that the Board's attorney surely had to know this.  Why didn't he direct the Board to do this?  Did he interpret it differently?  Did he think the Board was complying with it?  Did he think it wasn't relevant to this year's decision?

So I asked him after today's meeting.  I'm afraid I didn't have my camera out at the beginning.  He began by saying the key citation from the Hickel decision was completely off the radar.  As the video begins he's saying that the ruling essentially tells the board to ignore the federal law they have to comply with while they concentrate on meeting the state constitutional requirements.  You can hear the rest of his response on the video. 

If you want to see what the court said, you can see the text of the decision with my attempts to explain it here.  It's really not all that long. 

Redistricting Board Offers Three "Hickel" Plans

Member Green and Director Bickford, Torgerson and McConnochie in back

I still have to finish another 35 pages of Dirt Music for tonight's book club meeting, but let me post my quick overview of the board meeting.


They had  three "Hickel" plans.  This refers to the Supreme Court's citing of the 1994 Hickel v Southeast Conference decision which lays out a process for the Redistricting Board to follow and which was the basis for their sending the original plan back to be redrawn.

 
They started with a template that kept the parts of the state from their submitted plan that met the constitutional requirements (Southeast, Anchorage, Matsu, Kenai, and North Slope) intact. 

"Hickel" map template

They left blank the interior and Fairbanks districts and Western Alaska and Aleutians.  (see map)

When they tried to set up the missing rural districts they were about 7,000 people short* which they had to take from urban areas.

So starting from that template, they made three options.
Hickel 1 - reshapes the districts in the blank part and gets the 7,000 from Fairbanks.
Hickel 2.  does the same and gets the extra people from Matsu
Hickel 3.  does the same and gets the extra people from Anchorage. 

(The three Hickel maps are in the previous post.  Or you can get download them here.  But you can't see them large enough to see the details of what they do to the urban areas.)

Director Bickford and Member Brodie

It’s probably my imagination, but it almost seemed as though the meeting were scripted.  People asked the right questions - does it meet this or that constitutional requirement and if not why not - to show they had tried everything they had to try.  Board Chair Torgerson at one point actually said: 

"Just asking the same question ten times to get it on the record."

It seemed fairly reasonable as they went through Fairbanks.  This isn't easy to get all the various criteria to match.  It's like a Rubic's cube - as you turn it to get this side of the cube right, it messes up the numbers on another side.  Matsu was next.  But when they got to finding population in Anchorage (Hickel 3) to add to a district going out to the Bering Sea and Executive Director Bickford said:

"We picked up Kincaid, part of Lake Spenard, part of Inlet View precinct."

I just typed what I was thinking on my notes:  "This is so stupid."

Member Holm

My sense is that this was the point they were trying to make.  If the Supreme Court thinks we should try out pairings with other urban districts, let's show them what it would look like.  Even taking the more rural areas of Anchorage like Chugiak would have been as much of a stretch as Ester and Goldstream (suburbs of Fairbanks) were in the challenged plan.  But to pluck out pieces from neighborhoods in the urban areas of Anchorage was totally ridiculous.




I'll add more later, but thought I'd at least get this up now.







*"Short" means that they didn't have enough people to get within 5% of the needed 17,755 people per district.  They mentioned different numbers, but I think it came to still needing 9,000 to get enough for another district.

The Redistricting Board has three maps up on their website today (click documents) - Hickel 1, Hickel 2, and Hickel 3.  Presumably the staff was asked to come up with some options for the meeting that begins at 1pm.    You can click on the maps below to enlarge them.  Lots of details are missing.  But we can see that they've gone back to something that looks like the old District 6 [big yellow 37] that loops from near Valdez up along the Canadian border around Fairbanks.  That's got to be one of the Native districts and it looks like they set up another one to connect to it in Southeast [35.]  The other Native districts would be 40, 39, 38 and 36.  The other maps seem to be variations of this.
 

The question will be how big each district is and whether they're compact, contiguous, and socio-economically integrated.  And how they affect incumbents. 

We should find out more at the meeting.  You can also listen in online 

Live Stream: alaskalegislature.tv    at 1pm.

Here's the agenda:

CALL TO ORDER ROLL 

CALL APPROVAL OF AGENDA

 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR’S REPORT 

LEGAL REVIEW OF SUPREME COURT DECISION
EXECUTIVE SESSION 

STAFF PRESENTATION OF DRAFT “HICKEL” PLANS 

ADJOURNMENT