Shelby County 2: Will the End of "Racial Entitlement" Help Republicans Win?

Most of the Alaska Redistricting Board is hoping that the US Supreme Court will overturn Section 5 of the federal Voting Rights Act when the decision on Shelby County v Holder comes out soon.  (Though one member told me it was disappointing to see that the State of Alaska filed an amicus brief for Shelby County.)   I've written about this case already here.

But I wanted to point out that getting rid of Section 5 likely, at least in the short run, give Republicans a boost in elections by making it easier to set up obstacles to voting by Blacks and other protected classes. 

The conservatives - particularly Scalia, Roberts, and Kennedy - seemed to be suggesting the standards used to determine which states were required to get pre-clearance for redistricting plans and other voting regulations is outdated.  The problem is over now, they say, and the states shouldn't be singled out above all the other states for special treatment. 

This is despite a report to Congress [I think the link is to the Report], but there's a small chance it's another report] showing that serious problems still exist, and Congress passing the renewal of the VRA overwhelmingly - 98-0 in the Senate.  390 - 33* in the House.

Listening to the oral arguments, I couldn't help but think that these are the same Justices who voted to cut off the Florida voting review process and declare George W. Bush president in 2000.  And I couldn't help but think of this quote I saw on Immoral Minority (from Huffington Post) from a Texas Tea Party leader the other day:

“I’m going to be real honest with you,” Emanuelson said. “The Republican Party doesn’t want black people to vote if they are going to vote 9-to-1 for Democrats.”

I'm sure that is true.  Why would they want Blacks to vote if they're going to vote for Democrats?  But voter suppression is what's supposed to happen in phony elections in dictatorships, not the USA.  But voter suppression was one of the tactics Republicans used in the last several elections - though their spin was to fight "voter fraud" which no one could find. 

As the decision in this case is imminent and it will affect redistricting in Alaska, I do want to point out a couple of points that came up in the oral arguments.  

Scalia and "Racial Entitlement":

"And this last enactment [the 2006 renewal of the Voting Rights Act], not a single vote in the Senate against it. And the House is pretty much the same. Now, I don't think that's attributable to the fact that it is so much clearer now that we need this.  I think it is attributable, very likely attributable, to a phenomenon that is called perpetuation of racial entitlement. It's been written about. Whenever a society adopts racial entitlements, it is very difficult to get out of them through the normal political processes." (p. 47 of the Oral Arguments transcript)

OK, entitlement is a bad word for Republicans.  It means, for them, you get something you don't deserve.  So, whatever "Racial Entitlement" is supposed to mean, the intent would seem to be getting something you don't deserve because of your race.  Prof. Peggy Macintosh wrote persuasively about White Privilege in 1988, but I don't think that's what they mean here. 

"It's been written about" caught my eye and so I googled 'racial entitlement' and found that others noticed that term when it was uttered back in February.  Rachel Maddow's research staff found that it was indeed written about, in a paper in 1979, written by one Antonin Scalia, called "Racial Entitlement:  'In Order To Get Beyond Racism We Must First Account of Race.'"  I know it's ironic, paradoxical even, that we have to take into consideration the idea of race to fight racism, but yeah, we do.  After hundreds of years of race being used to discriminate against people you can't make it all go away by saying today everyone is equal.  But that seems to be a lot of Scalia;s thinking on this. 

Apparently here he means that the 98-0 vote in the Senate means the members have no choice but to vote for it.  He uses this logic for why the Court should overrule this overwhelming vote for renewing the Voting Rights Act in 2006 (which President GW Bush was strongly supporting.)

"I don't think there is anything to be gained by any Senator to vote against continuation of this act.  And I am fairly confident it will be reenacted in  perpetuity unless -- unless a court can say it does not comport with the Constitution."

So, the Senators are spineless and afraid to vote against it because their constituents their constituents want it.  Therefore the Supreme Court needs to step in.  I don't hear him arguing that Senators afraid to vote for gun control, and therefore the Supreme Court needs to help out.  

And, in fact, 33* members of Congress were not afraid to vote against the VRA. 


Voter Turnout Shows Mississippi is Fine But Massachusetts Isn't

The logic of the Chief Justice:

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Just to get the --  do you know which State has the worst ratio of white  voter turnout to African American voter turnout?

GENERAL VERRILLI: I do not.

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Massachusetts. Do you know what has the best, where African American turnout actually exceeds white turnout? Mississippi.

Part of the formula in the law, for determining which states must get pre-clearance from the Department of Justice (DOJ) is percent of voter turnout.  But I would argue that his conclusion, today, that Mississippi's black turnout his higher than Massachusetts', is wrong.  It doesn't indicate the problem is over.  I would argue it indicates the opposite.

The formula that the Justice Department uses in calculating, in Alaska's case, "Native Districts"  includes factors such as whether the non-Native population votes the same way the Native population votes.  If yes, then the percentage of Natives in the district can be lower to meet the standards. 

And that's why you might see lower African American turnout in Massachusetts.  African American voters know their votes are not as important because the white voters vote the same way they do.    African Americans feel their rights are protected and have less concern about voting.  They know the party that will protect their rights will be elected if they vote or not.

In Mississippi, if African Americans don't vote, they know the White voters will vote against their interests.


This could be a lot longer because there is plenty to raise one's eyebrows in this case.  For instance, Justice Kennedy brought up the term "reverse engineering" to explain why ther VRA standards are a bogus way to give an after the fact rationale for picking the states they wanted to pick.  (Others argue that those standards are still a good proxy for the states that need to be watched most closely and the number of lawsuits correlates with that reasoning.)  But I just don't have time for more. 

This should at least get some people aware of the thinking of the Justices who are likely to vote in favor of Shelby County. 

Undoubtedly, removing the checks on states and localities who have traditionally discriminated against Blacks and other ethnic groups, is likely to increase the number of disenfranchised voters.  After the fact remedies don't unelect people who got elected by voter suppression.  

I would note, that some argue that the Voting Rights Act actually helps Republicans by packing all the left leaning protected classes into a few very heavily Black (or in our case Native) districts, thus getting Democratic voters out of other districts.  There may be merit to that argument (some Black representatives win 90% of the vote), but just getting rid of Section 5 (that requires pre-clearance of changes) seems to do more harm to Black (and Native) voters than good.   I need more time to think this through. 

 *House members voting against renewal in 2006.  

State	# of No Votes	Congress Members Voting No
Alabama	2	Jo Bonner (R-AL) Terry Everett (R-AL)
Arizona	2	Trent Franks (R-AZ) John Shadegg (R-AZ)
California	6	John Campbell (R-CA) John Doolittle (R-CA) Wally Herger (R-CA)  Gary Miller (R-CA)  Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA)  Ed Royce (R-CA)
Colorado	2	Joel Hefley (R-CO) Thomas Tancredo (R-CO)
Georgia	6	Nathan Deal (R-GA)  Phil Gingrey (R-GA)  John Linder (R-GA)   Charles Norwood (R-GA) Tom Price (R-GA)   Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA)
Iowa	1	Steve King (R-IA)
Indiana	1	Dan Burton (R-IN)
Louisiana	1	Richard Baker (R-LA)
Maryland	1	Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD)
North Carolina	2	Virginia Foxx (R-NC) Patrick McHenry (R-NC)
New Jersey	1	Scott Garrett (R-NJ)
South Carolina	1	J. Gresham Barrett (R-SC)
Tennessee	1	John Duncan (R-TN)
Texas	6	Joe Barton (R-TX) Mike Conaway (R-TX) Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) Sam Johnson (R-TX)  Ron Paul (R-TX) William Thornberry (R-TX)

 Lavender indicates former member of Congress.

"I don't think anybody would've done anything differently" - Killing Moose In Denali National Park

The Anchorage Daily News story "Air Force staff sergeant felt he had to shoot charging Denali moose" Thursday tells about a family hike near the entrance to Denali National Park. They encountered a moose that charged them.  The airman, fairly new to Alaska, says he reluctantly shot the moose in the head when he felt his kids lives were in danger. 

I thought about this as I stopped on the Chester Creek bike trail on the way home Friday afternoon to watch a moose grazing about 50 feet off the trail. 


Richard Mauer wrote in the ADN story:

"Sirvid said he realizes some people think he shouldn't have shot the moose."

"I just wish that they were there with me. I know there are some points of views out there, but I don't think anybody would've done anything differently," Sirvid said.

Actually, I would have done something differently.  I wouldn't have shot the moose because I wouldn't have had a gun.

Carrying guns in Denali National Park only became legal in 2010, so all these years people managed their encounters with wildlife in the Park without killing the animals.  When we first came to Alaska - 35 years ago - I looked up the history of bear encounters in the Park.  No human had ever been killed by a bear in the Park.  I had done a check earlier when I snorkled in Hawaii and realized I knew nothing about the dangers I faced.  I learned that world wide, at that time, about ten people a year were killed by sharks.  I decided my odds were better in the water than on the road.   

A Craig Medred story in the Alaska Dispatch says that the first human killed by a bear in Denali only happened last year. Denali National Park's FAQ's about bears says there have only been 23 incidents where bears have injured humans in the Park.

No one can say what might have happened if Sirvid hadn't shot the moose.  I'm not saying I know that no one would have been killed by the moose or at least badly hurt.  I don't dispute his story - how could I?  He was there and I wasn't.   But considering the number of people killed by moose in Denali over the years (I can't find any examples), the probability is that no one would have died.

I do dispute his comment that nobody else would have done anything differently, because most of the people who have ever gone to Denali never had that choice to make.  Because they came into the wilderness unarmed.

And if he weren't carrying a gun, he would have spent what time he had thinking about non-lethal ways to avoid the moose instead of whether he should shoot or not.

And Friday, after I watched the moose for a while, I continued on home through the sun and shadows of the birch lined trail.

Got A Little More Info On the Process From The Chair

Ok, after I put up that last post, where I posted some maps and confessed I didn't know what was going on, I talked to Chair Torgerson about the process.

He showed me on the Auto Bound software how you create a new plan and give it a name.  He pulled up a new blank map of Alaska.  Well, it's not completely blank.  There are lots of lines that he thought were various local boundaries or geographic features.  Everyone started with fresh maps. 

The techs weren't given any instructions except to just work on districts and learn the software.  He said they seemed to be having a hard time getting out of Fairbanks and Kenai, which seem to be the hardest places because of the excess population.  My understanding of that is this:  each district should be as close to 17,755 people as possible.  Fairbanks and Kenai each have enough for, I think five and three districts respectively, but then they have left over population for another half a district.  So figuring out how to use that left over population is the hard part.

[UPDATE: I got clarification on this later.  Kenai's population works out well to (I think) three complete districts.  But Kodiak needs population so they were experimenting with population from Kenai.  These are all very preliminary maps as the new techs are getting up to speed on this.]

Torgerson also said they were using a lot of approaches and coming up with unique options.

These working meetings are going to continue through the 21st of June.  Board members will drift in and out as their schedule permits.  I think there are three Board members here today.  I've seen Torgerson and Green, and I think Brodie is in the back working on his own maps.  Torgerson thought Jim Holm would fly down for tomorrow.  Yes, the Board members will work through the weekend along with Eric, but the other two techs - Ray and Erin - are off for the weekend.

The 21st is also the date that third party plans are due - by noon.  During the last process there were a lot of sample maps that people could see and comment on during this stage, if I recall correctly, but it appears that this time there won't be any until next Friday.

What Am I Doing Here? Some Maps As Of Now While I Try To Figure This Out

I didn't come in until 1pm today to watch the Alaska Redistricting board move pixels around on their way to a new plan.  It almost feels like the first meeting I came to and had no idea what was happening.  These are work meetings so there is a lot of silence and then quiet conversations. 

I still have a lot questions about how this is being done.  I don't know how the districts on these maps got to be the way they are.  Did they start from a blank map or from a previous template of districts?  I got conflicting answers yesterday.  I'll try to clear this up.

[UPDATE 3:30pm:  After I posted this I talked briefly to chair John Torgerson and got some answers to my questions about what is actually going on.  I posted that here.]

I did not make it the first day when, perhaps, they explained things.  But there is no one transcribing - which would be tedious because there are long, long periods of silence except for the noise of the cooling equipment.   Which will make it difficult to record.

They had a lot of districts and a lot of numbers on the maps.  I'm waiting for someone to walk outside of the working meeting so I can ask questions.

I'm trying to square what's happening now with what happened when they did this before.  I think much of what I'm seeing now happened in people's offices before the actual meetings.  Then at the meetings they discussed what was on the maps.  Now the three techs are in here at their computers.  Two of them are hooked up to projectors so you can see what they are doing on a big screen.  John Torgerson is in here too and asking questions, but unless I stand close, it's often hard to hear over the air coolers and the fans.  And it seems pointless.  Thinks like will they have to go to Anchorage to get enough people for Matsu and for Kenai.

"That makes sense if you pick up these pieces.  Are you into the Matsu here?  Or Anchorage?  Here's the borough.  What was your deviation?  4.8.  That green doesn't belong over here."

Not really too meaningful without being able to see the maps they're talking about, and even then, I'm not sure.

Anchorage is 16 (15?) districts . . .

So, I'm just going to give you some maps.  I'm not sure who is looking here and what they'd like to see.  In any case, this is a snapshot of where things stood mid-afternoon (before 2:30pm) June 14.  There will be some overlap because different photos covered different parts of the same area.

Statewide:

Double click any image to enlarge a little more

Western Alaska

Central Alaska area

Fairbanks area

Matsu area

Anchorage/Matsu areas

Anchorage area

Anchorage again from Ray's screen

Kenai Peninsula:

OK, that's what I have for now.  I did take some video which I'll check on later to see if the sound came out over the cooling noise. 

John Torgerson just walked in with Board member Marie Green whom he introduced to the techs. 

Anchorage Has More Summer In The Last Week Than All Last Summer

Or so it seems.

11pm returning from the airport Wednesday night after dropping some visitors for their trip back to Singapore.

 

Midnight  returning from the airport Thursday night after dropping a friend on his way to India. 

This week we've had six days over 70˚F and there are predictions of into the 80s this weekend.  A little warm for my blood.

As we head for the solstice next week, we gain less and less daylight per day - only 1 minute 24 seconds today, according to the ADN weather page.  Sunset at 11:39pm and sunrise at 4:21am. 

Former Redistricting Board Director Taylor Bickford Is NOT Coming Back To The Board

I posted on June 4 that the Board was going to rehire former Executive Director Taylor Bickford on a part time basis to help with the mapping.  When the Board went on hiatus after the Interim Plan was accepted last May, Taylor was hired as the Director of Alaska Operations with Strategies 360 - a PR firm whose Alaska office also includes former Alaska Public Radio reporter David Shurtleff and former state house member and gubernatorial candidate Ethan Berkowitz.

But Taylor wasn't here working on the mapping, so I contacted him to find out what the story was.  He told me that when he was first contacted by the Board to see if he could come back to assist, that he'd said he now has a full time job, that he could only do part time help, and that Strateiges 360 would have to be his first priority.  They hadn't yet signed off a final agreement and the possibility of conflicts of interest with clients became an issue that could become an issue for both himself and the board.  In the end, he told me, it didn't seem to be worth the potential problems for the small amount of time he'd be able to spend on Board work. 

So, Taylor is not coming back to the Board.  That's a loss for the Board.  Taylor has strong interpersonal skills and always seemed more sensitive to the needs for good communication with the public about what the Board was doing. 

Redistricting Board's GIS Techs Are Designing New Districts

The term "watching paint dry" comes to mind.  I'm just going to show you some photos of what's going on.  Basically, they are working with the Auto Bound Redistricting software to get some districts together.

The two new techs appear to be just trying to make things work, technically, without political consideration.  They seem to just be trying to get districts that meet the parameters - 17,755 people per district, compact, socio-economically integrated (though I'm not sure how they figure that from the data on the computer).

There are long periods of silence and then there's some discussion which is hard to catch on video because of the noise of the fans and coolers.

But here are some pictures so you can see what's happening

Eric working his computer which is projected on the wall behind him.

This is Ray doing the same thing.  He was working on Fairbanks here I believe.

I'll add some video below, but here's a sense of how they are doing things.  From the upper left image, Eric zoomed into the middle image, and then to the lower right image.  For the middle to lower right transition I'm not completely sure why there's a flat line on the bottom - maybe the angle continues, but it just got cut off at the bottom.

On the bottom of the screen are stats for the districts they are looking at. They can change which stats to see.  Here the columns are TAPERSONS (not sure, I think it's total persons); Target (this should be 17,755*, which is the total population divided by 40 districts to make them all equal);  DEV (deviation);  Difference (Actual number - Target);  PctNatWht (I think this is percentage of Native to White population - something needed to make sure the Board has maintained the Native districts to comply with the Voting Rights Act);  PctNatAB (percentage NativeAlaskan??); PctVANW (percentage voting age Native/White); PctVANA(percentage Voting Age Native Alaskan). I'm not 100% sure I got the names right, but enough for you to get a sense of things.

*I asked Eric why the Target column said 17,756 and he said something like, it was an adjustment the computer did and it would have to be reset to 17,555.  

So, each time they make a change in a district - like move a census bloc to a different district - these numbers can change.

These are the controls they have for making changes.

Every now and then there is some discussion.  The third tech, whose name I haven't gotten yet, switched computers with Eric, so her map is now projected on the screen.  When she moved over, Torgerson asked her some questions, like "why do you have that big thumb sticking out?"  Then he saw that it followed the river, which conforms to the principle of 

"Follow natural and physical geographic boundaries such as major roads, major arterials, rivers, streams and creeks."

At least on the river side, but what about the neighborhood on the other side?  That's one of the problems here - you can only use the census blocs and they may not fall the way that looks best.  

As I'm watching this, it seems more and more obvious that at least the first stabs at the districts should just be done by computer which would be infinitely faster than humans moving census blocs around.  Then people could eyeball the results for those kinds of things human brains can still see better than computers can.

The video is short - I spared you the long waiting for the computer to react to the click of the mouse.  It gives you a sense of what most of today has been like.

Fairbanks, Cordova, Kodiak - Board Working On New Districts

I took a break - it was too hot in here and nothing was happening and I had something else to check up on.  I ran into Board Member Bob Brodie in the hall way who said they were debating whether connecting Kodiak and Cordova would be considered compact or whether it would be better to pair Kodiak with part of Homer.  One would be more socio-economically integrated and the other more compact.  Figuring out how the court would interpret things.

They were talking about connecting Cordova and Fairbanks as I sit here.  But all of this is just playing around for now.   The new techs may know GIS but they seem to have lot of catch-up to do with redistricting. 

Board Attorney Michael White was in the room when I got back here, but he's gone now.  Back to Chair Torgerson and the three techs.

They seem to be getting ready for a lunch break.  They've shut down the projectors and are walking out. 

[I can't get the preview in Blogger to work now, so I can't see what the post will look like before I post it. But this is pretty short and no pictures so it should be ok.]

Overheated Redistricting Board Work Session

Chair Torgerson in yellow shirt

 The door was closed to the meeting room?  Another executive session?  That wasn't on the announcement.  But Mary, the Board's administrative aide tells me it's because the air conditioning in the building isn't working.  The room was really warm last time I was here.

 Big windows with morning sun shining in.  Apparently it could be like this until they finish.  Though some cooler cloudy days should fix it. 

The cooling system

But that means for now they have some sort of standing cooler that makes a lot of noise, so any audio recording will be real difficult in here.  And they aren't saying much anyway. 
The only Board member here is John Torgerson.  (I got here ten minutes late.)  Eric Sandberg, the GIS person from the Department of Natural Resources who was lent to the Board for mapping in the original process.  There are two other people sitting at the table with computers. [I found out they're both GIS folks from the State Department of Natural Resources.] Not even an attorney.  And no one in the cheap seats but me.  [Whoops, 9:35 and someone else has joined me.  Not sure who he is.]


9:20am They’re bringing in two fans. They’re “Holmes” brand.  If I were a conspiracy theorist and I didn’t know how Board member Jim Holm spells his name, I might suspect some sort of questionable contracting.  It’s easy to jump to invalid conclusions.

See what happens when we get a week of sunshine with the temps into the 70s?  We all melt. 




I can't really tell what parts of the state they are working on.  Two of the four computers are on screens. 

A number of people who know that I'm covering the redistricting board have asked why they just don't use some optimization programs to come up with the most viable maps and start from there.  I know that terms like 'socio-economic integration" are hard to define - but people say it can be done, and it would be much more transparent that way (having to clearly define it for the computer) than it is now.  It would still leave the eyeball test at the end.  Here we have two new people to the process working on it with Eric.  Since I missed the beginning I don't know why the other Board members aren't here.  



It even looks like I got some wifi in here for the first time in two years.  Let me check and try to post this.  I have a 10am meeting, so I'm going to have to leave soon anyway. 

9:45 Board member Bob Brodie just walked in, but Chair Torgerson is out of the room. 

It's Summer In Anchorage And The Moose Are Calving

I was on my bike when I saw the three moose walking across the empty lot that once was a trailer park.  I barely had time to get my camera out of my pocket and take a quick picture before they disappeared.

It's been blue skies and warm temperatures since we got back to Anchorage last Wednesday night.  I think Anchorage has had more summer weather already than all last summer.  Our indoor-outdoor thermometer says it's 79˚F (26˚C) out on our deck.  That's hot for Anchorage.