Making Sense of Today's Redistricting Board Trial Testimony [UPDATED Formatting]

 [UPDATE Sat. Jan 29, 2022 - The numbering got messed up horribly in the original posting and I'm fixing that now.  Blogger is tricky with outlines and if you break them accidentally anywhere it screws them all up.  Peter should be #3 overall, not #5 of the new narratives. So I've also bolded the headings of each discrete point.]

I jotted down notes today about things I thought I should write about.  I do have 14 1/2 pages of single spaced typed notes, but you really don't want that, I'm sure.  So let me talk about what struck me as meaningful  from today's testimony.  

Clockwige: Judge Matthews, Peter Torkelson,
Tanner Amdur-Clark, Matt Singer

Take aways

1. While I, like others, was worried about political gerrymandering in Eagle River, I  missed the coordinated efforts to put all the Doyon and Ahtna villages into one district.  Well, I didn't totally miss it.  Doyon reps were there at most meetings, including attorney Tanner Amdur-Clark who is now the attorney for the intervenors.  
1. the text messages revealed yesterday and today - a few, I expect we'll be seeing more - reveal communications between Amdur-Clark and Nicole Borromeo over the efforts to get all Doyon and Ahtna villages together.  And another text shows coordination between Borromeo and Marna Sanford, a member of the Fairbanks North Star Borough Assembly, trying to get the Assembly to pass a resolution saying that because they were overpopulated (their five districts were each considerably above the 18,335 ideal district size) to get Chair John Binkley to back off on his strong attachment to the idea that Fairbanks should just absorb the the excess 4000 people over 5 districts to keep Fairbanks intact.  This also relates to the Valdez case, because by putting those 4000 people into D36, it meant that Valdez' 4000 people couldn't be in D36 where they wanted to be.  
2. Are thsee bad things?  Human beings follow two different sets of rules - human, rules of loyalty to family and community and people versus the rule of law - those rules that government sets up for us.  These often come into conflict with each other.  That's why, for example, spouses are not compelled to testify against each other in courts of law and why we have nepotism rules. When I lived in rural Thailand, the loyalty rules took precedence over the legal rules. What I realized in Thailand was that the people in my town depended on each other for many things, including helping each other plant and harvest rice.  Survival over the centuries had depended on community cooperation.  When I got to Alaska I slowly began to realize there were a lot of similarities to that sort of communal culture among Alaska Native peoples.   
3. Doyon was working openly and explaining its objectives in public meetings.  They weren't trying to get more politicians elected from any particular party.  They seem to have been trying to get the electoral districts to match how the people of Ahtna and Doyon see themselves.  
4. There were a lot of assumptions on my part about how the GOP appointed Board members seemed to be getting advice from people outside the public participation process.  Advice that wasn't reflected in the public testimony.  Particularly on how to draw lines in Anchorage and then with the Senate pairings and the allocation of staggered terms.  If there are similar text messages or emails from the Board members, we haven't seen them yet.  And while I missed this behind the scenes communications by Borromeo, it fits in with the testimony of Budd Simpson and others today who said that there was a lot of feedback from the public that wasn't on the record because it came in discussion between two Board members, say while traveling, or in conversations about the maps with the public on the tour around the state with the maps
5. Again, what Doyon was doing was what every other community and local governmental unit was doing - lobbying for what they thought was best for their people.  That's different from lobbying to impact which party dominates in the legislature.  
2. The new narratives.  At the end of the debates over the House districts, there was a lot of concern that Bethany Marcum had changed the Anchorage House districts at the last minute and created a district that put an East Anchorage neighborhood with Eagle River.  There was a great deal of surprise in the end when Budd Simpson voted in favor of the previous map that didn't have that new Muldoon-ER district,  while Marcum and Binkley no.  
1. What had happened? Why had Simpson voted against his team on the Board?  He said later that he'd been convinced by the overwhelming testimony against putting ER and Muldoon together that way.   Though he no longer felt that way when Marcum did the same thing with the Senate pairings.   
2. Today we got a new narrative about Marcum's no vote on the House plan (that passed 3-2)  Marcum’s new explanation for voting against the successful House map was that her vote was a signal to the people of the state that she knew there were issues and not everyone was happy.  She knew it was going to pass anyway, so didn't matter.   
3. Maybe that's true.  Maybe Budd Simpson had said he was going to vote yes on the map.  Or maybe Simpson surprised Binkley and Marcum the way he surprised everyone else.  Or maybe they agreed that he would vote no on the House districts, but then vote yes on a Muldoon-East Anchorage Senate pairings, which he did.  Even though the testimony from Eagle River and from East Anchorage was still overwhelmingly against the pairing.  
4. More likely in my mind, this is the new narrative to explain that first vote. Let's see what comes out in the next few days. 
3. Peter Torkelson and the Deviation Number Mistake - Torkelson has been the Board's Executive Director since December 2020, about the same time I started monitoring the Board.  From my very first contact with Torkelson  he's been very open, receptive to my suggestions for making the website easier for the public, and he's given me information and documents I've asked for.  He was always ready to help out.  He and his staff created a very helpful website and populated it with all sorts of information for the public.  Including getting the videos and audios of Board meetings up within days at most.  He's also gotten all the public testimony up very quickly.  And even though I wrote the other day, reflecting on the third party mapping teams and Stephen Colligan's testimony - and before the outside expert Kimball Brace testified - that next time the Board really needs people with more experience and expertise with GIS and mapping software, I think that Torkelson has a great sense for the tech side and did reasonably well as did the Board.  But I'd echo Chair John Binkley today when he was asked how well he thought the Board's final map was.  He said it was as good as any of the proposed maps. Maybe.  But it wasn't the best possible map that they might have achieved with a team of really skilled technicians.  
1. That said, Torkelson was grilled today about not having a degree in computer science or training in GIS before this job.  Steve Jobs and Bill Gates never finished their degrees either.  Not comparing Torkelson to them.  Just saying that people with natural aptitude and drive can achieve a lot.  And Torkelson had a rarer skill - the ability to work well with people and keep his cool under pressure.  He also has a strong public service ethic.  He wanted to make the best maps possible, knowing that ultimately he took direction from the Board. I didn't have as much contact with the Deputy Director TJ Presley, but I only had positive experiences when I did.  And Eric Sandberg, who I knew when he worked with the 2010 Board, is also a dedicated and talented tech.  
2. I also have to note that there was mention the other day, from Outside expert for Valdez, Kimball Brace, that there was a problem with the numbers on the deviation table* that was part of the Final Proclamation Plan.  He explained something about when they changed the numbers of the districts at the end, a bunch of the districts - Calista's attorney Schecter said 28 - had wrong numbers.  Today Schecter followed up on that.  He was very concerned that these numbers were up on the website and were incorrect.  This was at a time when attorneys were gathering data for their lawsuits.  He was particularly concerned that when Torkelson discovered and corrected the numbers that the site didn't say anything about the numbers being corrected.  It would have been hard for someone working with the numbers to realize that they had been changed without such notice.
3. I know how hard Torkelson worked and how dedicated he was to accuracy.  He explained to me at one point how he and (I think) Eric Sandberg had duplicated the Census data separately to make sure they had downloaded it correctly and they really had the true numbers.  (They didn't get a hard copy, they had to download from the internet and then later got the hard copy, which they then checked to be sure the original had downloaded correctly.)  So I'm sure part of Torkelson was mortified at the problem with the deviation table.  The Board's attorney Singer in redirect tried to repair some of the damage.
1. The numbers were correct in the original list on November 5 when there was a lot of clamor for them from local governments and the media.  It was only four days later, when that had died down, that the new district numbers were applied to the districts and the new deviation table made, that something happened to some of the numbers for many of the districts.
2. The numbers for the districts that Schecter's client - Calista - is interested in, were not affected.
4. It's not clear to me how the error was discovered.  Brace (Valdez' hired expert) seem to imply that he had discovered the problem when he testified the other day.  But today it sounded like Torkelson told Valdez attorney Brena in the deposition.  In which case it would seem Torkelson found the error and fixed it, but didn't widely announce it, but he did say he told the Board's attorney and assumed he would notify people if that was necessary.
1. (I would say that on this blog when I change substantive comments, I try to always make that clear.)
4. The East Anchorage plaintiffs have a race based argument that they want to add to the record that is opposed by Board’s counsel, presumably about the affect of the ER pairings.  This is just an alert.  There have been some cryptic comments about this yesterday and today.  The last court documents added to the Most Requested Cases page on their website are dated 1/20/22, so the public (including me) hasn't had access to them, so I don't know what East Anchorage attorney has asked of the judge.  I just know that the Board's attorney is strongly opposed to whatever it is.  
5. ^Bahnke pretty much tells us that SEI (Socio-Economic Integration) is in the eye of the beholder - I think I'll leave this for a post on the weekend.  But it is significant because it's one of the key criteria for whether a district is constitutional and there's been a lot of discussion based on whether key disputed districts meet that requirement.  
6. A lot of communication between the Board and the public was not on the record - Bahnke said that, Simpson said that, Torkelson said that, and we had the text message put on the record yesterday from Amdur-Clark to Borromeo and other emails.  Mostly they said there was just a lot of communication through conversations with the public and between Board members while traveling that ever got recorded.  Partly that's the tension between gathering enough information and documenting it.  For me the test is whether there were communications that were not documented or otherwise publicly acknowledged, that changed the outcome of the maps.  
7. Can you drive to Cordova from to Valdez?  This was a question that was asked of a number of witnesses today (and I think yesterday).  Everyone said no.  But I would point out that the Marine Highway goes from Cordova to Valdez and, yes, you can take your car or truck on the ferry and 'drive' to Valdez and the Richardson Highway. That's why it's called the Marine Highway.  
8. ^4000 pop exchange between Fairbanks and Valdez into 36 - This one I'll save until the weekend too. It's important to understand these cases.
9. ^Reporting and the relationships you develop with your subjects - Another point I want to save for later, but it particularly relates to someone like me reporting on a governmental body over a long period of time - long enough to develop at least a professional relationship and getting to know people as more than just a role on a Board.  It's particularly apt today because of  my comments about Peter Torkelson.  This one can probably wait until after the trial is over.
10. ^Importance of hearing the wishes of Alaska Natives and understanding the cultures relationships, and differences - another biggie that needs to wait

*The deviation table is the list of each district and how much each deviated from the ideal district size of 18335 shown in actual numbers and in percentages.  This would be used to determine if a district was over or under populated and by how much.

^I've marked those topics I'm postponing discussion on with the carat so I can find them easier and remember to expand on them.  

Blogging The Redistricting Trial Is Not A Sustainable Activity

[Note:  I'm wiped.  Please excuse typos and other problems. I need some sleep.] 

The trial goes from about 9am to 4:30, with a morning break, lunch break and afternoon break.  If we're lucking there will be a technical glitch (today they had trouble getting the audio to work on a video) and I had time to just let my brain drift.  

So, it's Wednesday which means our weekly video call with the SF grandkids.  I've got about 14 pages of notes of today's trial which would take at least 90 minutes to clean up enough to post as rough.  And I'm not sure many people would get much out of it.  

So I'm going to give reactions again.  Thoughts.  [Turns out there are two main points.  And if you get bored during the first one, then scroll down to number 2.  It's a whole new ball game.  

Best part of today's trial for me:  Testimony of Miranda Wright.  

She was born at her family's winter camp at Mud River where her family traveled to by boat from Nulato.  Now she lives in Fairbanks.  She was asked about her education by Lee Baxter, one of the Board's attorneys, "Educational background?"

Wright:  Life experience, construction.  She worked with her husband.  Then she got a degree in anthropology because of her interest in the culture of her people.  They had stories in books in the library about folklore>  She didn't view them as folklore.  They were part of her life.  She did her Masters  thesis on Nulato.  She talked about the ties between people along the Yukon and the Kuskokwim Rivers.  How there used to be lots of villages on the flats south of Nulato.  It was there homeland.  Small game, fish.  Then the pandemics came and everything was lost, including many of the people and villages.  The linguistic history shows ties to Holy Cross.  She talked about MTNT (McGrath, Takotna, Nikolai, and Telida), GASH (Grayling, Anvik, Shageluk, and Holy Cross), and GYL (The Gana-A’Yoo, Limited). 

Baxter:  What do they all have in common?

Wright:  All Athabaskan speaking.  Some variation in dialects, which happens when you're spread out like that.  Overarching kinship structure that unites us as one people of the Athabaskan nation.  Belief structures similar, How we prepare food is similar.  Intermarriages.

Interesting as it might be, you're saying, why are we hearing about Alaska Native anthropology at the Redistricting Trial?   Before I attempt to answer that, let's look at a map of the Board's House District 36R (R is the Senate seat it's in).  Nulato, is at the white #1 (middle to the left)  

For days now, the Valdez witness have been pummeled with questions like "how are Holy Cross (#2) and Valdez (#3) socially-economically integrated?  SEI is one of the criteria for combining communities into a house district.  Valdez (I know the 3 is hard to see - it's bottom to the right of center) has been arguing for a map that connects them up the Richardson Highway.  Even, if necessary to the huge purple district.  Valdez is in the Board's D29-O (pinkish lower right).  They've been complaining they aren't SEI with Mat-Su.  Valdez has been grilled about choices they made in their proposed map.  I've been thinking, "Wow, they're being grilled on how they justify their decisions, but no one has grilled the Board members how they made their decisions." (That actually began today with Nicole Borromeo being asked fairly gentle questions compared to what Valdez witnesses have endured.  It will continue tomorrow when Board members testify.)

Redistricting is an art where you have to balance (in Alaska) Compactness,  Contiguity, Socio-Economic Integrity, and getting 40 districts all as close to the same population.  Since there is no simple test for SEI, the lawyers are setting up all sorts of exaggerated tests and demonstrations of SEI and bringing in people to verify what is and is not SEI.  

The map above is the Board's D36.  This is, according to the redistricting expert, Kimball Brace, who testified yesterday and today, the largest electoral district in the country and would be something like the seventh or eighth largest state in the US.  

The Doyon Coalition that closely followed the redistricting process and submitted its own map for the process, and whose attorney, Tanner Amdur-Clark, is the Intervenor attorney at this trial (he's at the top right in the picture with Miranda Wright and Judge Matthews)STOP  That sentence was getting away from me.  Doyon pushed hard for a district that would pull all the Doyon villages together.  But there aren't enough people for a full district so they joined with Ahtna to get this huge D36R.  Including Ahtna is why there's a protuberance of dark blue (D36) between D29 (which includes Valdez) and D30.  That incursion into the Denali Borough pulls Cantwell - an Ahtna village - into D36.  

I also have Holy Cross numbered (2) and Glennallen listed (it wasn't on the original map so I had to write it in, because today the Valdez side returned the pummeling asking what was did Glennallen and Holy Cross have in common.  Do the live together?  Work together? Play together?  If not why are they in the same district?  

Have I lost you yet?  This is all the simple stuff so far.  You thinking you don't need to get into the more complicated stuff?  You're probably right.  Part of me thinks we have attorneys splitting hairs and then splitting them further and further.  They're trying to logically, almost quantitatively prove something that is qualitative and the more you work to prove it the more ridiculous it gets.  And that's one of the reasons I'm not trying to clean up my notes enough to drop them in here at the bottom.  It's just not worth it.  

But that is why I got to hear Miranda Wright's story.  She's part of proving that there are good reasons for all those villages in D36 to be together.  And I have to say she seems like an incredible woman who it would be fascinating to have dinner with.  

2.  Potentially the most impactful revelation at the trial today was the fact that the plaintiffs' attorneys have gotten access to at least some of the electronic communications between Board Members.  This is stuff the Board's attorney Matt Singer fought hard to prevent.  Whether they could be used went all the way up to the Supreme Court and Judge Matthews has been reviewing them to decide which can be released and which are protected by attorney-client privilege.  

Board member Nicole Borromeo was on the stand today and Valdez attorney Brena put up a number of texts she exchanged with people.  The Doyon attorney Tanner Amdur-Clark was texting her during Board work sessions about things I wrote about above.  Someone else was lobbying to get Fairbanks 'unlocked' because they were overpopulated but Board chair Binkley had decided from early on that Fairbanks houses should all be in Fairbanks.  It wasn't until the very end, when it seemed no longer possible, that he finally relented.  The Valdez folks are saying if that decision hadn't been locked in from the beginning, there would have been more flexibility for Valdez to have a better district.  

The question I'm sure everyone is asking is this:  What sort of messages are there between the three GOP appointed Board members and their friends about the Eagle River pairings?  There's good reason attorney Singer didn't want this information out.  It's a whole new world of open government now than it was ten years ago.  I have lots more thoughts, but the court is in session again in eleven hours.  

Tomorrow, when the Board members are testifying we could see more texts and emails.  

AK Redistricting Trial Day3: Including The Picasso of Gerrymandering

[As the judge keeps saying, we're all doing the best we can.  I feel like I should be doing more than I am, but I do want to get to bed so I can be up for court tomorrow. This should give you a sense of what happened today, but it's not complete.  And my notes just aren't good enough to post.]

In some way a trial is like a football or baseball game.  First one team may be doing well and pulling ahead, and then the other team scores. 

I started wrting during the lunch break, but it wasn't long enough, by the end of the day the other team was scoring points.  

But this is NOT a jury trial.  What might influence jurors isn't necessarily going to move a judge who has a lot more information than a jury would and is determined to render a verdict that is not only 'right', but that will be supported enough that a likely appeal to the Supreme Court will uphold his decision.  

Judge Matthews continues to convey a reasonable tone balancing the various demands of the attorneys, keeping one eye carefully on the clock, and praising everyone for the work they are doing under incredible pressure.  When he rejects an attorney's request, he does it with understanding and a brief explanation of his reasoning.  He's giving attorneys some leeway on timing because of the  time pressure.  He's trying to balance a break for one attorney with an equal break for the other.  He keeps telling them he's trying to gather the information he needs in order to make a good decision that he can support with facts.  

Here's what I wrote at lunch break:

Quick Thoughts During the Lunch Break:

1 Witnesses

Duval upper middle

Both witnesses were strong in different ways.  Nathan Duval, who works for City of Valdez, wasarticulate and able to say what he had to say succinctly.  He was able to voice what seems like an important point that hadn't been adequately discussed before:  How Valdez and Mat-Su have conflicting interests over ports and competing for money for their ports.  In the current district, Mat-Su has 40% of the population and getting to see the representative and Senator is hard.  The Senator doesn't come to Valdez.  Duval talks to them by phone or email.  Also mentioned they go to the Fairbanks reps and senators because they have more in common with Valdez and more likely to advocate for them.  

Pierce upper right

Sheri Pierce, the City Clerk for some 30 years, was not as articulate, but she knew what she wanted to say and despite a relatively silly set of questions from Tanner Amdur-Clark* asking about the Socio Economic ties between Valdez and various isolated villages, she didn't lose her cool and was able to get back to her main points:

• Valdez when included in a district along the Richardson Highway was more likely to be better represented than when paired the way the new district pairs Valdez with Mat-Su.  Even if there were some places that were not very socio-economically compatible with all the  communities.  
• The maps she preferred - like v1, or even Valdez option 1 - were maps that better met Valdez' needs and she wasn't looking at how they met other people's needs.  Valdez wasn't responsible for meeting the needs of the rest of the state, the Board was.  When she was saying she liked those maps she was specifically talking about how they handled Valdez and not the rest of the state.  
• She also voiced the concern that the Board was using the trope that Valdez was hard to fit into a district (and I might be accused of falling for that and perpetuating it in this post, subtitled "How do deal with a problem like Valdez".)  She said the previous Boards had solved the problem, and while their current district is paired with Mat-Su, it also includes the nearby Richardson Highway communities.  40% of the district being Mat-Su voters was bad, but with 76% Mat-Su voters this time, it's worse. And it's like that, she claimed, because the Board waited til the end, when all the other districts were pretty much locked in, to figure out what to do with Valdez.  

Needless Lawyer Stuff

I've been, up to now, impressed with Tanner Amdur-Clark, the attorney who worked with the Doyon Coalition of Native related groups to come up with one of the third party maps.   But he seemed more focused on winning today than reaching an understanding of the issues.  He is, understandably, concerned that Alaska Natives are fairly represented in the legislature.  But it isn't an either/or situation.  He asked Pierce a string of questions about the socio-economic integration between Valdez and Cold Foot and Allakaket.  A couple of questions would have made his point but he kept at it over and over as though he'd caught her in a terrible inconsistency and he was going to make her suffer.  But I thought that not only was this line of questioning hollow, but it was based on a dubious assumption:  That the Valdez Option 1 map was intended to be an accurate map for the whole state. Or that Valdez was required to provide map of the whole state if they waned to give the Board feedback on what they wanted the Valdez district to look like.

There were valid points to make about Valdez' preferred maps having some questionable socio-economic pairings.  And it's also valid to point out that if they complain, they need to understand the Board has to make compromises somewhere and the maps that Pierce preferred had problems for other people.  But he piled on and tried to make her look terrible.  

Pierce explained that Valdez Option 1 map didn't pretend to be a final map since it doesn't even have 40 districts.  It was drawn up quickly, using the Board's online map making tool, to give the Board a sense of what kind of district they preferred,  

The judge understands all these points and pushing hard on Pierce isn't going to gain Amdur-Clark any points.  He'd have been much better off, in my opinion, making his points without trying to make her look like a fool.  

Singer, on the other hand, asked questions about similar issues, but did it in a much more respectful way..  

What Valdez Gained This Morning

• Better establishing the close ties between Valdez and Fairbanks that result in representatives who understand and are aligned on issues that are dominant for Valdez -  on oil gas issues and port issues.  With Mat-Su, the witnesses explained, there is competition because of Mat-Su's  Point McKenzie's port aspirations and Mat-Su's interest in a competing gas pipeline.  And with the new district having 75% of its voters in Mat-Su, Valdez' interests just won't be represented strongly or at all in Juneau.  
• Cleaned up weak points in court filings.  In an earlier post after I looked at the Valdez court case, I noticed they claimed that maps v1, v2, and v3 were all ok with Valdez.  But v4 was a surprise and they didn't have time to respond.  In fact v4 came out the same time as v3 which they thought was ok.  
• Today, Brena added a new approach here.  
• The v4 map boundaries on the wall maps at the Valdez public hearing weren't clear enough to see that the Richardson Highway communities had been cut out
• The v3 and v4 maps weren't the maps completed in the 30 days time frame the Board has to get the maps out.  They were revisions of v1 and v2 after a lot of outcry over those maps.  But v3 and v4, not v1 and v2, were the maps that went on the road trip.  I understand the Board's view that they merely made adjustments based on the feedback with better maps for the road trips.  But Brena got out the points that
• that the Board was required to get the proclamation maps out in 30 days, but the v3 and v4 maps that they used to take around the state for comment weren't completed in that 30 day period, so
• the maps they took around the state weren't the proclamation maps and there wasn't the 60 days needed for the public to review the v3 and v4 maps.  This is a technical argument which may or may not appeal to the court, but it is, technically, a violation of the Constitutional requirements.  And it allows him to abandon the false claim that v4 only came out at the very end.  

There was more, but it got very tedious.  

The afternoon session was with national Redistricting Expert Kimball Brace.  Matt Singer in redirect pointed out Mr. Brace had been on the Jon Stewart show and was known as the Picasso of Gerrymandering.    

Brace and IL district

Brace came down hard on the Redistricting Board.  (Yesterday I posted my thoughts on how the Board was severely outgunned by the third party groups when it came to preparation before the Census data arrived and basic mapping skill level.  Glad I put that up before I heard this testimony.) 

It's getting late and I've been at the screen here most of the day.  There was a fair bit of jargon  - and I thought attorney Stone did a good job of stopping him and asking him to explain, but this is also a very experienced presenter who knows how to avoid yes-no answers and go on to explain instead.  So let me try to hit some highlights.  There will be more redirect of him tomorrow.  

Basically he said 

• the Board had started preparing very late in the game and weren't prepared to do the mapping when the data arrived August 12.  He acknowledged that Alaska has a very short required turnaround time of 30 days to get the initial map out.  
• they had race data turned on early on and got the Native districts settled first which is contrary to the Hickel decision to do the Alaska requirements before doing the Voting Rights Act adjustments
• when he looked at the TIGER files there was a discrepancy in the population numbers for districts 11-29 and 31-33.  He thought this might have happened when the adjusted the numbers on the districts
• there were issues of packing some of the Native districts
• pointed out how the ANCSA borders seemed to be used rather than Borough borders

These are pretty major issues.  The Board's attorney, Singer, started off by raising issues about whether he was a hired gun, by asking his salary ($500/hour) and pointing out the Picasso quote and giving examples of what Singer thought were questionable districts.  Brace remained cheerful throughout.  Then he started challenging him about when the Board actually started mapping and some of the inferences he made based on the trails left behind on the files.  He also raised questions about taking Nicole Borromeo's response to a question out of context, pointing out he'd pulled together comments from various pages.  Brace's response was he was trying to put together a response that was spread out over several pages and he had footnotes with directions to which pages each quote came from.  He also questioned him over the packing charge, pointing out that his own (Brace's) Native districts were only a couple of percent different from the Board's.  

Amdur-Clark,one of the intervenors - focused more on Brace's lack of understanding of rural Alaskan culture and the differences between different cultures.  This sounded similar to the questioning Amdur-Clark did of Sheri Pierce in the morning as he asked a series of questions about different rural communities and whether Brace knew what language was spoken, what traditional foods different areas hunted, the difference between Coastal and Interior tribes.  To a certain extent this was more justified with a certified National expert coming in to Alaska and dividing up the state, particularly the rural areas, into districts.  But Amdur-Clark was taking too much pleasure, in my mind, making Brace squirm.  Brace is a professional and didn't lose his composure or  claim to know things he didn't know - it wouldn't have worked anyway - and finally said "I'm an expert on redistricting, not Alaska Native groups."  This was very different from his explanation of the the district he'd carved out in Chicago [see red district map above] where he explained there were Puerto Rican Hispanics to the north and Mexican Hispanics to the south with African Americans in the middle.  He had no sense of those kinds of nuances in Alaska.  

This will continue tomorrow.  

Redistricting Trial Day 2: Some Insights

[It's been a long day at the computer.  I'm putting this up now, but reserve the right to edit it later when I have more time.] 

On the surface today seemed more like a regular trial.  There were witnesses and attorneys questioned them.  Sometimes other attorneys objected and the judge had to decide whether to sustain it or overrule it.  

My rough notes are rougher than usual and it would be tedious for just about everyone if I posted them so I'll skip that today.  Instead I'll comment on what the testimony said to me about redistricting.  

I would like to make two observations on the Board's representation today after my comments yesterday.  Board attorney Matt Singer was, in my opinion, far more respectful of the witnesses than he was of the witnesses yesterday.  Also, I'd suggested he should have one of his associates take over some of the in court appearances so he can get a break, and Lee Baxter did much of the work today for the Board.  I'm sure that was arranged a while ago, but I want to let regular readers know there was a difference today.  

This was Mat-Su's day, though Valdez (which is doing the case with Mat-Su since they both object to being paired  with each other) had a witness - the Mayor - today as well because she was available today.  The district in question is 29-O  (O is the Senate seat.)

The Stated Issues

• Is District 29 (the one that pairs Valdez with suburbs of Palmer) contiguous?
• Is District 29 compact?
• Is District 29 socio-economically integrated?
• Is District 29 unconstitutionally over populated?

These are the  State and Federal constitutional requirements for a district.  

Questions and answers over these issues got just short of ridiculous, making it clear to me that it would be helpful if the Supreme Court offered some new advice on what these ideas mean and how you would test them - particularly contiguous and socio-economically integrated.

Types of Witnesses Today

• Elected Officials
• Mayor Edna DeVries - Mat-Su Borough Assembly
• Michael Brown - Mat-Su Borough Manager
• Mayor Sharon Scheidt - Valdez
• Mapping Experts
• Stephen Colligan

Insights (if that's not too lofty a word for these thoughts)

1.  Redistricting Criteria

Throughout the Board's mapping process last year - including the public hearings - I was struck by how the board used the criteria listed above.  Too often they were NOT used as criteria to measure the districts they were making.  Rather they were used to justify the districts. Perhaps that sounds like double-talk on my part.  I mean that criteria were used to justify doing things, not to stop and check whether what they had done was correct.  

This became more obvious as one criterion took precedence over another one that had been crucial earlier.  At one point we heard the all districts within a borough boundaries were socially-economically integrated (SEI) so they didn't have to consider, say community-councils in Anchorage, or whether neighborhoods were similar or different.  At other times, say when Bethany Marcum was trying to put part of East Anchorage into the same district as part of Eagle River, she was listing all the Socio-Economic Integration of the two areas.  

At one point getting low deviations was important until it fell by the wayside for other criteria.  

Today's discussion made some of the criteria look so malleable you could stretch them to mean whatever you wanted.  Let's look at three of them.  (I'm going to leave compactness out for now because that seemed to be abused the least.)

1.  Deviation - This is a federal requirement. In order for the one-person-one-vote concept to work, districts have to be as close to equal in population as possible.  In theory anyway.  Part of Mat-Su's complaint is that Mat-Su as a whole is over populated because it's districts range from 1.1% more than the ideal 2020 Alaska Redistricting population number of 18,335. (That comes from dividing the 2020 Census number for Alaska by 40 House seats.)  At one point, their challenge added up the percentages for each district and they claimed they were 13.7% above.  But as I pointed out in a post yesterday, you can't add up percentages.  If you take the population of the six Mat-Su districts and divide them by the ideal size of six districts, the deviation is 2.2 or so.  

The Supreme Court has ruled that in urban areas it should be less than two and the lower the better.  In rural areas there is more flexibility.  The absolute limit from the Supreme Court has been a 10% limit between the highest and lowest deviations.  So if the highest deviation is 5% above 18335, then the lowest allowable would be 5% below.  But even that number would have to be justified.  

Stephen Colligan, the challengers' expert today, complained about Mat-Su's overpopulation and said they didn't have as much influence in Juneau because of it.  But really, if they have 400 more people in their district out of 18,335 people, how much of a difference does that really make?  This is a theoretical equality.  At what point does it become really an equity issue?  Some districts have a much higher proportion of non-voters than other districts, such as children or non-citizens, or prisoners.  Don't get me wrong.  Equal size districts is an important criterion, but we shouldn't obsess over it.  It's become even more of an issue now that software is available to reduce the differences to 1% for most districts and under that for urban areas.  AFFER's maps did that.  And Colligan's point that Anchorage and other areas were uniformly underpopulated is a valid one.  Was that done intentionally?  I suspect not, but it probably didn't have to be that way if the Board had more professional mappers working on the maps.  But I'll pursue that later.

2.  Contiguity - This basically means that all parts of the house district are touching.  It's the main criterion for Senate pairings. (In Senate pairings the two House districts have to touch, somewhere.) Here the basic issue in District 29 is that there is no way to get from Valdez to Mat-Su by car without going through another district.  The Board argues that the land is contiguous, it doesn't matter if the road goes out of the district for 60 miles or more.  Board Attorney Lee Baxter seemed to mock witness Colligan's use of the term 'auto contiguity' which got changed then to 'transportation contiguity' which then no longer seemed to have any meaning when helicopters and chartered plane brought up.  

But I'm all for the 'auto contiguity' concept.  People should have to drive out of their district to reach other parts of their district.  Of course, there are exceptions in rural Alaska where there are no roads, or where there is water and island.  But in urban areas and in areas with roads, 'auto contiguity' makes perfect sense to me.  You shouldn't have to drive through nearer areas to get to the other side of your district.  In Valdez' case to where 75% of the population of the district is located a four hour drive away, in good weather.  But this should also apply in Anchorage and Fairbanks.  Last time a Fairbanks district was 'connected' by a military bombing range that was closed to the public.  It was done to dilute the vote of the main part of the district.  And in Anchorage this time, this same sort of thing is being done in the Eagle River Senate pairings.  Yes, the districts are contiguous by land, but not by land people can use to get to the other side.  Instead they have to drive through other districts and then eight or more miles to get to the other side of their district.  This too was for partisan reasons and if the Court recognizes 'auto contiguity' it would put an end to this sort of gerrymandering.  

3.  Socio-Economic Integration - This is the most ambiguous criterion.  In my mind, it means that there is an important relationship, a common interest, that makes it beneficial to be grouped together and be represented by on representative.  But the plaintiffs and the defendant alike are coming up with all sorts of ways areas are similar or different.  Do they use the same highways?  Where do they shop?  Do Valdez folks shop in Mat-Su or Anchorage?  The answer from the mayor of Valdez was, "if your 45 minutes from Anchorage, why stop in Mat-Su where you have to pay sales tax?"   I thought Valdez had a strong list of reasons they are connected with the Richardson Highway communities - from goods coming in the port going up to Fairbanks, to the pipeline, to electrical utilizes, to higher education, etc.  But the Board's attorney pointed out that Valdez sports teams play in Mat-Su once a year.  The Mayor pointed out they play in Kenai too, but mostly along the Richardson Highway.  The Board's attorney asked Valdez if they thought Mat-Su was socially-economically integrated with Tonsina?  Later the Board was challenged whether Holy Cross was socially-economically integrated with Glennallen?  Both had been paired in different maps that had been supported.  It just shows that not every pairing will work exactly and the different criteria have to be weighed and compromised here and there to get districts.

At the Board meetings we heard that Interior Native Groups have nothing in common with Coastal Native Groups.  I understand they can have different language traditions and other traditions, but does that mean they have more in common with the White folks who are relatively recent arrivals to Alaska than to other Alaska Natives?  It became clear to me over this process that we can  find all kinds of areas of commonality and differences.  But which ones are really important in terms of having a representative?  And if you put everyone who is different in a different district does this ultimately strengthen or weaken their representation?  Packing is the type of gerrymandering where you put a lot of one group into one district.  They'll elect their representative by 50% or more.  But that also means they had 50% excess votes that could have made another district more competitive.  Lots of think about here.  

Expert Mappers versus the Board

Third party groups like AFFR (Alaskans for Fair Redistricting) and AFFER (Alaskans for Fair and Equitable Redistricting), Doyon, the Democratic Party, and the Senate Democratic Minority  attended most of the public Board meetings.  As I listened to them testify and talked to them, it became clear that they had begun mapping months before the Board even started.  They had people trained in GIS (Geographic Information Systems) that is the basis of the mapping software.  Stephen Colligan, today's expert witness is the head of AFFER and said he has people with masters and PhD's in this field working on mapping.  He said that Mat-Su had begun working on this five years ago.  

In comparison, the Board is made up of people with little or no previous mapping experience.  They had basic classes for beginners to help them learn how to use the software.  At the time I was beginning to form thoughts like - "the board is way behind the third party groups" and "the board is learning on the job."  Colligan today said that the Board didn't start until September 7 and then gave themselves two days to come up with maps.  They actually started playing with the software on August 24, 2021.  Meanwhile the third party groups had professionals and had started making maps months earlier.  [UPDATE Jan 25, 2021: I tracked down my post "Redistricting Board Meets To Learn Software" which happened on June 30, 2021.  They had a three day workshop.]

This just tells me that for 2030, the Board needs to hire professional map makers and not be dilettantes trying to do a specialists work.  I don't blame the Board itself.  The technology has changed rapidly and they didn't know enough to know how in over their heads they were.  

I suspect this is something the legislature needs to work on, because we can't settle for amateurs doing the mapping and judging the maps next time.  We need people who are trained and experienced in this.  

You could tell by the level of detail Colligan went into.  It was a totally different kind of conversation than with the other witnesses and different from how the Board members talked about mapping.  You could also tell when Doyon attorney Tanner Amdur-Clark talked.  He too was very involved with the Doyon mapping and software.  This is like the difference between lay folks and doctors talking about medical issues.  

Should Local Areas Be Required To Submit Statewide Maps To Be Listened To By The Board?

This was a Valdez and a Mat-Su report.  The Board's attorney mocked is probably too strong a word, but was dismissive that Valdez submitted a map that only made appropriately sized districts for part of the state in the map they submitted to the Board.  "The Board has a responsibility to the whole state, not just your area."  Colligan said the same thing happened to Mat-Su who submitted maps for their districts.  

Colligan felt it was unfair to ask local areas to map out the whole state.  They should only be asked to do a map that shows their preferences and it's the Board's responsibility to do the whole state.  

I think this is an issue future Boards need to think carefully about.  It's expensive to hire experts to do a whole state map.  But I also understand it's easy to do one small area if you don't have to consider how it affects the rest of the state.  I raise here just to get it on the record for the future.  

Enough now.  It's late.  This isn't the he-said-she-said report of the trial, but I think it's just as meaningful if not more.  Take care.

AK Redistricting Board Trial Day 1 - Peeling Back The Layers

Anyone who is NOT confused by this case just isn't paying attention.  

You could read Matt Buxton's account of Friday's opening court date -and it's a good version - but there is so much happening, that 100 different reporters could have written equally good accounts that were all different.  

In part, because direct testimony in this case is not happening in open court.  That decision was made because of the ticking clock between now and the date by which candidates, who need to know what districts they're in, have to file to run for office..  The court's decision has to be in 120 days before that June 1 deadline.  That's January 31 or February 1.  

So I'm going to ask readers who haven't read Matt's account, to go read it.  That leaves me free to not try to give an overview, but rather to focus elsewhere. For instance, Matt wrote:

"The court spent a decent amount of time in the afternoon arguing about access to records and the admissibility of various pieces of testimony."

With no intent of contradicting Matt, I'd say the court spent an indecent amount of time on the rules of this trial. Maybe it's more obvious because in this trial the public was able to follow the wrangling in the pre-trial hearings - stuff we don't usually see in court.  I'm now thinking back to various screen court dramas.  I think most spend 99.9% of the time in open court, not in chambers arguing rules. Maybe some chamber time with the judge, but after the trial has already begun. Usually the judge is giving one party a stern warning about following the rules, not about what the rules are.

But it's become clear to me that that is where the real battle is here.  It's the rules the court ultimately follows that will decide the outcome of this case.  

Essentially, the plaintiffs are trying to expose how the board came to their decisions when they were drawing the lines.  The plaintiffs belief the Board members either had no documented reasons or had blatantly partisan reasons.  

For the most part, the Board's process was the most open in Alaska history.  Every meeting since at least December 2020 was available via phone or online.  The Board staff listened to suggestions about their website, quickly put up audio and video tapes of meetings, and worked to set up interactive programs that the public could use to make their own maps online.  They put up all the public testimony on the website in days.  

What didn't get up were transcripts of any of these meetings.  Video's nice, but searching keywords doesn't work. (Though the Assembly has a program where you can search keywords.)  The one area I'd found the Board a little loose on was Executive Session.  These seemed a bit too long to just be covering the official reasons for them. And often the list of reasons a board is allowed to go into ES was cited, but not the specific issue they were going to discuss.  

Well, despite all this openness, the battle now is between the plaintiffs trying to extract the reasons the Board made certain decisions and the defense trying to block them.  They've been asking for the Board meeting transcripts from last November's key meetings for a month now, but the Board only just got them out a few days ago.  They've been asking for the transcripts of the Board's emails to each other and the attorney for a month.  The Board's attorney Matt Singer has been fighting that request tooth and nail.  Even after the Judge ruled in favor the the plaintiffs - with the stipulation that the Judge would read them 'in camera' and decide which were and weren't protected by attorney-client privilege - Singer asked for a stay.  When that was rejected, he asked the Supreme Court for a stay.  They granted a stay, but it was short lived and in the afternoon before the case began, the Supreme Court upheld the Judge's ruling.  

But that meant that Holly Wells had to try her case without any of the information in those emails.  But the judge did allow that this is one big case and she hasn't closed her case yet.  It's still open pending those emails and what other things come up in trial.  Despite Singer's vigorous argument against that.  

There were three witnesses Friday.  Felisa Wilson is the lead plaintiff in the Anchorage case.  I couldn't tell if she said anything that isn't already on the record or not.  I say this because - as mentioned above - it's hard to know what is already on the record.  While the affidavits and depositions are now on the record, they've only recently been available.  In a normal trial, we would have heard direct testimony and what documents were submitted as evidence.  In this trial there are thousand of pages of transcripts, much of which has only appeared in the last week.  

David Dunsmore, worked with Alaskans for Fair Redistricting (AFFR) to come up with their third-party map and was deep in the weeds of this whole process.  Again I don't know that he revealed anything new.  They also had an expert witness.  It seems he did get a few points in about the demographics of East Anchorage and why pairing that district with ER would dilute their voting power.

The Board's lawyer, Singer, did everything he could to discredit the witnesses.  He pointed out that Wilson had been treasurer of the Democratic party, implying this made the lawsuit simply a partisan maneuver. She retorted that she was more than a temporary volunteer position she had only recently taken - that she was a physician, retired Air Force Major, an African-American, and a Blackfoot Sioux and when she retired from the military she got to do a lot of volunteer work she couldn't do while in the military including in immigrant neighborhoods of Anchorage, the ones that will be hurt by the Board's Senate pairings.  

Singer did the same with Dunsmore. You were a staffer to Democratic Sen Bill Wielechowski, right?  AFFR was a union organization right?  These kinds of guilt by association arguments might work at a jury trial, but I have confidence they won't sway Judge Matthews.  

He tried to deny the expert credentials of anthropologist Dr. Chase Hensel.  He asked him questions about things he either wasn't qualified to answer (the law) or aspects of the Anchorage maps he hadn't studied.  Hensel didn't fall into the traps.  These attacks on Hensel were particularly awkward because, as Mat-Su plaintiff's attorney got on the record, Matt Singer himself had himself hired Hensel as an expert witness for another Alaska case. 

I understand that attorneys try to diminish the creditability of opposing witnesses, but given that there is no jury here, these attacks were fairly transparent and seemed sleazy.  Singer had already seemed close to whining as he repeatedly complained about 'changing the rules at the last minute'.  

Singer is one attorney (plus the backups from his law firm) who is fighting off five other attorneys.  With just one opponent it's much easier.  But here, one attorney raises a point and debates with Singer, and then the next one picks it up and adds more ammunition, then the next.  The plaintiffs' attorneys each have one big day in court and the rest of the days they can sit back and just swoop in with question when an opportunity arises.  Singer has to be in the hot seat every day.  Maybe he should have given an associate responsibility for a couple of these cases so he could recoup.  

His main accomplishment has been to block the plaintiffs from getting information that would help them find out what the Board's logic was for the districts that are being challenged.  (Most of the house districts were discussed fairly openly.  But the Eagle River pairings- the most blatantly partisan action the Board approved - was not openly discussed. It was just ramrodded through.  The Valdez pairing with Matsu was briefly discussed in open, but it seemed to be, "Well we've got most everything else done, what do we do with Valdez?"  The options they discussed were pairing it with Anchorage or Mat-Su.  Since it's with Mat-Su now, that seemed the best to them. 

I'd note that Holly Wells had planned to cross examine Melanie Bahnke about the Eagle River pairing.  Board member Bahnke had flown in from Nome specifically for this.  But at the last minute, Wells decided not to cross Bahnke.  My rough notes include this:

"Singer:  I want to call member Bahnke and Borromeo is here.  Ms. Bahnke wants to go back to Nome.  

Wells:  I was hoping to take break given Mr. Singer’s comments.  Rather not call Board.  Nervous about that."

I didn't understand the issue, only that she didn't want to open things up for Singer to question the two Board members.  Later I found a "MOTION TO PRECLUDE REDIRECT QUESTIONING IN ABSENCE OF CROSS-EXAMINATION" that was submitted the evening before the trial was to begin. (It's still, as I write this Sunday evening,  the last document up for this case.)  It's in response to things Singer said in a meeting they had Thursday afternoon.  The part that seems to most succinctly explain her concern:  

"Plaintiffs indicated that they intended only to call three of the Board members, after which counsel for the Board informed the East Anchorage Plaintiffs that he intended to conduct a re-direct examination of all the Board members, regardless of whether the East Anchorage Plaintiffs intended to cross-examine them."

Another maneuver by Singer.  I don't deny that Singer's job is to defend his clients to the best of his ability.  But what is becoming clear is that his clients' case in the Senate Pairings is pretty weak.  His defense is not - at least in the East Anchorage case - to have his clients come to the stand and explain how they got to their decisions, but rather to keep the plaintiffs from getting to his clients.  

On the other hand, he belittles the work of the East Anchorage plaintiffs' expert witness.  That's ok except that the expert actually did some analysis of the districts, while the Board member who did the Eagle River pairings, Bethany Marcum,  used, in her own words, her opinion based on having lived in Eagle River.  No demographic analysis, no numbers on the comparative racial and ethnic make up or economic differences between the two house districts she paired up.  

The wrangling in this case tends to support those who argue that the US courts are not about justice, but about winning.  

Enough.  

 

Bahnke and Borromeo will be back for the other plaintiffs, but I'm not sure Wells will be able to get more about the Senate pairings from them.  

What's A Blogger To Do? Mat-Su Case Due Monday, But Haven't Yet Addressed Friday's East Anchorage Case

 Thoughts and ideas are sloshing back and forth in my head like waves racing up the beach, that quickly sliding back down into the ocean.  And it seems the facts and actions in the combined Redistricting cases are as easy to describe as the constantly moving surf.  

So, let's hold off on Friday's hearing.  You can read Matt Buxton's account here which captures much of what you should know.   

To prep for the Mat-Su case, here's the Board's final map of the Matsu districts.  Districts 25, 26, 27, and 28 are shown completely, but 29 and 30 are cut off.  You can't, for example see that Valdez is part of 29 or that 30 includes Denali National Park but not Cantwell.  It's best to use the Board's interactive state map here.

So let's at least get a sense of what Mat-Su is complaining about and wants.  You can see their suit here - it's ten pages, not too bad.    I've tried to pull out the key points they're making from a section called "Counts".

Valdez Case Connected
I'd also note that the Mat-Su case is paired in trial with the Valdez case - both locations don't like being paired with each other.  I've done two posts on the Valdez case which you can see here (Part 1) and here (Part 2).

Mat-Su has two counts:

• Equal Protection
• In this one they point out the Federal requirement that the districts be as equal in population as possible and that the Mat-Su as a whole is over-populated, that is their districts have more people than the perfect size district of 18,335 residents. (State population as of official 2020 census/40 house districts.)  
• The plaintiffs claim that the six Mat-Su districts "Combined, the total overpopulation of the districts is 13.75 percent."  The problem here is that they are adding the percent above the ideal for each district.  That doesn't make sense with percents, because percent is district size/ideal size.  If you have two districts you have to calculate 2 districts/2*ideal size, etc.  The chart does that for each district and then shows the total percent over for all six districts - 2.3, not 13.75.  

  
  

  District	Over or under	Total Pop	Ideal Pop	% above/ Below
  25-M	487	18,822	18,335	2.66
  26-M	472	18,807	18,335	2.58
  27-N	464	18,799	18,335	2.53
  28-N	458	18,793	18,335	2.50
  29-O	438	18,773	18,335	2.39
  30-O	201	18,536	18,335	1.1
  Totals	2520	112,530	110,010	2.3

  Looking at the chart, when you add the six districts and divide their total population (112,530) by the ideal size for six districts (110,010), the percent is 2.3 over the ideal size for all six Mat-Su districts combined.  That's well within the parameters for redistricting in non-urban areas.  
• One could argue that the smaller, more urban districts like Palmer (D-28) and Wasilla (D-27) should have lower deviations than the much larger and more sparsely populated D-30.  That might raise a question or two about the overpopulation of all the Mat-Su districts.  But the claim of them being 13.75% above the ideal is a specious argument.  If they really were that high, they would be automatically ruled unconstitutional because the greatest difference allowable between the lowest under populated district and the highest overpopulated district statewide is 10%.  
• District Boundaries - Here they argue the constitutional requirements of compactness, contiguity, and socio-economically integrated.  The Valdez plaintiffs, in their challenge, make a strong argument about socio-economic integrity in their long list of how Valdez is tied in with the Richardson Highway communities.  Compactness gets squirrelly when we get into rural Alaskan districts because of the sparsely populated areas.  But I think contiguity is an important factor is this case.  Valdez is connected by road to Palmer, but you can't drive from Valdez to Palmer without going outside the district.  Yes, they are contiguous by roadless, unpopulated, land, but not by road.  The courts have accepted contiguity in rural Alaska where communities are not connected by road.  But that's been in areas where there are NO roads at all between communities.  In this case there is a road that connects Valdez to a number of communities they have much closer ties to than to Mat-Su.  Valdez residents have to drive through another, much closer, district to get to the Mat-Su part of their district. This is also part of the argument in the East Anchorage case where this is an even more extreme example of using geographic contiguity to connect districts that are actually far apart.  

From Mat-Su's complaint:

"COUNTS COUNT I – EQUAL PROTECTION Paragraphs 1 through 36 are incorporated herein as if fully set forth. The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides that the State shall not deny any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. 39. Article I, Section 1 of the Alaska Constitution provides that all persons are equal and entitled to equal rights and protection under the law. 40. The Final Plan violates the equal protection clauses of the United States and Alaska Constitutions. 41. The Board's plan unnecessarily divides the excess population of the MSB in a way that dilutes the effective strength of municipal voters, including by placing them in districts centered elsewhere and that have different social and political concerns; ignoring traditional senate configurations; and, failing to respect political subdivision boundaries and communities of interest, thereby depriving its citizens the right to be an equally powerful and geographically effective vote, all of which is in violation of the equal protection clauses of the United States and Alaska Constitutions. 42. The Final Plan overpopulates each of the six House Districts within the MSB in an excessive amount and out of proportion with the remainder of the State of Alaska, demonstrating that the Board failed to apply the quotient in a practicable fashion in violation of the equal protection clauses of the United States and Alaska Constitutions. COUNT II – DISTRICT BOUNDARIES 43. Paragraphs 1 through 42 are incorporated herein as if fully set forth.

44. Article VI, Section 6 of the Alaska Constitution provides the requirements for each House District. They are to be compact, contiguous, and contain as nearly as practicable a relatively integrated socioeconomic area, and consideration may be given to local government boundaries. Each must contain a population as near as practicable to the quotient obtained by dividing the population of the State by forty. Additionally, drainage and other geographic features shall be used in describing boundaries wherever possible.

45. The Final Plan violates Article VI, Section 6 of the Alaska Constitution.

46. The Final Plan overpopulates each of the six House Districts within the MSB inan excessive amount and out of proportion with the remainder of the State of Alaska, demonstrating that the Board failed to apply the quotient in a practicable fashion in violation of Article VI, Section 6 of the Alaska Constitution.

47. House Districts, including but not limited to, 29, 30 and 36 as included in the Final Plan violate Article VI, Section 6 of the Alaska Constitution, as the House Districts are not compact, contiguous, do not contain as nearly as practicable a relatively integrated socioeconomic area, nor do they consider local government boundaries."

My Conclusions  

Valdez is a tricky community to deal with in redistricting.  Its location and size make it hard to add to any district without doing some sort of stretching of the constitutional criteria.  I think Valdez made a strong case for it being with the Richardson highway communities, but that leaves Mat-Su with a partial district that needs to be paired with something.  I think the lack of road contiguity is also a big issue.  

I also get pretty suspicious of parties who make misleading arguments - like the claim that Mat-Su is 13.75% over populated.  Either they can't do the math or they're being disingenuous. Either case is bad, but shouldn't prevent the court from weighing the rest of their arguments.  

If this Valdez-Mat-Su house district is rejected by the courts, there will be a ripple effect as the Board has to find ways to make other districts that are reasonably sized and are compact, etc. 

Alaska districts are a balancing act and the courts will have to decide whether the arguments here are compelling, whether there are better alternatives, and how disruptive it would be to tell the Board to go back and draw a better map.  

Blacks Targeted On TikTok

 I was talking to an African-American friend today (who is also very much an American, by the way) who told me his TikTok account has been hampered by bots who target his messages that use words like 'white' as violating TikTok rules and it's taking just too much time to fight this.  

I don't use TikTok - I have enough online distractions so I've limited myself - so I wasn't aware of this issue.  But it seems to be longstanding and I'm guessing it's a well organized campaign - like the CRT nonsense - to suppress black voices.  From the people who use terms like 'cancel culture' to accuse others of doing what they themselves are actively doing.  

From a  July 2021 NBC piece:

"Tyler tried a number of phrases, including ones declaring his support for “Black Lives Matter,” “black people,” “black voices” and “black success,” and simply stating “I am a black man” — all of which would immediately trigger a pop-up message prompting him to “remove any inappropriate content.”

But putting “supporting white supremacy” or "supporting white success” in his bio did not prompt the same inappropriate content message. Neither did 'I am a neo-Nazi.'”

It says TikTok apologized, but it's clearly an ongoing problem for my friend.  

Here's a TIME article almost exactly one year before this article on the same issue, just to show its ongoing.   

From a January 2022 article at Insider, we can see the source of the problem my friend was reporting: 

"TikTok told Insider that all of the content cited in the Media Matters study was removed from the platform for violating its hateful behavior policy. Additionally, the company outlined anti-abuse efforts that it has built into its product, including its addition of new controls that allow users to delete or report multiple comments at once and block accounts in bulk."

My friend was reporting what he called bot accounts that would report comments with the word "white" as violations and TikTok would remove them.    Here's a message he got from someone who reported him to TikTok and got things taken down.   

This is, presumably, a white guy telling a black guy he's being racist for talking about white racism.

I'd note that for TikTok content creators with tens of thousands of followers, their income stream is  cut way back when their content is blocked.  

From a December 2021 NYTimes article specifically on the TikTok algorithm :

"the app is shockingly good at reading your preferences and steering you to one of its many “sides,” whether you’re interested in socialism or Excel tips or sex, conservative politics or a specific celebrity. It’s astonishingly good at revealing people’s desires even to themselves — “The TikTok Algorithm Knew My Sexuality Better Than I Did,” reads one in a series of headlines about people marveling at the app’s X-ray of their inner lives."

This article focuses on how the algorithm addicts users and the information it collects on users as the paragraph above indicates.  This leads to concerns about national security because of TikTok's Chinese origin.  It doesn't discuss how the algorithm determines inappropriate content.  

So, this is just a heads up for people like me who only see TikTok videos when they are reposted in other social media.  African-Americans appear to be targeted and their messages are getting censored.  My friend's issues were about using words like 'white' and having people complain to TikTok and getting things blocked.