State Legislature Redistricting

[cinyc]

The Alaska Maps are out, with two official alternatives.  (Alternative 1, Alternative 2)  Let's just say that because of attempts to keep Senate District C a minority-majority district and incumbents in their seats, the results are... interesting.    Ketchikan will end up in a Senate District A with either Kodiak Island and Seward or a huge swath of the railbelt stretching from Valdez to Cordova to Delta Junction and even Talkeetna.  Neither alternative creates a contiguous Senate District A.  And due to relative population loss in the Bush, one or more of the HD37-40 bush HDs intrude on part of the railbelt.

There are also links to plans proposed by others.

[cinyc]

Alaska's map has been released:

http://media.adn.com/smedia/2011/06/07/18/13/ez7t.So.7.pdf

As expected, the Southeast panhandle is down to 4 house districts.  Petersburg was split from Wrangell and placed in a district with Democratic-leaning downtown Juneau.  The bush was split into 5-6 districts (depending on how one defines it), with one district stretching all the from the Bering Sea way to suburban areas of Fairbanks.  All are high-numbered districts.  The old huge interior bush house district 6 was split up, with the bulk of the population put in HD-39 with Nome.  That district now stretches from Nome to the Canadian border.   Some Senate districts, which make up two consecutively numbered house districts (i.e. 1+2=SD-A, 3+4=SD-B, etc.) might not be strictly contiguous in some places.

The redistricting panel didn't seem to care much about incumbents.  Some incumbents were put in districts together.

More here:
http://www.adn.com/2011/06/06/1902638/panel-approves-new-district-boundaries.html

[cinyc]

A revised, renumbered Alaska map is here, which takes away a lot of the non-contiguity in Senate districts.

http://www.akredistricting.org/Files/Board%20Adopted%20Final%20Draft/Statewide.pdf

Numbering starts in Fairbanks and spirals southward toward Anchorage, then the panhandle, then the bush.  The Bristol district is smaller and takes in the far Aleutians, which were split.

Incumbents are mad about this plan, particularly Democrats, who think they are most harmed by it.  The redistricting panel was made up of 4 Republicans and 1 Democrat - though the vote for the map was unanimous.  The main arguments against the plan are geographic, not respecting borough boundaries and the like.  A prior Aleutian split wasn't allowed by a court and the Mat-Su Valley supposedly only has 4 seats instead of 5 - though a fifth is largely Mat-Su.

http://www.adn.com/2011/06/07/1904650/redistricting-plan-called-flawed.html

The panel really didn't care at all about where incumbents lived when drafting it, which, in my opinion, is the way redistricting ought to be.

[cinyc]

Is the GOP in the Alaska legislature still split/factionalized? If so, with the map apparently bad for the Democrats, how does it fare for the pro-coalition Republicans?

Yes, the Alaska GOP is still split, at least in the Alaska State Senate.  

I guess how pro-coalition Republicans fare depends on how many Senate seats the GOP holds after elections.  If it's just barely a majority, the coalition may live.  If not, coalition Republicans might work within the party.  The Alaska Senate is currently 10-10 Republican-Democrat and 16-4 coalition.  The Alaska House is 24-16 Republican, with some of the 16 Democrats in a coalition with all but 2 Republicans - though they are not strictly needed for a majority in the caucus.

[cinyc]

I hope Cuomo vetoes that mess.

I hope that if he does, the Assembly and Senate make a deal to override the veto.  Neither body really wants to roll the dice and get a court-drawn map that puts incumbents in danger.

Both maps are poster children for partisan Gerrymandering.  They did quite the job of carving up cities for partisan ends.

[cinyc]

I could see the State Assembly signing onto the project, possibily, but, some Senate Democrats also will have to sign onto the project. What is their risk-reward ratio in a court-drawn map?

The proposed Senate map creates some minority-majority districts that might otherwise not exist, including the first Asian-American majority district.  That's despite New York losing 100,000 African-Americans in the last census.  I could see the black caucus and three independent-leaning Democrats whose districts were largely protected splitting off from the caucus and voting for the plan.

The Senate map also puts the Brooklyn Orthodox Jewish community in one district instead of five.

[cinyc]

An Alaskan judge ordered the redistricting board to redraw four house districts.  The board is appealing the need to redraw two of the four, largely due to VRA concerns.

[cinyc]

The legislature passed and Governor Cuomo signed into law the New York Assembly and state Senate redistricting plans.  Senate Democrats have already filed a lawsuit questioning the addition of the 63rd seat and claim they will sue in federal court, too.

In Alaska, the Alaska Supreme Court struck down[ the proposed map, upholding the lower court's opinion.  So it's back to the drawing board there.