Vermont Legislative Redistricting

[jimrtex]

Note that Vermont law doesn't require a certain number of seats at all.

Just in case anyone wonders (you probably know this, Bacon King), the Vermont Constitution does specify that "The Senate shall be composed of thirty Senators..."  Regarding the number of seats in each district, it is open ended: "The voters of each senatorial district established by law shall elect one or more Senators from that district, the number from each district to be established by the General Assembly."

In the next paragraph, though, as both Bacon King and jimrtex have alluded to, it reads, "In establishing senatorial districts, which shall afford equality of representation, the General Assembly shall seek to maintain geographical compactness and contiguity and to adhere to boundaries of counties and other existing political subdivisions."

The interesting part is that before the OMOV decision, senators were apportioned by counties, and that continues to be the practice, but the constitution doesn't require it.  And there is the same language in the section for the House of Representatives, such that counties are not necessarily being given precedence over towns.

But the statutes do specify counties (or groups of counties) for apportioning senators, but then it is somewhat ignored.  During some of the discussion by the LAB, it would be noted that so and so county was 12.8% short, and then the next statement was what would be the adjustment needed to get it barely within 10%, and which neighboring county could spare a town or two without pushing it out of bounds.

The only thing in statute that might support switching to smaller districts in Chittenden is the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment, which is probably the basis for moving towns between the county-based districts.  But based on the constitution, the legislature could do anything it wants, because it can change not only the districts, but the process.

[jimrtex]

But on Friday, the board said its proposed reworking of the Chittenden, Grand Isle and Franklin districts contained an error, yielding 31 senators, instead of 30.

Whoops!
[/quote]

Where'd Vermont get this idea of having 150 representatives and 31 senators?

[jimrtex]

The LAB met to try to reduce the number of senators to 30.

The Vermont Democrats have sent out a fund-raising attacking the proposal by the Legislative Apportionment Board for single-member districts claiming that the Progressive Party is threatening single-payer health coverage.

And the minutes of the June 16 meeting of the LAB are online.  These included more discussion about the senate districts.  One member wanted 30 single member districts, while others said that this would make the senate be "another House of Representatives".

Others wanted a consistent 15 2-member districts, while some simply wanted to split Chittenden, while leaving 3-member districts elsewhere.

[jimrtex]

From VTDigger.org:

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The two-member Essex-Orleans district became a one-member shed Essex County and some towns in Orleans County to the Caledonia district, which lost its portion of Orange County which combined with Windsor County to form 2 two-member districts, and other changes are described in the article although it's not clear exactly what changes are changes from the plan the LAB had adopted last week before they realized it had one two many Senators.  You can view the plan and the population and deviation of each district here.  (The Deviation column is the districts population minus the ideal district population of a district electing that number of Senators, but the "% Dev" column is the percentage that that district's population per Senator is over the statewide population per Senator.  In other words, it's correct, although I thought it wasn't at first.)  I verified the figures on a spreadsheet I made back when I started this thread.

I think they probably still had the Windsor 3-seater.  This is the problem when you mix up apportionment and districting.

Franklin 2.29, Lamoille 1.17, Washington 2.85, Addison 1.77, Rutland 2.96, Windsor 2.72, Bennington 1.78, and Windham 2.13, have grossly enough population for a whole number of senators (18 total vs. 17.67 ideal).

But if you place Grand Isle with Franklin (you wouldn't want to stick it in the Chittendon super district) you then have 16 total vs 15.38 ideal.

Franklin-Grand Isle 2.62, Orleans-Essex 1.61, Caledonia 1.50, and Orange 1.39 are pretty far removed from a whole number of senators.   But if you are just apportioning, you apportion 8 seats (3,2,2 and 1) vs 7.12 ideal.

Finally you have Chittendon with 7.51 ideal and even if you truncate to 7.00 you have 31 senators.

If you decide to split Chittendon, you end up with a 3-2-2 or a 2-2-2-1 split.  The only other one-seaters would be Lamoille and Orange.  And if you had a 3-seater, you might be tempted to put Burlington in it.  But Burlington is right at 2 seats (2.03).

So you add Grand Isle to Chittendon so that there can be 8 districts (7.84 ideal), split 2-2-2-2 including a Burlington district.  This restores Franklin to a 2-seater.   The whole-unit counties then have 18 senators (17.67 ideal).  

Orleans-Exeter, Caledonia, and Orange have 5 senators (4.50 ideal).   You convince yourself that this is OK since Orange is significantly past enough for one senator, and you can get some extra people from Franklin and Lamoille.   If you add these two to the NE counties.  You have 8 senators (7.96 ideal).

But this leaves the remaining whole-unit counties at 15 senators (14.21 ideal).  The excess in Franklin and Lamoille is being used two places.  To shore up the population in the neighbors to the east; and to rationalize the apportionment of senators to the whole-unit counties.  But 5 of the 6 whole-units counties in the south are under-populated (Washington 2.85, Addison 1.77, Rutland 2.96, Bennington 1.78, Windsor 2.72).  The exception is Windham with a modest surplus 2.13.

So in total, this southern region had 15 senators for and ideal population of 14.21.  The extra (31st) senator was spread over 6 counties, which was why they couldn't locate him.

Alternatively, the original plan had Orleans-Essex (2), Caledonia (2), Orange (1), and Windsor (3).   Windsor would have had a deficit of 9.1%.  Caledonia and Orange would actually be paired with a total deficit of 3.7% (in 2001, a fairly large chunk of Orange was placed in the Caledonia district.

The revised plan has Orleans (1), Caledonia-Essex (2), Orange (2), and Windsor (2) for one less district (8 to 7).  Since this northeastern area ends up with a collective surplus of 0.29 this suggests most of the patching was done here.

The final plan shifts Charlotte (Chittendon), Elmore (Lamoille), and all of Orange to the south, while only adding one senator.  This is equivalent to 1.62 senators, bringing the southern total to 15.83 ideal and 16 actual, and eliminates the hidden extra senator.

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That's true (the overall deviation in 2002 was 14.73%, if defined as the difference in the largest population per Senator to the smallest as a percentage of the ideal district population which seems to be what federal courts use (rather than as a percentage of whichever district's population would yeild a larger figure which would always be the smaller district, which would also always yeild a larger figure than the ideal district population being the denominator unless there was no deviation), ...

Of course they should use the maximum absolute deviation from the ideal vs. 5%.  They are trying to hit the center of the target, with some area around it counting as a score.  The current court practice is to shoot the arrows and then shift the target to match.

That's true, but how has Vermont gotten away with such deviations?  Maine had a House District in Limestone that had no more than 27.?% of the ideal district population (if all the census 2000 population in Limestone was in that district) from 2002 for 2004, but that was due to a delay in redistricting (and Loring Air Force base in Limestone having closed in the 90's) rather than a deviation as large as Vermont's when the districts were drawn.  Perhaps it's all for the same reason: no one bothered to challege it.  A 12 or 13 percent deviation in Maine's 1983 House district plan was upheld by the state Supreme Court court, but from a newspaper article a plan recommended by the challegers had an even larger deviation.

For the House of Representatives it appears that Vermont considers +/- 10% (twice the conventional federal standard) as normative.

+/- 5% is considered safe harbor, with anything larger having to be justified by the State.  In some cases this has been done.  Wyoming at one time required each county to have one representative (or senator) and it turned out that it wasn't too horrible to do so.  Hawaii also apportions legislators by island group, though they have sometimes ignored the provision and created canoe districts that include a portion of Oahu with a portion of Hawaii or Maui.  In 2001, they danced around whether or not to include the military population in order to rationalize eliminating districts, when they probably could have done so regardless.

Vermont can probably justify larger deviations for House districts, since they respect town lines.  I think I'd be more comfortable if they first did an apportionment by county (or group) in the case of Grand Isle-Franklin and Essex-Caledonia, and then districted those individually.
But if they start dividing towns more extensively, it might be harder to rationalize.

I think Vermont would have a hard time justifying this most recent proposal for the Senate.  They can't claim that they are apportioning on the basis of counties, when they shift so many towns (9 of 23 in Windsor, and 24 of 255 overall), and there is nothing in the constitution that requires them to do so.  In addition, with some minor adjustments they could get within 5% (and eliminate two split counties).  Too often it appears that the goal is to get districts within acceptable ranges rather that to the targeted population.

So if challenged, they would argue that they respect counties, but not really, and that there is no constitutional requirement, and that they shift towns to balance population but don't do a very good job at it.

For example, Bennington starts out at 1.78 and Windham at 2.13 so they shift some population to get Bennington somwhat closer (11% to 6%).  What is truly odd is that Readsboro and Searsburg are moved from Bennington to Windham.  If you put these two towns back in the Bennington district, Bennington is within the 5% range, and the two districts are more equal in population (1.93 and 1.98).

Caledonia-Essex started out at 1.80 and ended up at 2.16, for the worst deviation of any district.  But if you move Wolcott (Lamoille) to Washington, then Caledonia-Essex is reduced to 2.08; and Washington is up to 2.98.  You also eliminate the 3-way split of Lamoille.  Alternatively, shift Stowe form Lamoille to Washington (and keep Elmore and Wolcott in Lamoille), and Lamoille would also be within 5%.

Then shift Westford to Grand Isle-Chittendon and St.George to Chittendon East, and all districts will be within 5%.  The number of towns shifted would be reduced from 24 to 21 and county splits from 9 to 7.

If Vermont wanted to go to consistent 2-member Senate districts, they could divide the state into the following regions: East (Essex, Caledonia, Orange, Windsor, Windham) 8.04 senators;
West (Addison, Rutland, Bennington) 6.51; North (Grand Isle, Franklin, Orleans, Lamoille, Washington 7.95); and Chittendon 7.51.

Place West and Chittendon together, for 16.02 with one district taking in the more rural eastern part of Chittendon together with northern Addison, then the other districts will be fairly similar to what is proposed, while eliminating the the remaining two 3-seat districts and two 1-seat districts.

Parts of Rutland would be added to Addison, and parts of Washington added to Lamoille.  The two-seat Rutland district would be centered on the city of Rutland, while that in Washington would be centered on Barre-Montpelier.  The final one-seater in Orleans would become a two-seater with all the county along with the more rural part of Franklin.

[jimrtex]

The Legislative Apportionment Board has completed work on their senate proposal.  It now goes to the legislature which may pass it into law, or simply ignore it and draw their own maps.  There is nothing in the constitution that requires county boundaries to be used, but there is in statute that the LAB is supposed to follow.  The LAB in essence honored the constitution, but not the statutes, and then compounded it by including excessive population deviation.  Oddly enough, the deviation could be within federal limits (10% of ideal population difference between the largest and smallest districts) by making a couple of changes that would reduce the number of county splits.  That is, the idea of county splits is to make the population deviation more reasonable, but two splits could be eliminated to get the deviation within constitutional limits.

The senate proposal eliminates the Chittenden super district and divides the county up into 2-member districts.   Overall, there are 15 senate districts, with two 3-seat and two 1-seat districts, and the other 11 2-seat districts.

There is also a draft proposal that the LAB considered to create 30 single member districts.