2021-09-09 Redistricting Commission minutes (2nd Session)

Home

KOSSOW: And then we’re heading over to Number 4 under New Business, Communication 6: How to Draw District Plans That Will Stand Up in Court, and this is from Deputy Corporation Counsel. Let me know when you folks are ready to go. YOSHINA: Mr. Chair, this is Dwayne. KOSSOW: Mr. Yoshina. YOSHINA: Can we take a break? Five minutes. KOSSOW: Sure, five minute recess. 4. Communication 6: How to Draw Redistricting Plans That Will Stand Up in Court From Deputy Corporation Council Diana M. Mellon-Lacey KOSSOW: I’m calling the meeting back order. Is Corporation Counsel ready? MELLON-LACEY: Yes, Chair, I’m ready. KOSSOW: Okay, go right ahead. MELLON-LACEY: Okay, so, in your packet, you got a copy of an article that’s called, “How to Draw Redistricting Plans That Will Stand Up in Court,” and it’s fairly involved, it’s fairly lengthy, it goes into quite a bit of detail, case law, and looks at it at various levels. And what I wanted to do today, was just really briefly go over some key points, primarily because it was quite a long time ago that we had our training. It was back in March. And I know that the presenter today has gone over a lot of these critical issues so I won’t take up, you know, a lot of time doing this, but if there’s a lot of interest, and if anybody wants any of the cases that are cited in the article, I would be happy to pull them down and make them available so, just shoot an email if there’s anything you’re particularly interested in. Okay, but this article was by a man named Peter Wattson, and he has done this for a number of years. I know they’ve used the same article back in 2011 and it was updated in 2021. So, essentially, you know that redistricting is the process of changing the district boundaries so that the idea would be, you’re trying to come up with an equal number in each district. So, it’s going to be the boundaries that have to change to do that. And, it has the potential to be highly partisan because drafters in some cases have wide discretion where boundaries will run, and creative drafting can give one party a significant advantage in elections. So, we redistrict because the population shifts, and just as we saw today, we’ve had some population growth on our island that has changed how the districts now line up. If everything was uniform, arguably we wouldn’t need to do this, but as we can see, we have to identify those districts that have grown faster or slower and adjust accordingly. So, the big issue, and I think we talked about it last time and it’s in the Charter and our Hawaiʻi County Code, is this issue of gerrymandering. And gerrymandering is any 26