2021-12-09 Redistricting Commission minutes (9th Session)

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never, and of course I wasn't privy to all this detail, but I never noticed or understood what the action is or what was the point. Whereas this one, clearly—and I felt that those pinch points particularly that you brought up, I saw those affect me many times in trying to adjust the census blocks. So, thank you for this and I think as a group, we should hardly endorse something like this in our final report as an actual. Not just saying that there's irregularities that should be fixed, but also specifically pointing out those that are obvious and those that we can make a recommendation how to fix. So, thank you for bringing this forth. Very good. KOSSOW: Ms. Lui. LUL I also want to commend James for kind of keeping this on our agenda and keeping track of these weird census blocks. I think that actually the area of some of these is a big problem in where the population lies. But another problem is just the size of some districts. They vary so much between zero and several thousand. As we've been trying to manipulate the population, sometimes you need like a hundred and all you've got is a census block with a thousand. So, if they could be a little bit more uniform in terms of the numbers of population, that would definitely make this process a lot easier too. So, that's one thought. The other is that I noticed in the 2011 report, there was a recommendation that this be looked at. But since our Commission ends its service at the end of the month, at the end of our job with drawing the maps, what is the process for making that happen? Obviously, it did not happen over the last decade. So, I guess I'm just wondering, maybe this is a question for corporate counsel, I'm not sure. But I just wonder how we don't let this, even with our recommendation, how we make it happen so that they're not in 2030 saying the same thing. I cede. Thank you. KOSSOW: Thank you, Ms. Lui. Is there anybody from Elections Office available? Or Corporation Counsel? Ms. Mellon-Lacey, thank you. MELLON-LACEY: Aloha, everyone. This is Diana Mellon-Lacey, Corporation Counsel, and Pat Nakamoto's making her way here as well. As you saw in the last report of 2011, this was given as a recommendation for County administration to draft the letter to the U.S. Census Bureau. Of course, a recommendation is just that. It doesn't require that it be done. And I don't know if it was done or not so, I believe that Ms. Nakamoto has some information. NAKAMOTO: Yes. The information was forwarded to staff at the State Office of Elections. I was told that the information is forwarded to the Census Bureau, but there's no guarantee that they're going to do anything with that information. You can put the information in the report, but then it needs to go further. My suggestion would be to maybe do a letter to the State Chief Election Officer because he is the Secretary for the State Reapportionment Commission. And he would know the dates, because there is a specific period of time where these suggestions can be made for this boundary suggestion program with the Census Bureau. If we would send, or the Commission would send, a letter directly to the Chief Election Officer, asking him for his help in taking care of this 8