CHC 1979-06-05 SUBCOMMITTEE - Laserfiche WebLink

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Based on that, I would kind of like to rule out a strict district representation , also. If we go 5 districts then we are talking about 5 councilmen and I think that would be too small a number to work with. If you double up, if you go 10, I think that would be too big, also. CHAIRMAN ISHIDA: Stuart, is districting based upon registered voters, valid? MR. ODA: I think you have to use population. Elected officials have to represent, in general, the population rather than inference or registered voters or non-registered voters, not just registered voters. Every court case that I have looked at based it on the population rather than on the registered voters. Registered voters is just one criteria of many that are looked at, but, generally speaking, if there is only going to be one criteria, then the key criteria will be, population. CHAIRMAN ISHIDA: In other words, if we try to consider our district based strictly upon registered voters alone, and nothing else, that is no good. MR. ODA: I don 't think it would be. CHAIRMAN ISHIDA: And if we go based upon population, what population count are we supposed to use? MR. ODA: Well , that is going to be another problem because nobody has an exact head count of our existing popula- tion . We do have some information compiled by the Research 4nd Development Department, but these are based on estimates, educated estimates, you might say, of the present population of the entire county. How accurate they are, we don ' t know. Again, these kinds of estimates have been sustained by the Supreme Court inbetween census periods. That is the only way you can get any kind of objective statistics because, obviously, you can ' t go around counting heads between census periods. CHAIRMAN ISHIDA: As I assume, now, we don ' t have any current count as far as what the population is, right? As far as the county is concerned? Are we somewhat forced to just rely upon what we have now, like we have the representative districts, and assume that to be applicable? MR. ODA: To answer that question , in a nutshell , I think the answer is, yes, with a qualification. For example, Table VII, of this Data Book, 1978, County of Hawaii , is really a population estimate and projection for the State of Hawaii by counties, 1975 to the year 2000. This commission can use this sort of thing which is compiled by, as I said, from public records and projected, as one way of comparing the present House of Representative districts with the population estimates on this sheet. -4-