HomeMy WebLinkAboutComm. 008 - 2021-09-08 (testimony) Common Cause Hawaii: items on September 9, 2021 agenda*Common Cause
Holding Power Accountablig
September 8, 2021
2021 Council Reapportionment Commission
County of Hawaii
25 Aupuni Street
Hilo, HI 96720
COMMUNICATION 8
(Via Email Only)
RE: September 9, 2021 Agenda of the 2021 Hawaii County Redistricting
Commission
Dear 2021 Hawaii County Redistricting Commission:
Common Cause Hawaii is a nonpartisan, nonprofit, grassroots organization dedicated to
upholding the core values of American democracy and ensuring a fair and transparent
reapportionment and redistricting process.
Common Cause Hawaii hereby provides comments pertaining to the Hawaii County
Redistricting Commission Rules of Procedure. According to the March 1, 2021 draft
Redistricting Commission minutes, Rules of Procedure for the Hawaii County Redistricting
Commission were adopted. However, Common Cause Hawaii does not see said rules on the
Laserfische WebLink. According to Hawaii Revised Statutes (HRS) § 92-7.5, all board
documents should be publicly available when distributed to the Commission. Thus, all
Commission packets should be provided to the public as soon as possible, including but not
limited to packets from previous meetings.
Further, if not part of the Rules of Procedure for the Hawaii County Redistricting Commission,
Common Cause Hawaii suggests that, as meetings are currently occurring remotely, they be
recorded and made publicly available for later viewing. This will ensure greater transparency
for and public access to the 2021 Hawaii County Redistricting Commission meetings.
Additionally, Act 220 (2021) amended the Sunshine Law to allow the conduct of remote
meetings in non -emergency times and would take effect January 1, 2022. Act 220 allows
boards and the commissions the option to use interactive conference technology to conduct
remote meetings under the Sunshine Law, while still retaining the option to conduct traditional
in -person meetings at a single meeting site or at multiple meeting sites connected by
interactive conference technology. Thus, it is reasonable to continue with remote meetings,
which should be recorded for later viewing
Common Cause Hawaii requests the opportunity to testify after each agenda item. The policy
and intent of the Sunshine Law is clear: "the discussions, deliberations, decisions, and action
of governmental agencies — shall be conducted as openly as possible". HRS § 92-1.
Therefore, given the consequential matters that will be discussed during the meeting after
public testimony is taken, the public should be allowed additional opportunity to testify after
each agenda item and not be limited to giving testimony at the beginning of the meeting.
"Periodic testimony may be especially appropriate in situations where a controversial or
significant issue that was not anticipated develops during the board's discussions and
decision -making." Kanahele v1194
?Q13 . Limiting the public to testifying at the beginning of a meeting will decrease the
effectiveness of testimony, especially when Commission packets are not provided in advance
of meetings.
Lastly, Common Cause Hawai'i requests that the 2021 Hawai'i County Redistricting
Commission reallocate the population of incarcerated persons to their place of residence prior
to incarceration. Including incarcerated persons in the population count for the district in which
their facility is located alters representational proportions and, as a result, the voting power of
residents. Without reallocation, the total population of prisons districts will contain few eligible
voters (because prisoners can't vote in Hawai'i), and thus, the elected representatives for
those districts represent fewer voters than their colleagues in parts of the State whose districts
do not contain prisons. Common Cause Hawai'i attaches information for the Commission on
how to reallocate this data.
Therefore, Common Cause Hawai'i respectfully asks that the 2021 Hawai'i County
Redistricting Commission (1) meetings all be recorded and then publicly available for later
viewing, (2) permit remote public testimony at the start of the agenda and additional testimony
by the public after each agenda item for full transparency, accountability, and public
participation, (3) make all board documents publicly available when distributed to the
Commission, and (4) reallocate data to have incarcerated persons counted at their place of
residence prior to incarceration.
If you have any questions or concerns, I am available to discuss further at 808-275-6275 or
sma@commoncause.org.
Very respectfully yours,
Sandy Ma
Sandy Ma
Executive Director
Common Cause Hawai'i
Attachment: How to Count Incarcerated People at Home
2
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Cause POLICY INITI TINE
Step by Step Guide: How to coun
incarcerated people at home
An overview of the steps involved in adjusting state redistricting data to
create equitable solutions to prison gerrymandering
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Get state
prison data
from the
state's
correctional
agency
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Geocode
individual
address data
Work with the state's correctional agency to get data for people incarcerated on
Census Day, including: address where person is incarcerated, last known address
prior to incarceration, age, race, and Hispanic origin, if available.
o To anonymize the data, a unique identifier should be assigned to each record.
o In most cases, the data on race is incomplete or the categories used by the
correctional agency do not line up with census categories, and states will have
to take a best -fit approach to matching the corrections data to the census
data.
o If the state maintains alternative addresses (address provided at arrestor
expected address on release, etc.) those should be included as well.
• Ensure address data is as specific and accurate as possible, including street, city,
zip code, and state.
• Remove all addresses that list another state.
• Geocode all remining addresses - geocoding can be done using geocoding
software (i.e. ESRI, MapMarker) or the Census Bureau's batch geocoder, available
to states specifically for this purpose.
o Some states contract with a vendor to do the geocoding.
o The geocoding process will likely identify additional addresses in need of
correction (problems such as "street" instead of "avenue" that look like a
complete and accurate address on first glance but fail to match to a mappable
address).
• For any addresses that fail to geocode, establish a protocol for correcting
addresses and recording any edits made.
o In 2011, New York established a set of alphabetical codes to note the source of
supplemental information used to clean up addresses.
o Some corrections will be easy, like misspellings or incorrect abbreviations for
cities or street names.
o Other addresses may take more research such as looking at additional address
data provided by the state's corrections agency (i.e. booking address) or
looking at maps of municipal boundaries, zip codes, or online mapping sites
like Google Maps.
• After corrections are made, run all the corrected addresses through the geocoder
again, and repeat this process for as many iterations as practicable.
• States handle unusable addresses differently - some require those individuals be
counted where they are incarcerated; others, like California, assign the individual
to a randomly determined census block within the smallest geographical area that
can be determined from the information provided.
• NOTE: Do not let the perfect be the enemy of good! Every person counted at home
is one that is not counted in the wrong place. States should make their best effort
to correct and geocode as many of the addresses provided, but no state will get
100% accuracy. As a rough guide, a 70% success rate would be considered a good
outcome in most states going through the process for the first time.
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Subtract the correctional population reported by the census in the group quarters
tables of the redistricting data.
Subtract the
• Some states may require or have discretion to subtract federal prison populations.
relevant prison
• Some states, like Maryland, require that individuals without an address be counted
populations
at the facility address. In that case, take any unmatched addresses from Step Two,
from census
above, and add those populations back into the census block containing the
blocks where
facility.
prisons are
located
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The state will have the data set that best counts incarcerated people at home and
minimizes padding of districts with prisons once it completes Steps 1 thru 3: people
Use adjusted
with geocodable addresses have been counted in their home census blocks;
data for
correctional group quarters counts have been subtracted from the census blocks
redistricting
where prisons are located; and people without a last known, unusable or out-of-
state address have either been subtracted or placed back in the census block where
they are incarcerated, depending on what is permitted or required under state law.
9 Additional resources:
• Quick reference chart for state -specific legislation:
tt s®//www.prisonersofthecensus.org/models/chart. tml
• Quick reference on state options for addressing prison gerrymandering:
tt s®//www.prisonersofthecensus.org/facts eets/national/state solutions. f
• A detailed overview of the reallocation process used by New York and Maryland in 2010:
prison gerryi�andering
For questions and more information on prison gerrymandering, visit
httpl-//www. risonersofthecensus.org
For questions and more information about redistricting, visit
tt s://www.commoncause.org/our-work/ rr ri
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