The Independent Redistricting Commission is working quickly t odraft voting district maps for Congress and for the state Legislature. “The initial draft maps are abominable,” says an email to members of the Oro Valley Democrats.
Out of the 30 legislative districts in Arizona, the district lines guarantee that Republicans will win in 14 districts, but the proposed maps give Democrats only 9 nine districts that should be safe for a Democratic nominee. The final decisions by the IRC are expected in December and will last for 10 years.
Democrats are urged to comment on the maps today through Thursday. It only takes a few minutes to comment. During the meeting, click on the public comment link for the comment form. There are only a few fields to fill in including agenda item (draft maps) and whom you represent (myself).
- Monday, Oct 18, 8am-3pm – Public comment link
- Tuesday, Oct 19, 8am-5pm – Public comment link
- Wednesday, Oct 20, 8am-5pm – Public comment link
- Thursday, Oct 21, 8am to 5pm – Public comment link
Just a few of the problems
The Arizona Ground Game identified just a few of the problems with the district maps:
Draft maps favor Republicans. According to PlanScore, a districting analysis website strongly recommended in the IRC documents, the new versions of the CD and LD maps are biased in favor of the Republican Party. For the LD map, the metrics show the maps favoring Republicans between 68 and 83% of the possible election scenarios. Because the new versions of the map are biased towards the Republican Party they should be abandoned and fresh maps drawn with more competitive districts.
The maps Separate Affluent White Suburbs From Urban Tucson. In a recent IRC meeting, it was proposed that the affluent white suburbs surrounding Tucson be combined into a single LD that wraps around urban Tucson. Tucson area LDs should not be segregated into high-income districts and lower-income districts, but instead should be compact and competitive districts that include neighborhoods of all income brackets.
David Mehl’s influence. Republican IRC member David Mehl is dominating the meetings. When the Independent Chair defers to him regarding Pima County it creates the appearance of bias.
A Better Mapping Tool for Ordinary Citizens. The IRC needs to provide a mapping tool that can be navigated by ordinary citizens. The mapping system is baffling to inexperienced users, which is demonstrated by the low number of unique users. Many give up out of frustration. Training in the system was inadequate for people unacquainted with GIS. There is no FAQ section and no one to contact for help.
Respect for Tohono O’Odham. The new version of the map rejects the clearly expressed desire of tribal advocates that they are primarily associated with metro Pima County where they have both historic and economic roots. By putting the Tohono O’Odham Nation in a district with very little of Metro Pima County you are making it likely that their representative would be from Santa Cruz County.
IRC meets today
At the Monday, Oct 17 meeting the IRC will presumably vote to select one Congressional District map and one state Legislative District map from the version 3 maps as the basis for that day’s decisions.
You can view the version 3 test maps on the IRC Redistricting System website, which requires creating a free account. When you log in to the Redistricting System, you will get a dialog box showing the maps you can load.
Because the IRC Redistricting System can be confusing, Bickel wrote detailed instructions on how to get into the system, and how to find and load the latest test maps. The test maps can be found below:
Congress:
State Legislature:
You can follow the meetings live without spending all day watching on your computer. The following Twitter accounts live-Tweeted the Friday meeting and presumably will do so again for the meetings this week:
- Jeremy Duda (AZ Mirror reporter): https://twitter.com/jeremyduda
- Indivisible AZ Redistricting Team: https://twitter.com/redistrictAZ
You don’t need a Twitter account to view these feeds.
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Oh Johnny, you didn’t read the article, did you. It notes a Daily Star story covering wht Princeton whitewash, and the article said “Forget everything you learned from that article,” said Susan Bickel, Chair of LD9 Democrats.
Now, go outside and play with your little Republican friends.
I quoted from the yellow sheet. If you want to reference another source, please provide a link as I could not locate the article you’re talkin about. However, given the choice between a group associated with Princeton University, no hotbed of right-wing Republican activism, and a Democrat LD chair, I think I’ll go with the Princeton group informing my opinion. Wouldn’t you? In addition, you might want to drop the disrespectful name calling, unless you are ok with dwelling on Sharpie’s intellectual plane.
Jeepers Johnny, don’t you have any Republican friends? You spend all your time commenting on a liberal blog, which is kind of sad. Nobody cares what you think.
Actually, you do,
Don’t know why you brought me into this, but since we’re here, the place is spacious and very quiet, just a soft breeze blowing is all you can hear, but these 1940’s furnishing’s really need an update.
Spoiler Alert:
According to today’s yellow sheet,
“Experts at the Princeton Gerrymandering Project told our reporter the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission’s preliminary congressional and legislative maps are scoring high marks relative to other states when it comes to partisan fairness, competitiveness and geographic features. The project, which evaluated earlier iterations of the maps last
week (LINK), graded the versions approved Monday, though they noted revisions would continue throughout the week (the commission is holding lengthy revision meetings Monday through Thursday and will likely vote to approve draft maps next week).”
Of course, Princeton is known as being a right wing enclave.