Read Public Comments in Arizona Redistricting Hearings Should Matter. Will They? now from Blog for Arizona for Politics from a Liberal Viewpoint

The Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission (AIRC) is now in its final decision phase. After issuing its preliminary draft maps, the Commissioners listened to the public via 14 public meetings. Now they must use their collective judgment to decide on final maps, presumably taking into account what they have heard from the public.

This is pretty tricky. Have you met “the public?” We are a pretty wild bunch – many of us are poorly informed, we have strong biases, and we are influenced by many things, not all of which are rational. Cognitive scientists would say that very few of these are rational.

And as Chair Neuberg noted during the December 9th deliberations, “we hear from a VERY small percentage of the state”; and at the December 3^rd virtual public meeting, she emphasized, “we’re all aware that it’s not a representative sample.” Both statements are true.

And yet – the purpose of these hearings was to hear from the public. In all such endeavors, those that take the trouble to express their opinions publicly are a small, unrepresentative group – they are the motivated ones!

And it is the responsibility of public officials to take such testimony seriously. Yes, they must incorporate their own logical faculties, bringing to bear other resources to help form their own opinions. But views of the outspoken members of the public must matter, or else the public will never be heard.

Analyzing What The Public Said

To help with the understanding of what was said in these meetings, a number of the Indivisible Arizona Statewide Redistricting Team members (all volunteers) decided to analyze the spoken data from the 14 public meetings. On Google Drive, we have spreadsheets showing the support for one side or the other on 3 contentious issues: competitiveness (critically important versus overblown); the Verde Valley (grouped with Prescott in order to keep Yavapai county in one district, versus grouped with Flagstaff); and the draft map’s LD17 near Tucson (Yea or Nay). We supplemented the spreadsheets with typical quotes on each side of each issue, to give some grounding to the numbers. You can access our data and analysis via the links at the end of this post.

It’s critical that the public comments be seriously considered by the AIRC. But how should the documented positions on these issues be interpreted? One extreme would be to take them as representative of the voting public; in keeping with what Chair Neuberg has noted, we don’t have evidence of this. But the other extreme would be to ignore the numbers entirely. I’d argue that this would be equally inappropriate. The totals should be viewed for what they are – a representation of the support for one side or the other on these issues by those concerned enough to take the time and effort to participate in the public process. Next, arguments made by each side on these issues should be considered and taken into account.

As of this writing, the AIRC has made public the manual transcripts of the meetings up through the November 19 virtual meeting. When these have not been available, approximate transcripts generated by automatic speech recognition had to be used. But since this process generated time stamps throughout the testimony, one can also check back with the original video to resolve any ambiguity about a speaker’s positions.

For the purposes of this article, let’s consider the first of these controversies: should the redistricting criterion of competitiveness be viewed as critically important, or has its emphasis been overblown? It is the last of the six redistricting criteria listed in the Arizona constitution, but this is a list that is not actually ranked. It is true that it is a criterion that should be maximized “where to do so would not create a significant detriment to the other goals.” But most of the other criteria are also limited by phrases like “to the extent practicable.” Further, a number of the other criteria are very loosely defined, while competitiveness has often been more crisply delineated, as it has been by this commission.

What are the views of the vocal individuals who have participated in the public hearings?

Public support for, and against competitiveness- by hearing location.

Basically, there has been massive support for the importance of competitiveness as a key redistricting criterion. Yes, this is from a small and vocal fraction of the public; but this is always who public figures hear from.

The testimony urging a greater emphasis on competitiveness is often not specific, as opposed to testimony about particular boundaries that will preserve perceived communities of interest. But this is understandable. While competitiveness as a measure is straightforward to describe, its realization requires major efforts comprising many, many mapping steps. And it is difficult – as Chair Neuberg has pointed out, in practice, compliance with the Voting Rights Act means that there are significant concentrations of Democrats in the VRA districts, which reduces their numbers in the remaining districts. With an overall Republican lean in the non-VRA districts, it is difficult to create competitive districts.

But “difficult” does not mean “impossible”. The legislative draft map showed that six competitive districts could be created, and other maps submitted by the public showed seven or even eight of them. In principle, if there were as many as 9 VRA districts (currently there are 8), if they were balanced by 9 strongly Republican ones, there could be as many as 12 competitive districts. That is a theoretical number, and in practice, it would require a complete rethinking of the maps to approach that goal. But again, a number of citizen maps have been submitted that have more competitive districts than the draft maps. It is probably unrealistic to expect citizens in a two-minute public testimony to describe the complex set of mapping actions required to improve this criterion. But there are some maps promoting improvements in this factor, at least for some. Some of the submitted LDF maps that at least attempt this include 0006, 0010, 0011, 0012, 0018, 0023, 0070, 0071, 0072, and 0074.

Finally, since ultimately the AIRC must employ their own rational decision-making abilities to interpret and augment the public response, it is incumbent on them to evaluate the arguments that have been made. And here, in this author’s opinion, the “No” arguments fail.

To decide for yourself, you should look at the extracted quotes in Google Drive or go directly to the points in the meeting videos listed in the spreadsheets there. The links are at the end of this post.

Arguments For and Against

What follows is a summary of some of the primary arguments being made by the public.

Arguing that competitiveness has been an over-emphasized criterion:

Competitiveness is just a tool for the Democrats to gerrymander in their favor.
Response: Each party might use one or more legal factors in their own favor, but this does not obviate their legitimacy.
Competitiveness is the least of the required criteria.
Response: The courts have weighed in pretty decisively on this one, and it has been described by the AIRC’s primary mapping expert, Dr. Doug Johnson: beyond legal constraints such as the VRA, each of the criteria has limitations and must be weighed equally against one another. This is well-represented by the constitutional listing of the criteria, which are lettered, not numbered.
In competitive districts, representatives can’t take a firm stand – they take weak middle-of-the-road positions that they think won’t upset anyone. Then no one is happy.
Response: Others may disagree, but I think that electoral results in Arizona suggest that “middle of the road” is a pretty good description of the average Arizona voter.
In competitive districts, the maximum number of voters are unhappy with electoral results. Response: Interestingly, this is also an argument made by Senate President Fann. On the face of it, it seems to be mathematically unassailable – in a 50-50 election, half of the voters will not have their preferred outcome. However, this does not account for the characteristics of who is likely to win primaries in a competitive district. In a state where 1/3 of the voters are unaffiliated with either party, if each party wants their candidate to win, they will tend to nominate more moderate candidates in such a district, leading to less disappointment regardless of the outcome. Furthermore, most people are less focused on politics, and their disappointment in any outcome will not be major – their attitude will be largely focused on “kitchen table” issues. But finally, you can’t just consider the effects of having a competitive district in weighing the idea – you have to consider the effects of having an uncompetitive or “safe” district. These effects can be major, as are described in some of the “Yes” arguments below.

Arguments made by supporters of emphasizing competitiveness:

My vote doesn’t matter in a non-competitive district.
Response: I would like this not to be true; engaged citizens often point out to other prospective voters that their actions still matter. But in practice, it is difficult to get voters energized to turn out for elections where the outcome is pre-determined by the district lines.
Better candidates run in competitive districts. Why would someone run if there is no chance of winning?
Response: In practice you can observe the many legislative positions in safe districts where one party or the other fields no candidate.
Safe districts empower extreme candidates. Polarization in legislative bodies leads to inaction.
Response: The first phrase here appears to be correct, although there are many causes for extremism. And given the complexity of politics, legislative inaction can result from many factors. But extremism makes compromise difficult.
Officials elected in non-competitive districts do not need to be accountable to all their constituents.
Response: This is a critical point. We want our representatives in government to do their best for the entire state, not just a small group, and if that group represents the extremes, the others in a district may just be out of luck.

To me, the arguments made by the “pro” side are far more compelling. More importantly, as the AIRC considers the changes that affect competitiveness one way or the other, I hope that they consider these arguments from the public. I believe that their rational examination would lead them to favor competitiveness where they can.

Nelson Morgan, an Arizona Indivisible Gerrymander Slayer and retired academic researcher, now in Phoenix after 50 years of life in and around Berkeley; is the author of “We Can Fix It: How to Disrupt the impact of Big Money on Politics.”

Check out the data and analysis from these links:

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