(UPDATED) Red Alert: Redistricting Commission Gerrymanders Arizona into Many GOP Districts

This is an urgent call to action: send in a comment today and Thursday to object to the pro-Republican maps proposed by the Independent Redistricting Commission (AIRC). It creates 15 solid Republican voting districts (up from 13) and shrinks solid Democratic districts to only 10 (down from 13).

The Commissioners met this morning and approved Map 8.0.

• To send in a comment today, use the Contact form at irc.az.gov/contact-us
• Send a comment on Thursday: the next IRC mapping discussion will take place at the next IRC meeting on Thursday, October 29, starting at 9:30 am. Click to see the agenda.

Act now or we will face another 10 years of oppressive Republican rule. Click to see Map 8.0 for yourself. 

“Draft Map 8.0 is the worst map proposed so far,” said Dee Maitland, a Democratic activist. Maitland, a  member of The League of Women Voters. “There should not be 17 districts ranging from 57.2% to 80.6% white.”

Map 8.0 is biased by many statistical measures, and for example, the partisan bias of the map favors Republicans in 80% of simulated scenarios.

“My concern is the division of Pima County. The population alone supports 4 legislative districts. Instead, Map 8.0 divides county voters into 7 districts crossing 6 other counties: Yuma, Pinal, Santa Cruz, Cochise, Graham, and Greenlee,” she said.

Further, the 7 districts formed put Pima County voters in 2 safe Republican districts. In Pima County, Democrats represent 40.3%, Republicans 28.7% and Independents 31.0%. “There is no justification for putting Pima County voters in 2 safe republican Districts,” Maitland said.

District 18 is also very suspicious. This distorted voting district runs from Tucson National Estates in Oro Valley, through the Foothills, south of Grant, to include Rolling Hills Country Club Estates. In essence, it puts the deeply Democratic Foothills with Republican Oro Valley plus a fancy country club.

An earlier attempt to gerrymander

Commissioner Mehl, a Republican, introduced Map 6.3 which was written by the anti-consumer, pro-business Southern Arizona Leadership Council (SALC), a GOP front organization. The group claims to promote the Arizona economy, but it does so by opposing consumer and labor protections.

The SALC/Mehl pro-GOP map 6.3 creates a peculiar dragon-shaped district that literally resembles the gerrymander image. The AIRC’s own lawyers intervened, telling the commissioners to take down map 6.3 from the official website, but Mehl made a motion to adopt the map, which violates all six of the required constitutional criteria.

Map 6.3 carves up Tucson into 5 voting districts. The city is a strong Democratic voting area, and the map shatters it apFor a senator or representative (or candidate) to drive from the Tanque Verde section of east Tucson to Marana could take over an hour even in light to moderate traffic.

The Latino Coalition proposed districts but the SALC/Mehl maps weaken them. For example, map 4.0 had eight districts with a Hispanic citizen voting population of over 43%. The GOP map 8.0 only has six such districts. Evidently, these maps were drawn without any input from the Latino community so perhaps this is no surprise.

The SALC/Mehl map is a spectacular failure by creating a distorted Legislative District 17, which is under-populated by 6,839 people or 2.87%. It puts the parts of Marana and Oro Valley together — and these are two very different communities. The northern parts of Marana and Oro Valley, which tend to be Republican, are combined in proposed LD 17 and the southern parts, which tend to be more Democratic, are excluded. It takes more than an hour to drive from the Tanque Verde section of east Tucson to Marana.

This is gerrymandering pure and simple:

City boundaries are disrespected; both Marana and Oro Valley are split into two districts. Moreover, there is a mountain range, the Catalina Mountains, which separates east Tucson/Tanque Verde from Oro Valley and Marana.

• To send in a comment today, use the Contact form at irc.az.gov/contact-us
• Send a comment on Thursday: the next IRC mapping discussion will take place at the next IRC meeting on Thursday, October 29, starting at 9:30 am. Click to see the agenda.