The League of Women Voters of Alaska (LWVAK) supports Rep. Les Gara’s House Joint Resolution 26, a bill to amend the Alaska Constitution to create fairness in redistricting, and encourages all legislators to support this Resolution.
Alaska’s redistricting process has always been contentious. Originally redistricting in our state constitution was a function of the Governor; the constitutional convention, seeing the problems other states had to reapportion in a timely and fair manner, selected the governor model. However, the redistricting maps of 1970, 1980 and 1990 were found by the Alaska Supreme Court to be unconstitutional.
As a result, in 1998 the Legislature initiated and the public narrowly supported creation of a five-member redistricting board in which two members are appointed by the governor, one by the speaker of the House, one by the Senate president and one by the chief justice, all “without regard to political affiliation.” These words imply that the board would be nonpartisan. In practice, nonpartisanship was not achieved. The maps of 2000 and 2010 were also challenged in court and parts were found unconstitutional.
The result of this redistricting history is that Alaskans, aware of the possibility of gerrymandering and desirous of a nonpartisan apportioning of districts, continue to look for approaches that are fair, support the one person/one vote rule, and do not allow legislators to pick their own voters. Alaska has yet to achieve this goal.
In HJR 26, Gara and his staff have taken an approach that will bring the state closer to nonpartisan redistricting by calling for a reformulation of the Redistricting Board. HJR 26 calls for the board to be composed of two members from the party with the largest number of registered voters, two from the party with the second largest number of registered voters, and one nonpartisan member. Further, the resolution allows the solicitation and hiring of technological expertise, much needed as mapping and evaluation techniques have become quite sophisticated.
Judy Andree,
President of the League of Women Voters of Alaska
Margo Waring,
Member of the LWVUS Redistricting Study Group