Redistricting: A Simple Question

good idea, but... (4.00 / 1)

That's a good idea, but a new amendment wouldn't take effect until it was passed.  That can't happen till the upcoming General Election.  We can't have the election in the first place without a redistricting plan of some sort.

The O'Mirski plan pretty much totally ignores the 2006 amendment anyway.



sitting state rep: running for re-election in 2012.

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by: TimothyHorrigan @ Sun Mar 25, 2012 at 23:01:04 PM UTC

Understood - (0.00 / 0)

But the problem will never be clearer than it is right now.

And if the legislature has to ask the judiciary for a little extra leeway on the 2012 plan, trying to fix the mess for next time would help demonstrate good faith.

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by: elwood @ Sun Mar 25, 2012 at 23:24:04 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

When will they have time to ask the judiciary? (4.00 / 2)

Between their war on women, trying to cut down the judiciary, and Right to Work... doesn't sound like these folks are all too interested in getting the jusciary involved in anything.

"We start working to beat these guys right now." -Jed Bartlet

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by: cblodg @ Mon Mar 26, 2012 at 00:01:25 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

I disagree (4.00 / 1)

Its not impossible. Plans and amendments to the current plan were offered that would have been much much better. There is nothing wrong with the 2006 amendment. It protects the rights of towns to their own representation.  

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by: Tgroh @ Mon Mar 26, 2012 at 02:13:17 AM UTC

At least some of those plans (0.00 / 0)

took extraordinary steps such as giving different representatives, different numbers of votes (e.g., DinkyTown rep gets 1 vote, BiggerTown rep gets 1.2 votes).

That's a clever solution, but it's a dramatic departure from the way our legislature has worked for 230 years or so. Some folks in both parties are uneasy with the idea.

The 2006 language goes beyond requiring big-enough towns to get their own reps. It also prohibits combining a larger town's fifth seat, with a tiny town.  That appears to be the source of a lot of the difficulty.

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by: elwood @ Mon Mar 26, 2012 at 02:22:58 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

difficult to impossible ... (4.00 / 5)

This premise hasn't been tested.  Compliance with the 2006 amendment is certainly difficult, but is it impossible?  The House redistricting committee chose early on to follow bad advice from House counsel and require all plans to adhere to a rigid 10% deviation rule. But this is required by neither the state nor the federal constitutions.  Absent a good faith effort to construct a statewide plan compliant with the 2006 amendment's "reasonable deviation" standard, it is premature to judge whether compliance is possible.  

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by: rames14779 @ Mon Mar 26, 2012 at 02:38:15 AM UTC

The problem isnt really with the 2006 amendment. (4.00 / 6)

The problem really lies in the fact that both the federal requirement of one person/one vote and the NH 2006 requirement of giving towns their own reps when warranted conflict with the far older and not longer feasible requirement that towns and wards remain intact at all times.

It is simply impossible to  do all three things.

What I would suggest is that an amendment be drafted that gives priority in descending order to

A one person one vote
B small districts
C keeping towns and wards intact to the greatest extent possible, but only after meeting A and B .

Doing so would eliminate multi-member district and floterials-- two absurdities that make a mockery of the concept of a 400 person citizen legislature.

I have a way to do this and will suggest it when there is a new legislative session. It is way too late to submit an amendment to the constitution in this session and anyway I think that amending the constitution is something best done by a legislature with a significantly smaller group of radical right wing extremists, ie after November .

In a similar vein, I think it is time to completely rethink the whole concept of who does redistricting. Other states have gone to a model of a independent redistricting commission. We should examine the experience there and see if it would fit NH.

"But, in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope." Si se puede. Yes we can.  

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by: Paul Twomey @ Mon Mar 26, 2012 at 11:47:08 AM UTC

One other point about 2006 Amendment (4.00 / 2)

We would probably be in far worse shape without it. As it is, it forced the breaking up of a number of large multi member districts, even under the GOP leadership plan. (They are correct in saying that their plan has far less huge districts that the 2002 court plan, although they neglect to mention that they redistricted in 2004 and left all the huge districts that served their purpose of denying democratic voters representation.)

Large districts enable gerrymandering and enough smaller districts make it almost impossible to pull off to any appreciable extent.


"But, in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope." Si se puede. Yes we can.  

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by: Paul Twomey @ Mon Mar 26, 2012 at 13:06:44 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

The problem is with the floterial districts in the amendment (4.00 / 2)

A One person-one vote is good.
B Small districts are good.
C In rural areas, keeping communities of towns together (school districts, watershed areas, local market areas) is as important as keeping larger towns intact.

The amendment, and specifically the provision for floterial districts which it contains, dismembers those communities. The small-town populations are shuffled wherever they they are useful to create a district of the right size meet deviation requirements for an overlying floterial.

Floterials turn into huge and awkward conglomerations of towns. Who will want to run in these groupings sharing nothing but bits of borders?

Republican leadership brags about the number of new districts that their plan includes. Half of these new districts are floterials that represent not a smaller and homogenious groupings of towns, but combinations of already ungainly groupings of towns.

I will support a more responsible amendment that provides for communities of interests of small towns as well as representation of larger towns and cities.

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by: Chuck Townsend @ Mon Mar 26, 2012 at 21:39:43 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

If you really had 400 separate single member districts, it would go a long way toward providing for communities of interst of small towns. (4.00 / 3)

"But, in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope." Si se puede. Yes we can.  

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by: Paul Twomey @ Mon Mar 26, 2012 at 23:46:41 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Fair enough - (0.00 / 0)

There's a reasonable case for not starting the amendment process now, and just going back to status quo ante isn't the best choice.

Thanks for weighing in.  

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by: elwood @ Mon Mar 26, 2012 at 21:40:56 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

like Vermont (4.00 / 2)

Vermont has roughly 600,000 residents, served by 150 state reps.  That's roughly 1 rep per 4,000 people--- not that much more than NH's 3291 per capita.

VT has all 1 or 2 person districts, which across county lines.  You can split towns into  multiple pieces, although this is avoided whenever possible.

Their deviation is still way more than Mirski's plus or minus 5.  That goal is inachievable without "megadistricts."


sitting state rep: running for re-election in 2012.

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by: TimothyHorrigan @ Tue Mar 27, 2012 at 00:48:01 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Other redistricting plans have been proposed (4.00 / 2)

As I recall, there is at least one very good proposal that gives their own reps to 95% of all towns that should have one under the constitution. The plan the Republicans favored and voted for has a far lower percentage of compliance with the constitution, for no good reason.

I don't think we should repeal the amendment. I think we should hold out for a plan that complies with it, to a reasonable degree. 95% would be reasonable. The current plan is not.

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by: beverlywoods @ Mon Mar 26, 2012 at 13:56:08 PM UTC

A thought on how it could be handled (0.00 / 0)

The amendment and federal law are in place right now, so those are going to have to be handled no matter what. But here's a thought for a future revision of the amendment: leave it mostly as-is, in terms of what it mandates, but add in the caveat: if full compliance with this amendment and federal law is not possible, then the plan presented by any member of the legislature with the smallest number of citizens living in non-compliant districts shall be automatically accepted.

Bam. You can gerrymander and tweak all you want, but if someone else can come up with a map that puts fewer people into non-compliant districts, they automatically win. The map instantly goes to whoever can put the most people into compliant districts. If somebody tries to get cute with what constitutes a compliant district, you go right to the court, which has the final say. As a side benefit, both sides can take advantage of crowdsourcing and a completely open process; there's no question about whether a redistricting commission is really independent, much less questions about a map being deliberately partisanly created.

Only the left protects anyone's rights.

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by: RealNRH @ Tue Mar 27, 2012 at 04:05:15 AM UTC