Gathering Places
Gathering Places
IN THE 1812 ELECTIONS, a newspaper cartoonist put a salamander's head and tail on a map of politically shaped districts drawn by Massachusetts Gov. Edmund Gerry and called it a Gerrymander. Gerry has gone to the ballot box in the sky, but the term and the tactic live on. Reapportionment Games:
The slippery GerrymanderSPREADING IT AROUND
In 1991, for instance, the Hawaii State Reapportionment Commission gerrymandered dissident Sen. Mary Jane McMurdo into a new district where voters didn't know her. She lost the next election.
As Hawaii Senate President Bobby Bunda has said, "When you take over, you screw the other guy. That's the American way."
The 2001 Reapportionment Commission is drawing boundaries to reflect the 2000 Census.
The U.S. Supreme Court requires that districts have almost-equal populations. The Hawaii Constitution says that districts should respect island and neighborhood boundaries and be compact and contiguous (in one piece).
Some Oahu boundary changes are necessary, because the population in Ewa, for instance, has grown more than in downtown Honolulu or Kaimuki.
The Reapportionment Commission first agreed that students and military people who keep their out-of-state resident status should be excluded. The commissioners agreed to include immigrants, children and prisoners, since they are residents and could vote some day.
Maui Advisory Committee member Madge Schaefer and other Maui residents objected to a proposal to include military dependents, saying that they would one day leave with their military relatives, and that including them would unfairly favor Oahu, where most of them live.
On July 25, the Commission privately showed the first maps to legislators. Two proposed Senate districts were intended apparently to eliminate the district of dissident Sen. Les Ihara, who had opposed Senate leaders when they instituted an undemocratic rule allowing committee chairpersons to veto bills in conference committee hearings.
In contrast, Senate leadership allies Donna Mercado Kim and Norman Sakamoto, who live just a few blocks apart in Moanalua, were saved from having to run against each other by a squiggle in the boundary that put them in different districts.
In the House, Republican Barbara Marumoto had lost her post as minority leader and had conflicts with Republican Party Chairwoman Linda Lingle. Marumoto was put into a new district with new voters. In the neighboring district, Democratic House Speaker Calvin Say retained most of his territory and asked for changes to keep his base.
Republican Charles Djou, who is supposedly running for lieutenant governor, and Democrat Terry Yoshinaga, who has been criticized for her management of the Labor and Public Employment Committee, found themselves sharing districts with strong incumbents. It seemed that the leadership of both parties would be satisfied with the new districts.
On July 26, the commissioners voted on congressional districts, adopting the "traditional" division between urban Honolulu and rural Oahu and the neighbor islands instead of an experimental "North-South" alternative proposed by Commissioner Harold Masumoto that cut across Oahu, or a zig-zag alternative from U.S. Rep. Patsy Mink that drew laughter from the audience because of the many twists and turns.
By July 31, the Commission had drawn new maps that changed the embarrassing Senate boundaries but still eliminated Ihara's district.
At the Aug. 2 meeting, Schaefer dropped a bombshell. Maui News reporter Mark Adams had discovered official election documents showing that the intent of the constitutional amendment passed in 1992 was to exclude military dependents from the population base. The Commission consulted with the deputy attorney general and postponed adoption of the modified House and Senate maps until they could get an official opinion.
If the 41,430 military dependents are excluded from the population base, the neighbor islands will probably gain a Senate seat and two House seats from Oahu, and the Commission staff will have to make their third set of maps in two weeks.
Which legislators will be hurt is unclear.
Events so far show that it will not be House and Senate leaders or their allies.
Larry Meacham is spokesman for Common Cause Hawaii.