Every 10 years, as populations change, lawmakers in most states draw up new district boundaries so that voters will have proportional and equitable opportunities for representation. But they don’t always achieve that goal. Redistricting fights are often extremely political, and can end up disenfranchising voters of color. Assigning the redistricting decisions to independent commissions, rather than lawmakers, is intended to address these challenges. In Washington state, it hasn’t always worked out that way. Marilyn Thompson has reported on Washington’s independent redistricting commission for ProPublica, and joins us to talk about what she’s found.
This transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Every 10 years, as populations change, new district boundaries are drawn so that voters have proportional and equitable opportunities for representation. In most states including Oregon, that job first falls to lawmakers, meaning they get to try to draw their own district lines. That doesn’t always turn out so well. Their maps are often challenged in courts for not being fair. So in some states, independent commissions make the maps instead, but it turns out that they can be prone to the same issues. Marilyn Thompson wrote about problems with Washington’s Redistricting Commission for ProPublica recently and she joins us now. Welcome to the show.
Marilyn Thompson: Thank you so much.
Miller: You started your recent article with a story about Washington’s Redistricting Commission from three years ago. Parts of this story would be comical if democracy weren’t at stake. Can you tell us the basics of this story?
Thompson: Well, the basics of the story are that Washington State has an independent redistricting commission. It’s actually been known nationally as one of the more effective independent commissions that have become kind of a trend in redistricting. Because the hope is that putting it in the hands of an independent body will make it fair and not prone to backroom deals and such.
But what happened in this case, the independent commission was doing what it was supposed to do, soliciting public opinion, going around the state, having conferences with citizens, and trying to meet with lawmakers and congress people. And then they were supposed to draw maps for both the legislative and congressional districts that would hopefully be passed by the Legislature. They were gonna do this by the constitutional deadline of November 15, 2021. They had no latitude in that.
What happened in Washington, and as you say, it almost read like a funny screenplay or something as you began putting it together - the Commission was composed of five members. There are two Republicans and two Democrats and one floater who was there to sort of organize things. And they were completely deadlocked on what to do about the Latino population in an area called the Yakima Valley. It had a huge immigrant surge for agricultural purposes and the population had become predominantly Latino in many of those five counties that composed the Valley. They knew that under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, they had to create a district where Latinos would have a fair chance of electing their own candidates of choice. But they were deadlocked on how to do it. And giving Latinos too much power at the polls would hurt Republicans.
And so what you had was an almost farcical, quote, “public meeting” in which they operated on Zoom. But they were actually cutting deals for this in a hotel outside of Seattle and couldn’t quite make up their minds about what to do here. And what ultimately happened was that the Republican side of the Commission prevailed. And they drew a district with such a low Latino-per-voting percentage that it was almost bound to attract a federal lawsuit under the Voting Rights Act, which is exactly what happened.
Miller: So, because of this lawsuit, I mean, we now have access to a lot of text messages between members of this commission and other folks - party officials, lawmakers, other people. Can you give us a sense for the explicitly partisan horse trading that went on?
Thompson: Yeah. It was actually pretty shocking for me because, as you say, it’s supposed to be working independently, coming to independent decisions. But right up until the very last moments, the members of the Commission were in touch and trading text messages with people in the Legislature who would be directly impacted by the plan. And this went on at great length until midnight, when they were supposed to take a vote on the maps.
The Speaker of the House sent in a text to her representative on the Commission, wanting to get a little change in the map that would help one of her political allies. It was that kind of petty partisan stuff that was, in effect, delaying the Commission, which did miss its deadline and created a big mess.
Miller: One of the biggest surprises to me with respect to that part of your reporting is, unless I misunderstood something, this kind of horse trading, these text messages, is not actually illegal. Is it allowed under the functioning of this committee, or did I misunderstand that?
Thompson: No, it was allowed. What was supposed to happen, the Commission had set up procedures and there were kind of explicit instructions to staff that they were not supposed to be taking special requests from lawmakers. But that apparently didn’t apply to the members themselves. They were free to communicate with the parties, and they did.
Miller: So just to go back to the big picture here for a second. As I noted, the whole idea of these independent commissions - and I almost feel like I should put that word in quotes at this point - is to remove influence from lawmakers. In general, how do maps created by these kinds of commissions, compare to those created directly by lawmakers? I mean, are they any better in general?
Thompson: Well yeah, there’ve been a number of studies done to address specifically that question. And the conclusion is that if you look nationally at the scope of redistricting maps, and compare the ones drawn by commissions to the ones drawn by legislators, then you’re gonna find that the commission maps are a better representation of the population. But that doesn’t mean there’s not stuff going on behind the scenes.
And that’s really been the problem in recent years. A couple of these commissions have just fallen on their face trying to get the basic job done. And when you start peeling away the layers, what you see is the same kind of petty politics that we’ve been hearing about in legislatures forever.
Miller: And on some level it makes sense. In Washington’s case, even though it is technically independent or ostensibly independent, the commissioners are chosen by lawmakers. So even if it’s not lawmakers themselves who are drawing their own boundaries, they’re putting people who are aligned with their values in partisan ways and who want the same thing, more power for the respective parties. How do you get around that? What’s a better model?
Thompson: Well, that’s a great question and certainly, there are better models. The world of independent commissions has been evolving steadily. Washington had one of the first. It was the third in the nation to create an independent commission. But as the problems have surfaced and other states have been looking at these old-fashioned commissions, to see where the problems are, they’ve built in a lot of new structures and safeguards.
The one that’s held out as the sort of national model now is California, which has a much larger commission. And it has both appointed members and total free-floating agents, who have no political affiliation at all. And the logic there is that it will all balance out. You’re not gonna have one that’s heavily weighted toward a particular party because there’s a way to balance it out.
Miller: Is there a technological solution here? I mean, could computer modeling, if there were an algorithm that different sides could agree on…it’s still people creating technology, obviously, but is there some kind of computer solution to this, so we don’t have to rely so much on people who have vested interests?
Thompson: There almost certainly is. And it’s interesting you’re asking the question. I got a lot of follow up questions from the public asking exactly that. Why do we still have this kind of thing? And yeah, there are ways to do it electronically or technically that would keep this thing clean as a whistle. But this is politics, and it just hasn’t happened.
A couple of people told me, “You need to look at the redistricting system in Canada and in Australia.” They have made huge gains. Their processes are much fairer. I have not had time to do that yet. But in both of those countries, I think there’s a much heavier reliance on technology to create the fair lines.
Miller: Meanwhile, the legal battles over Washington’s Legislative Districts have not stopped. Two cases have now been appealed all the way up to the US Supreme Court. Where do those stand right now?
Thompson: We’re watching that because at any day, we could get a court decision on whether they are going to suspend the remedial map-drawing. The way it stands now, there’s supposed to be a new map coming out of the Federal Court at any time. They’ve been working on that for the past several months. So the Supreme Court has been asked to stop that in its tracks while they weigh the merits of a second lawsuit called Garcia v. Hobbs. That has an entirely different argument about what happened in Washington, which is that the State created a racial gerrymander which is illegal.
Miller: This is actually an important point before we say goodbye. This is a relatively new conservative legal argument?
Thompson: Yes, this is an attack on Section 2, a very complicated part of the Voting Rights Act, that basically uses population numbers to decide who gets what in the representation. But there is an argument that when you use Section 2 criteria, you can rely so heavily on race in creating your map, that you end up doing something illegal. And that’s been a conservative argument, not just in Washington, but in a number of different states.
Miller: Marilyn Thompson, thanks very much.
Thompson: Oh, thank you. I enjoyed talking with you.
Miller: Likewise, Marilyn Thompson is a reporter for ProPublica. She wrote recently about problems with Washington’s Redistricting Commission. Her reporting about redistricting continues.
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