# Appendix — Ford v. County of Hawaii (No. 05-1325)

> Briefs, arguments, decisions, and more.

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/documents/brief%3Amicro_IA40386008_0672%3A2

## Record

- **Collection:** Supreme Court brief
- **Document type:** Appendix
- **Published:** January 1, 2005

## Text

A 72
recognize that it is very difficult for the Commissioners and
the reason we got into it is because some of us in south....
I'm sorry, West Hawaii were very concerned about these
particular maps. We didn’t feel that they reflected the
community of common interest. At least certainly not in
West Hawaii and that was our biggest concern, because the
computer doesn’t know those kinds of things. And I'm not *
suggesting that I know it, or Chucky knows, knows more
than anybody else in this room. But we took a shot at it from
the little different perspective as I said. We believe that the
district boundaries of these maps needed to be amended
because the community interests are not being aligned. We
did follow the County Charter for the four mandates that
was already explained to you but we also added some
working assumptions on our project.

The first one was that we had to keep communities of
common interests together and that means a community of
common interest to us meant that the people lived in the
same geographical area, they have a similar economic base.
And I don’t mean money, amounts of money, I’m talking
whether they are agricultural, rural, whether they’re urban
or light industrial, or they’re resort areas, or whether they
are transportation center like an airport.

Um...that they also shouldn't say they share the same town
center for their daily stuff. For instance, where their schools
are, where the churches are, where the shopping is, um...
where their cultural events take place. If that’s are the daily
stuff that we all go through on a daily basis, you know,
where that takes place is...as a common area.

And then we also looked at where the people go when they
need to get to a larger area to do, say major shopping. And
there’s on our Island, of course there are three major areas,
Kailua, Hilo and Waimea. And which of those areas were
these people more aligned with. So we, that’s the attempt

A 73

that we made, ah, those were some of the working

assumptions, we also did the very best we could to keep
subdivisions together and intact. We only one or two
subdivisions that we actually had to split and that’s because
the census tracts were so huge, they had, some of them had
ten thousand people, or 7 thousand people, we had to split
some of the over to Puna section. Sorry, Julie.

Um...the other thing that we did is, we used a different
target number than this Commission did. They used 16
thousand 5 hundred twenty, and that’s because they used
the U.S. Census Data and they did not have the exclusions at
all. And we had some of the exclusions. And | apologize in
advance because I’m sure our map is going upset every
council member, every boundary changes. We...one of the
things that was raised at another meeting was how difficult
it is to print ballots when you don’t have overlapping House
and Senate and County districts. And we took a look at that
and we finally threw up our hands and said, there’s no way.
We're going to have to print multiple ballots if we're going
to align ourselves based on the Charter and based on our
community of common interests. There’s no way that we're
gonna make the boundaries of the maps. I am...] have been
a precinct worker for the last two years and I can tell you for
the...for the issues of who shows up in what precincts to
vote, if you're in the wrong precinct, the precinct leader will
call your correct precinct, have your name removed from
that precinct so you can’t vote twice, and you'll vote right
where you are. We don’t make people run around, so the
issue of people going to the wrong precinct is really a non-
issue. Its hard on the precinct workers, but we get it done.
At least we get it done in West Hawaii.

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The other thing is, there will be multiple ballots because
people are going to have to vote for one Senate and there's
gonna be, possibly in another...in another County district.
So let me tell you how we got started on this. I called the
County Elections Office and asked them for the information,
the Census data and I was refused because this is a licensed
piece of software that we're using, and they can’t let anyone
else use it, they couldn’t download any data to me even
though it was public data. They could not, even if they
wanted to, and so I called the State, I got hold of the State
Reapportionment staff, and I Gwabled [sic - groveled] ..and
I begged, and | got them to download the U.S. Census Data
to me for this Island, and then I got them to download two
of the three exclusion groups. There’s the non-resident
military dependents which we all heard about, we all know
of that disaster. That's still is not available because the State
Commission has not made the decision to exclude it and so
they haven't required their staff to do that job. So we don’t
have that information. However, we did get the active
military, and our Island has only 62 active military
personnel. Only 62. And so the number of dependents that
they're gonna have with this is gonna be a very low number.
It probably won't ev cremake-a decimal point change in any
district. But it should be there but it isn’t. The other thing
that | hadn’t heard about was non-resident students at the
universities. That was part of the exclusion base that was
not included in some of these maps. So the total
number...the total number that we started with was slightly
lower than what the...this Commission worked with. And
we had this information down to the Census block. We’ve
got a huge data base that we’ve created now with a lot of
this information and then we borrowed the maps from Mark
through Curtis, and we put them together on the floor of my
living room and we've been crawling for 5 days on our
hands and knees across

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these maps. And we looked at the way the things. ..the
blocks and the tracts are designed, the blocks are the very
tiniest units, usually that’s a little tiny neighborhood, maybe
bordered by two or three or four streets. And then those
blocks are put together into a tract. Um...and we decided
when we look at the census tracts that there were lines that
were just defied any reason. They were... the doggedly,
they ran helter-skelter all over the place and they...it
looked...it..it not only looked bad, there was no reason for
it. And so when we did our cut, we actually got down the
maps and found the census blocks that were in unusual
places and we straightened out the lines. Okay? So those
were the...that’s how we did this job, we did it manually
and plugged the information into my database.

So I’m gonna ask for some help, I'm going to ask my
husband, Sandra, if you want to help, um...I’ve got a map
here and I’m gonna apologize in advance. We started this
map late this afternoon, we got half of the map drawn, and
I’ve got a little tiny map with the Island on it. So we want to
show you what we've got, and the Commission needs to see
this. Is it possible. ..Chuck, come on up, you can explain.
Chucky’s here, he can explain map to you. I didn’t see him
come in. Come in here, we have to give them our spill.

C. FLAHERTY: (INAUDIBLE-SPEAKING FAR FROM
MIKE FROM AUDIENCE)

Boy, what an influence, yeah?

Okay, um...as Brenda said we um...the first thing that we
started off with was the fac: that District 6 or the southern
district of this Island is going to be huge no matter what you
do. Its gonna be cumbersome for whatever council person
has to deal with it. Um...from what we had heard,

A 76
the map that was being preferred had Kealakekua Bay
aligned with Volcano and down towards Mt. View in the
same district which I and Brenda just didn’t think was
plausible. So, we looked more on the lines, aligning Ka;u
and South Kona, both of which are rural, both of which are
agricultural, and both of which are still relatively pristine
open areas, as well as, have large populations of native
Hawaiian peoples and who are seeking, you know, all of
their practices. Um...the other thing we wanted to do was,
we want to do what...as we're looking at these numbers, we
realize that a Kailua-Kona district would be created.
Ah...and so that’s what we did. We created an urban light
industrial, Kailua-Kona urban area which gives on the
general plan, zones to be an urban area. And so we tried to
include all the areas um... within Kailua that’s scheduled
for urban development within a district. Doing that allowed
us to remove the Volcano Village an areas east from District
6, and moved District 6 up towards Kailua-Kona so that it
includes a good deal of the Kona Coffee Belt. Ah.. we did
try...we did look and tried to include the entire Kona Coffee
Belt, um...in a district because of its importance to Hawaiian
agriculture, but its just because of the distribution of the
population, the way that the Island is, and having 9 council
members, there’s just no way to do it...or at least not at this
_ time around.

So we got as much of the Kona Coffee Belt included in
District 6 as we could, again, in keeping what the rural,
agricultural nature of that. So we have an urban district for
Kailua, then the district, and that would be District 7. The
District 8 would then become what we call a residential
resort community district that contains Kona International

Airport, (inaudible), as well as, Kawaihae Harbor, so some
major transportation hubs for West Hawaii. And this entire
coastline is slated for luxury golf course resort type

A 77
developments, as well as, the ancillary supporting
communities that will be necessary for the workers, such as
Waikoloa Village, which in itself had...we’re really
surprised that one of the census blocks that contain
Wailokoa Village has 7,000 people in it. So it’s a substantial
number of people within that particular areas as well.

CHAIR: Mr. Flaherty, please hold up for a second.
C. FLAHERTY: Sure.

CHAIR: Since it is the Commission that you need...oh, I'm
sorry, that and I'd like to be fair to everyone who signed up
to speak. So the Commission members are pretty familiar
with some of the things that you say. So if you just explain
the map, as to where the boundaries are...

C. FLAHERTY: Okay.

CHAIR: ...and leave the advocacy maybe for our meeting
on October 18...I/m...

C. FLAHERTY: Sure
CHAIR: ....sure you'll appreciate it.

C. FLAHERTY: Well, anyway the challenge was to again
bring communities together, so basically what we have is
the North Hawaii district which is the communities of
Hawi, Kapaau, those two, Waimea, as well as, Honokaa.
Um... which is, of course, will serve the Kohala geographic
area. We have North Hilo district which extends down the
East coast to Kawaihae from Honokaa into actually, down
into Hilo. Again, through Hilo urban...is essential Hilo
which is sort of like central Hilo, and then we have basically
a suburban Hilo area, which is also an urban area. And then
we created two districts for Puna and we tried to draw as
many Hawaiian Homelands as we could get it into the north
Puna district and also south Puna district as you can see has
already been drawn out on this wall. And the

A 78
only subdivision that we had to separate was the very small
portion of Hawaiian Paradise Park. All of the other
subdivision we were able to keep intact.

So basically that is the proposal that we came up with. We
only had a week to do it, obviously we would have liked to
had more time to be able to tweak a little bit more, creating a
little bit more of a buffer zone around Waimea, for instance,
because it is this the way the district is drawn right now.
This comes rather close to that...to that area. But the concept
that we came up with, the reason that we came up with this,
we wanted to keep the urban areas represented by urban
council people and rural agricultural areas represented by
rural council people. And that represents, I mean, that is
more degradable of the demographics of this Island, as well
as, the geography um...of this Island as well. So obviously,
there’s no perfect solution but that is one that we came up
with. Thank you.

CHAIR: Thank you. Um...if the both of you could sit up
here, I have a couple of questions. Um...assuming that the
Commission wants to work further with the map, we would
appreciate if you would give us the information regarding
the census blocks so that we can ask the staff to do more
work with the census blocks that you worked on.
Um...other than that I don’t have any questions.

Does any other member of the Commission?

M. VAN PERNIS: You just said that there are 3 economic
centers on the Island, Hilo, Kona and Waimea. We’ ve heard
quite a bit of testimonies that Puna considers itself to be an
economic center, too. You didn’t consider that to be another
economic center?

B. FORD: (INAUDIBLE - SPEAKING FAR FROM MIKE)

A79 -
M. VAN PERNIS: Do you think its appropriate to divide
North Kohala from South Kohala and divide Hamakua in
two districts when we've heard quite a bit of testimony and
evidence of North Kohala basically is entirely West Hawaii
oriented and its economic place both in terms of jobs,
shopping or ...so what you do is basically divide Hamakua,
and divide Kohala for the sake of creating two more Kona
oriented districts. Do you think that’s appropriate to
divided North and South Kohala into two different districts.

B. FORD: Yes, I personally do, the fact remains that we have
to have the right numbers, we all know this. If the fact also
remains that even North Kohala and South Kohala may be
West Hawaii oriented or Waimea oriented, it’s the fact that
we drawn these lines in a particular manner isn’t going to
stop that, we're still going to be involved with this. We
thought it was most important and we have the numbers to
justify it that south...the South Point area, all of that area,
Kailua urban area, the North Kona, South Kohala section
and the North Kohala have representatives inside those
districts representing the West Hawaii perspective. And
most of these other maps basically give us, we
representatives on this side of the Island, because they drag
Ka’u and South Kona all the way over to Puna...

CHAIR: Oh....
B. FORD: ...and we thing that’s totally inappropriate.

M. VAN PERNIS: So basically you devised this to basically
create corner districts where representatives and move the
lines forward and move the rest of the area....

B. FORD: No, we did not let the lines go where they may.
We did the very best job we could to make this reasonable

; A 80
cut. We believe that Puna is with the numbers and entitle
them to two districts, our numbers entitled us to four. Its
not....its not a matter of trying to do somebody out of
something, we have the numbers to justify this.

M. VAN PERNIS: And your District 6, where is this
northern boundary?

B. FORD: Its um...Chucky what's the northern boundary on
6?

C. FLAHERTY: It runs. ..it runs just from the south of
Keauhou Bay, basitally up mauka.

M. VAN PERNIS: So Keauhou Bay does it run Kahaluu for
instance?

C. FLAHERTY: I’m sorry? |
M. VAN PERNIS: Does it run as far as Kahaluu? |
C. FLAHERTY: Ah...no.

M. VAN PERNIS: Is it on the north side of Keauhou Bay?

C. FLAHERTY: No, its on the south side of Keauhou Bay

and it runs through an area which at this point is relatively
undeveloped. It runs through these ...through the south of
Keauhou Bay Estates, south of the golf course, it runs north
of the Hokolei’a Development that’s basically a very open
ranch land type of area at this point. So it is sort of a natural /
demographic break, so... |
M. VAN PERNIS: So, its between Kainaliu and Keauhou |

Estates? /

}
/

basically through the Honalo area.

C. FLAHERTY: Its between ...its between Kainaliu, it se

A 81
M. VAN PERNIS: And would you feel that students ....oh,
that’s all right (referring to B. Ford)...students who reside
here are not entitled to representation?

C. FLAHERTY: Ah...Brenda would like to address that.
B. FORD: (INAUDIBLE-SPEAKING AWAY FROM MIKE)
M. VAN PERNIS: Okay.

C. FLAHERTY: There’s two things I'd like to say. One thing
is, all the other plans divide Kailua Village in half.

CHAIR: Ms. Ford, would you simply answer the question?

B. FORD: The students...no, | do not believe that non-
resident students who have homes on some other Island or
some other continent should be voting in our State and
should not be included in our census data base.

M. VAN PERNIS: Even if they're registered to vote?

B. FORD: If they’re registered to vote and their non-resident
students, they are not telling the truth.

M. VAN PERNIS: Or do you feel that ah...if they’re living
here the majority of the time are they entitled to
representation?

B. FORD: My opinion is, if they are a legal resident
someplace else, then they vote someplace else. If they are
legally a resident here, then they shouldn’t...then they
won't be paying non-resident fees to the university, because
then they are legally a resident. My son spent a year as a
Honolulu resident...

M. VAN PERNIS: Are you that if a person votes here they
are entitled to representation. If they don’t vote here, they
are not entitled to representation.

A 82
B. FORD: Yes.

M. VAN PERNIS: So all of the kids here are too young to
vote and are not entitled....

B. FORD: No.

There...if you are a child of a legal resident here, then you
have...you should have complete representation. That’s
what the census is all about.

M. VAN PERNIS: But if you are a legal resident but are not
registered to vote?

B. FORD: How can you be a legal resident and not be
registered to vote?

We have friends that are registered in other states. We have
snowbirds that come in and...

M. VAN PERNIS: There’s lots of people ...
B. FORD: Okay. Yes, you're...
M. VAN PERNIS: If you’re not registered to vote or...

B. FORD: Then they can’t vote (emphasized). Then
why...why would they be counted?

They’re probably counted in the census population, I don’t
think that the students who are non-residents should be part
of our census space, and they are excluded by the State.

CHAIR: Mr. Pavao?

S. PAVAO: Why...I don’t know what the right word would
be but why is District 4 - 5 and why is District 4 -5?

B. FORD: That's the way the districts are today. And the
numbers are really immaterial, but right now, South Puna
15:,

A 83
S. PAVAO: If you look through the numbers the logical
sequence would go 1 - 2-3 -4-5...and

B. FORD: I numbered them the way it exists today. They can
be renumbered or relettered if that’s...

S. PAVAO: But that’s the way it exists today, and the
number...

B. FORD: Julie, what district are you in?
S. PAVAO: 6.

B. FORD: 6?

S. PAVAO: That District 4 is 5.

B. FORD: Okay. That’s....l can get in a race [sic - eraser] 8
and take care of that.

S. PAVAO: The other two questions I have is, maybe I'm
wrong...you don’t tell me what tax block the school is. As I

count it, | count 10 districts, maybe you have opened up
another ....

B. FORD: No, no, no.
(END OF TAPE 1)
Even worst than that some of the census blocks have

three or four thousand people in them. And so it makes it
real awkward trying to separate them. I...] don’t know if
you can do anything about it, but whatever, its Hawaiian
Paradise Park.

J. FERGUSON: All right, the next question is how many
people were cut and put into another area?

B. FORD: It went...we went district by district. and we took
the census....we tried to...

A 84
J. FERGUSON: Just on the map you substituted, how many
people...?

B. FORD: I have to look at the database. I’m not even going
to guess, ;
J. FERGUSON: And ah...how many students?

B. FORD: Seven hundred thirty eight non-residents
students.

J. FERGUSON: Seven hundred thirty eight?

B. FORD: That's from the State and 62 active military. No
numbers yet on the others.

CHAIR: Thank you very much. Any other member have a
question for Ms. Ford?

Mark?

M. VAN PERNIS: I see you split 7...you split mauka from
makai in your District 7, all right? Is that split along
Mamalahoa Highway?

B. FORD: Part of it. Um...Chucky, I can’t...this map doesn’t

have the streets on.

M. VAN PERNIS: So basically, you decided to put the makai
side of Mamalahoa Highway...

C. FLAHERTY: No.

M. VAN PERNIS: ...In District 7 and the makai side in
District 8?

C. FLAHERTY: UM...Mamalahoa Highway...Okay...
M. VAN PERNIS: I'm sorry, I can’t see it.

A 85
C. FLAHERTY: Where Mamalahoa Highway splits from
Kuakini in Honalo. Okay, we basically included District
8...excuse me, District 6 basically goes all the way to...

M. VAN PERNIS: I’m talking about District 7 only.
C. FLAHERTY: Oh, District 7 only?
M. VAN PERNIS: Your District 7.

C. FLAHERTY: Its basically from Kuakini mauka until you
get into the area of the Department of Water Supply Road,
then it goes up at that point, I believe, and follow...where is
it? So, it basically follows Kuakini, then it goes back up
um...I'm trying to see...

M. VAN PERNIS: That longest stretch from south to north,
is it along Mamalahoa? It appears to be.

C. FLAHERTY: At the very bottom?
M. VAN PERNIS: No, at the top, that longest stretch.

C. FLAHERTY: Yes, that’s Mamalahoa Highway, it comes
down, you see it comes down with an indention, that is the
area below Holualaa which is the coffee growing region
then it comes back up to where there’s a lot of urban
development..

M. VAN PERNIS: Well, Holualoa is not...well, you can call
it coffee but its more urban than anything else, it’s a bigger
community than Kailua-Kona, I live there. But the point I'm
making is that you felt that it was appropriate to divide 7
from 8, at least for a significant portion by Mamalahoa
Highway?

C. FLAHERTY: Um...we did the best we could, certainly
someone elses work ...

A 86
M. VAN PERNIS: | appreciate your effort. I’m just trying to
get information, but I'm wondering whether you split that
because of geography because you felt there was some
cultural or economic difference between the mauka and
makai side. :

C. FLAHERTY: We were looking....we were trying to look
at economic differences, people who...and lifestyle
differences, people who were more, for instance, in town
versus people who prefer a more rural environment,
um...suburban, to me is more people who are utilizing an
urban whereas rural is someone who doesn’t necessarily
have a need to go into town.

_M. VAN PERNIS: Is this on Mamalahoa north or south

Palani Road?
S. PAVAO: North.
C. FLAH TERY: As far as?

M. VAN PERNIS: This division. Is it on Mamalahoa, north
of Palani Road?

C. FLAHERTY: No.
M. VAN PERNIS: Thank you.

C,. FLAHERTY: No. We weren't able to...we weren't able to
because of the numbers unfortunately.

CHAIR: Thank you very much. Thank you both very much.
Page 20
CHAIR: Sandra Scarr?

S. SCARR: Good evening, thank you for coming over to
Kona, and thank you for listening to us, and I guess as you
can see that many people in Kona are very concerned about
how our districts are construed. I'd rather you listen

A 87
(inaudible-speaking away from mike). | am speaking to all
of you. Let me speak first to vou.

Um...thank you for coming and I appreciate your listening
to us, and I think we thought a lot about the guidelines
under which you're working, which is to draw contiguous
districts that are not too favor any...or disfavor any existing
arrangement, or person. All right?

And | think it was very hard for us to say, okay, Iet’s think
ten years ahead. Let's think what our County is going to
look like in ten years. Where is it going to grow, where do
we need to predict what kinds of economic and
demographic interests people will have in common. And I
think that what Brenda and Larry...Brenda and Chucky had
presented and Larry, as well, has such compelling
underlying interests. Let me, | want to say them again.

If you take the area from Ka‘u through South Kona and then
the mauka lands of North Kona where people are farming,
you have a solid agricultural district and you would have a
representative clected from that area representing,
agricultural interests. | also live in Holualoa and I’m a coffee
farmer so I...1 feel that strongly...that, that’s a very
important group not to be deluded by the growing urban
numbers. Now, speaking for the urban Kailua-Kona district
there is no reason that 20 thousand people who could be
construed as being as being in urban Kailua-Kona that’s
certainly a-council district. Why should we be divided? Why
should Kailua-Kona have to have halt its representation in
one district and half in another? Its seems sensible at this
point in time, and maybe it wasn’t sensible ten years ago but
its sensible now and henceforth to say, “Kona deserves a
council district all in itself, Kailua-Kona”. And then we have
the suburban people on the north side of North Kona who
orient some to Kailua-Kona but some to Waikoloa. There are
people...some of them

A 88
who work out in the resorts. Then you have Waikoloa
Village, surely, a lot of those people are working in the
resorts and up north. And then you have many developing
residential areas in North Kohala, north of Kawaihae. |
drove up that area just less than two week ago, and its
astounding how much luxury resorts, luxury subdivisions
are going in up there. So, there’s a lot of coherence between
the resort areas of south Kohala and the resort areas of north
Kohala. But when you get past, you know, before you get to
Hawi, now you still got traditional sugar lands, cane
workers, ex-cane workers, resident...rural agricultural and
ranching people. And that extends all the way back down to
Waimea but on the north side. So I'm saying there’s a lot of
coherence to what Brenda Ford and Chuck Flaherty had
presented to you in those districts. I think we feel less
confident, 1 will speak for myself about speaking to the
people of Hamakua or speaking to the people of Puna, And
I think you’ ve heard from them as to what they want. But I
think talking about West Hawaii, we do have some
knowledge and we do really think that this presents at least
the beginnings of a very good plan, and we'd like you to
take it seriously.
Thank you.
CHAIR: Thank you. Do any of the members OF THE
Commission have questions of Ms. Scarr?
Page 17
David Holzman?
D. HOLZMAN: My name is David Holzman. I live in Kailua
and I'll read along with you here so the audience can hear it.
First for all, aloha and thank you for giving us this
opportunity. | know your guiding principle has to be one

person-one vote and you're not bound to please anyone, its
just not possible and I commend you for taking

A 89
on a difficult responsibility. In the hope of not making your
job more difficult, | wish to make a suggestion on how you
can enhance and make more perfect the principle of one
person-one vote. Sections 37- 317 of the County Charter,
Item 4, states the Reapportionment Commission shall
determine equal population districts as required by a
applicable State Constitutional provisions. Now our Charter
does not spell out what those applicable State Constitutional
provisions are. So T went and lookedthem up. The Hawaii
State Constitution, Article 4, Section 6, ask you to be guided
when practical, | guess you know these, by the criteria of not
favoring political parties, districts should be contiguous,
compact and easily recognizable geographic features, and
don’t mix different socialeconomic areas. That’s what | think
has been overlooked so far. Don’t mix different
socialeconomic areas. However, on the criteria of different
social-economic areas, the Constitution ask the Caveat that
submerging one area in another district with a substantially
different socialeconomic interest shall not be...shall be
avoided. Now that’s the only one of those provisions that
Constitution then says, shall be avoided. ‘This Caveat is very
applicable to our County and I will present reasons why it
should adhered to.

First | want to call your attention to the Constitutional
Convention of 1968, Section 5, which reads as follows:

Whenever possible, the division of areas with substantial
community interest (socialeconomics) is to be avoided. That
homogenous group should participate in the political
process as a unit, rather than be split up arbitrarily into
small fractions of two or more groups. The homogenous
groups, your committee needs to decide, the numbers of
which are alike in the social-economics status to the extent
possible, your committee believes that areas with substantial
community interests shall not be divided.

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Now this criterion of not dividing social-economic groups
has been challenged and upheld in State and Federal courts.
First, your Supreme Court with Burns v. Richardson 1963
and again Burns vs. Gill 1972, those are Hawaiian challenges
to the Constitution. The Federal courts found that artificially
chopping up canoe districts results in a complete loss of
meaningful representation. Now I believe the Constitution
is exclusive on this point, and the Federal courts agree that
because it gets to the heart of equal representation under the
Law and compliments and makes more perfect the
importance of the one person-one vote. Think of it. If you
put equal numbers of people in each district, you have not
necessarily given equal rights to each person’s vote. Because
of one social-economic group is in the minority, and of a
lower status and has different needs than the majority
higher status group, you've weakened the political power of
the minority group .‘

Now, there are several different methods that identifies
social-economic status. But more social side is generally
agreed that it is comprised of the factors that gives people
and their children similar-like chances to achieve a higher
quality of life. Those factors are primarily family income,
educational level and political power. When you look at the
Hawaii County Data Book of family income, educational
level and unemployment rates, which is related to income,
you will find 3, a defined clusters of social-economic groups.
One is Hilo, urban area has been stated, the other is Kailua-
Kona urban area and the third is Puna. If you look at the
other districts, we are fairly close to the County average of
social-economic status.

As Brenda and Charlie pointed out, it tends to be more
rural. And some were income and some were educational
levels. The census data shows, many of you know

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intuitably, that Puna has a lower family income, a low
educational level than Hilo or Kailua-Kona. The family
income differences can be as much as 2 to 1, between Hilo
and Puna and Kailua and Puna. Educational levels are twice
as high in Hilo, than Kailua-Kona as in Puna.
Unemployment last year 2000 was 50% higher in Puna than
Hilo and over 1 hundred per cent higher than in Kailua-
Kona. So given that low family income and educational
level to citizens of Puna and their children have very little
chance of bettering their lives compared to the 9 political
representation. Political representation is difficult at best,
but almost impossible if elected officials have to represent 2
widely different socialeconomic populations. It becomes a
tough juggling act to submit capital improvements needs,
offer legislative remedies and keeps folks on the needs of
your constituents.

Now because social-economic status is highly correlated
with the types and frequencies of criminal offenses and the
need of social services, consideration should be given to
following the judicial district boundaries in the County as
much as possible. As you know, the police, fire, public
works, parks and recreation, and the courts are all
organized by judicial districts. Therefore, to use judicial
districts as the guiding principle and take care not to split
the three socio-economic defined groups of Hilo, Kailua-
Kona and Puna, you'll go a long way to the needs of the
people with their political representatives and the social
services, and the safety of fire and police protection that
they need. This is very doable because north and south Hilo
judicial districts of the population, 49, 106, the three council
districts, the Puna judicial district has enough population,
31, 335 for two council districts, and the north and south
Kona judicial districts have more than enough, 37,132 for
two council districts. Since north and south Kona have
excess population, it becomes necessary to look for

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equita...equitable ways to figure the south, north and
remainder of the west areas. I leave that up to you and to
your Office of Elections staff. That I don’t want to get into, I
see what happens when you get into that. I urge the
Commission to ask the County Office of Elections to prepare
a new map, a map that gives the highest priority of the
several constitutional criteria to social-economic status, and
above all avoid splitting upper Puna into 2 districts, one of
which is Hilo. Where the maps start as key, therefore, I
order you...in order, excuse me...I order you...I take that
back. Excuse me. In order to keep faith with our State
Constitution I recommend the maps to start at the judicial
district between Hilo and Puna.

One last statement. When the Hawaiians started their
society along naha ahupuaas, they wisely guaranteed that
each group had access to all that is necessary to their quality
of life. Everyone in the Island could access to the forest for
wood, the midlands for agriculture and the ocean for fish.
The alii did this to minimize the conflicts between the
groups. Look ahead ten years from now, and you should be
as wise because we all live on an Island and one segment is
to deny access to the means of improving the quality of their
lives we will never truly enjoy our harmonious Island.

CHAIR: Thank you very much. Any member of the
Commission have a question for Mr. Holzman?

M. VAN PERNIS: Mr. Holzman, | didn’t get it but where do
you live?

D. HOLZMAN: | live in Kailua.

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M. VAN PERNIS: And ah...do I understand you right, you
are advocating the poor folks be in one district and the rich
folks in another district and so on and so forth?

D. HOLZMAN: Ah...that’s where the poor folks live and
that’s where the rich folks live.

LADY FROM THE AUDIENCE: (INAUDIBLE-FAR FROM
MIKE)

M. VAN PERNIS: So you're basically advocating that the
division by economic divisions is more important than
getting the numbers right?

D. HOLZMAN: No, I didn’t say that.
M. VAN PERNIS: But you want the numbers divided so that

the poor won't be all in one district and the average and rich
are all in another districts?

D. HOLZMAN: No, I didn’t say that either.
M. VAN PERNIS: Well, that’s the way I hear you're saying.

D. HOLZMAN: Well, you better listen to what I'm saying, I
said there are two urban areas with higher educational
levels and higher income and that’s Hilo and Kona...Kailua-
Kona basically.

M. VAN PERNIS: So you're basically advocating two... all
poor folks be in two districts, right?

D. HOLZMAN: You're making it sound like I’m kicking the
poor people into Puna, I didn’t didn’t put people in Puna,
but I’m looking at the County Data Book....

M. VAN PERNIS: But you’re advocating that the... that they
not be mixed with the socio-economic...

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D. HOLZMAN: That they can’t get out, that I’m putting a_
bridge and I’m tearing down barriers? _

M. VAN PERNIS: For instance, would you be
satsfied....would you be satisfied if there was a district that
had 3 quarter of the poor people in it and 1 quarter of the’
middle class and upper class in it so the poor people can still
control the district?

D. HOLZMAN: That's highly hypothetical, I'm not going to
respond to it.

M. VAN PERNIS: If its hypothetical, you see it on 3 maps
here.

D. HOLZMAN: Where is that? Show me the socio-economic
status of those maps. You can’t do it! (emphasized)

M. VAN PERNIS: I can’t do it, sir. But the point I’m making
is that you seem to be advocating Ms. Jacobson’s plan, is
that correct?

D. HOLZMAN: No.

M. VAN PERNIS: Okay, the two perfect districts for Puna
and the rest you say, leave it to us to work out?

D. HOLZMAN: I say, follow the Constitution, not split
socio-economic groups. As a sociologist, | have a PHD in
sociology, and I can tell you there are only 3 identifiable,

clearly identifiable, statistically significant socio -economic
groups, one is in Hilo, one is in Kailua, and one is in Puna,
upper and lower Puna.

M. VAN PERNIS: And....

D. HOLZMAN: That is statistically significant socio-
economic groups.

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M. VAN PERNIS: How about the Kohalas? Where do they
fall?
D. HOLZMAN: Close to the average.
M. VAN PERNIS: They do...and you're sure?

D. HOLZMAN: Of course, you’re gonna find pockets here
and there, yeah.

M. VAN PERNIS: Well, there’s some very rich folks in
Kohala and some very poor folks in Kohala, so together they
are average.

D. HOLZMAN: Some of those poor folks aren’t even
residents there.

M. VAN PERNIS: Now, um...you said you'd leave it to us,
you've advocated two districts in Puna and two districts in
Hilo and you'd leave the rest to us...

D. HOLZMAN: 3....3....3.

M. VAN PERNIS: 3 in Hilo and and you’d leave the rest to
us and...

D. HOLZMAN: And 2 in Kailua.

M. VAN PERNIS: 2 in Kailua and you leave...and how
much of the ah...south part of the Island would you put in
the Kailua district?

D. HOLZMAN: I have no idea on that.

M. VAN PERNIS: And how much of the ah... Hamakua
ah...districts would you put in the Kohala.

D. HOLZMAN: You have my presentation, I didn’t make a
single statement about where you put those.

M. VAN PERNIS: So you don’t have any idea how the splits

goes?

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D. HOLZMAN: I gave you a guiding principle,
Constitutional principle...

M. VAN PERNIS: All right.

D. HOLZMAN: And I gave you the 3 sociio-economic
groups, I gave you the judicial districts, | make no other
claim, I have no other knowledge that I wish to present to
you tonight.

M. VAN PERNIS: And if we need to make some other
division of the Kona, Puna and Hilo districts in order to
accommodate these other geographic areas in order to meet
the one man-one vote principle, you are for or against that?

D. HOLZMAN: For what?

M. VAN PERNIS: In order to meet ine one man-one vote
principle we would have .

D. HOLZMAN: That was the first part of the question?

M. VAN PERNIS: If we had to divided up Puna, divided up
Kailua-Kona, divide up West Hawaii, divide up Hilo and
add to parts of Hamakua or the south part of the Island, in
order to meet the mandate of one man-one vote, would you
say that the socio-economic requirements are more
important?

D. HOLZMAN: Is there one answer to that question?
M. VAN PERNIS: I'm asking you, sir.

D. HOLZMAN: Listen to what I’m trying to say. We have
one voteone person, one person-one vote. But if you put
those people in predominantly social...
predominantly....don’t take exception, predominantly,
different, socially-economic groups, the Constitution, the
Supreme Court, and the Federal Court will tell you, you
have violated the Reapportionment rules.

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M. VAN PERNIS: You have defined as I understand it, 3
districts?

D. HOLZMAN: Correct.
M. VAN PERNIS: Is that correct?

D. HOLZMAN.: I...no, no. | have defined 3 socio-economic
groups.

M. VAN PERNIS: All right.
- D. HOLZMAN: Well, I used to call it

M. VAN PERNIS: You're advocating based on your logic, 2
districts in Puna, correct?

D.HOLZMAN: They have the numbers.

M. VAN PERNIS: And you're advocating 2 districts in West
Hawaii?

D. HOLZMAN: No, I didn’t say anything about West
Hawaii.

M. VAN PERNIS: Well, 2 districts in Kona..
D. HOLZMAN: Ah....Kona, yes.

M. VAN PERNIS: All right. Is there any difference between
that and West Hawaii, I'll accept that. And how many
districts in Hilo?

D. HOLZMAN: I said that already, 3.

M. VAN PERNIS: All right, that’s 7 districts, right?

D. HOLZMAN: Oh, God. Oh, man. What did you do?
M. VAN PERNIS: Isn’t that 7 districts?

D. HOLZMAN: What....what? No, listen. I'm not going to
answer those silly questions like that.

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M. VAN PERNIS: Well...

D. HOLZMAN: Its so hypothetical, 1 mean....
M. VAN PERNIS: Well...

D. HOLZMAN: I gave you my presentation, I told you what
I had to offer, and you got me playing a numbers game....

M. VAN PERNIS: Well...

D. HOLZMAN: And now you tricked me in a numbers
game.

Ooh...good for you.
M. VAN PERNIS: You’ ve advocated 7 districts....

D. HOLZMAN: I have not advocated 7 districts!
(emphasized)

M. VAN PERNIS: ...and I want to know...

D. HOLZMAN: I have not advocated 7 districts and in
answer to your silly questions, I still say, I don’t know!

M. VAN PERNIS: All right, that’s what I wanted to hear.
D. HOLZMAN: Thank you.

CHAIR: Do any other member of the Commission have a
question for Mr. Holzman?

Mr. Holzman, thank you very much.

This concludes our public hearing.

HEARING ENDED AT 9:40 P.M.

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TRANSCRIPT OF REAPPORTIONMENT COMMISSION
MEETING
Of
October 18, 2001 at 9:00 a.m.
Hawaii County Councilroom
25 Aupuni Street
Hilo, Hawaii 96720
Session 4

(Partial Transcription)
Page 5:

CHAIR: Let me move on then, simply call the people in
order of the notices that I have here.

I would like to get and I would like to impose some
reasonable limits on..in terms of their statements to the
Commission and I would ask that each of you providing
statements attempt to keep your comments to no more than
5 minutes. I believe looking at what we have here, that the
members of the Commission have heard from each of you at
least once. So having said that, the first note I have here is
from Charles Flaherty and Brenda Ford.

Mr. Flaherty, Ms. Ford?

B. FORD: I'm Brenda Ford of Captain Cook, and I'd like to
start off by um..clearing up some possible misconception.
Last time I spoke before this Commission about ten days
ago, | made a comment about the Elections Office and my
inability to get the information I needed from the Election
Office. And Iam afraid that it might have been perceived as
the Elections Office not being supportive. And that is not the
intent that | had specifically talking about the database

A 100

that | work with. The Elections Office personnel workers
were gracious, they were informative and they were helpful
at all times. | could not have started this without that
assistance. And more importantly, they gave me the phone
number of the State person. So | want to make sure that the
Elections Office did a wonderful job for me.

We've handed out a revised map, you know, the last time
we came here we did not have it colored out where we
wanted it colored out, and had to make some few
refinements. Chucky will talk about those, and we've given
you comments, and Chucky will be making a little chart that
explains things like the number of people in each district,
the deviations and target populations, and the urban
districts. And I'll let Chucky take over from here.

C. FLAHERTY: Good morning.

As this is provided as written testimony, | won't read this
entire submission to you to save time. Basically. what we've
done with this map is to recognize the urban areas of the
Island of Hawaii as deserving of districts. And that central
Hilo, and southeast Hilo, as well as, Kailua-Kona, Keauhou-
Kailua-Kona areas, are..have sufficient population. Actually,
Kailua-Kona has more that sufficient population for an
viban district, and we're forced to divide the ahupua’‘a of
Kealakehe in order to create this urban district so that the
mountain portion of Kealakehe is actually in District 8
which extends up to the northern part of this district to the
South Kohala-North Kohala boundary.

The map does bring together the sort of resort, residential
retirement area of West Hawaii into District 8. District 9 is a
north Hawaii district which is ranchland and rural
agricultural area. Then district-wise you have toward the

A 101
east side of the Island is a basically rural area with most of
the population being sort of a suburban north Hilo
area, as well.

I covered the central and southeast Hilo districts which
central Hilo contains the downtown area and mauka urban,
commercial and industrial areas of Hilo, while the south
and east of Hilo contains the international airport, the
harbor, Keaukaha and wraps around containing the
portions of suburban, urban Hilo.

Puna, north Puna is basically the northern part of Puna,
with some area of Ka’u situated with Volcano Village and
the National Park.

And then south Puna, we put as a separate region because
of its accessibility. It’s only one way to get to that area. And
we did include the entire area of Hawaiian Paradise Park
and Ainaloa in South Puna, as well.

As you can see the variations, the deviations on our
numbers are within the parameters of less that 5% which
was our goal and basically the map that we presented has its
basis, the social economic demographics of the different
areas of the Island, as well as, economic activities that we
see occurring over the next ten years.

If you have any questions, I will be happy to answer them.
CHAIR: Any members of the Commission?

Hearing none, thank you very much. Next is Al Konishi.

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REAPPORTIONMENT COMMISSION
25 Arfpuni Street, #100
Hilo, Hawaii 96720
Phone: 961 8277
Fax: 961 8673

TRANSCRIPT MEETING OF
HAWATI COUNTY REAPPORTION COMMISSION
November 21, 2001
10:00 a.m.
Waimea Community Center

Kamuela, Hawaii

(Partial Transcript)
Page 15:
SANDRA SCARR: The commonality of interest between
Ka’u and South Kona is pretty clear. Someone pointed out
just a moment ago, that in fact a lot ...this is really a large
agricultural area. So | would argue with you that this map
and it isn’t you know...it may be some some tweaking
around the edges but in fact this map comes in with ..within
the plus or minus 5% that you require, and I think you
should require for any map, would population, and it does a
better job than you're doing with putting the minuses into
the areas of rapid growth. Unfortunately, in your map the
areas that are currently plus over in population are the most
rapidly growing areas. The ones are under population are
those that will not be growing very much in the coming
years, as far as we can project. That means that two years
from now, or three years from now, you will have exceeded
your 5% deviation and you will know that. You already
know that, that’s what's going to happen. So would argue
with you, this isn’t a very acceptable map.

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Page 45-57:
CHAIR: Any other member of the Commission have a
question?
Hearing none, thank you very much, Mr. Martin.
Ms. Ford? Brenda Ford?
B. FORD: I’ve come to the meeting here in Waimea to
explain some of the points of the process and the result of
the plan that surges accordingly. But I had some input, too.
First thing Id like to talk about is just basic raw data. When
we started, when we were first requested to do an analysis
of the raw census data, that is without any exclusions
whatsoever, to determine if any of the 9 maps this
Commission had been working on at that time, met, what
we felt the constitutional guideline ;. The first thing that
popped out of the U.S. Data on a census tract basis, census
tracts being the larger geographical areas filled in by the
small census blocks, you're familiar with this. The first thing
that popped out of that data was that there was a
justification for two urban Hilo districts, which Ms. Scarr
has already discussed, and one North Hilo, Hamakua
district, and let me clarify the misinformation what has been
presented by some individuals, the North Hilo district in
our plan consists. ..is that suburban area of North Hilo, plus
a 21 % of the Hamakua population. We had to do a split. As
we all know, because I have done the same process that
you've gone through, lines have to be drawn somewhere.
And you still have to meet constitutional guidelines of plus
or minus the 5%. We all know that, we've all done the same
process. So the question becomes what is the raw data
telling you? So the raw data says, two urban Hilo districts, a
North Hilo district, two full Puna districts, one full Kailua
urban district, a southern district, whatever you want to call
it. If you want to call it South Kona- Ka‘u or some other
name, southwestern Hawaii, but

A 104
the name is or the district number is immaterial. ‘The fact is,
if the justification in that portion of the Island in the south,
southwest are full council seats. And then you get the
Kohala and with all due respect to the people of Kohala,
they have exactly the same feelings as the same people of
Puna, they don’t want to see their district fractured. But
while Puna can justify two full council seats, Kohala is in a
precarious position. Because Kohala has 120% of a districts.
That means they can justify one full legal district and 20% of
Kohala has got to go legally someplace else. Whether it goes
south to the Kona, or it goes east to the Hamakua-Hilo area,
doesn’t matter. Or even if it is split between those two
things. 20% of Kohala legally must go someplace else. So the
question when you look at the raw data and you look at the
census tracts, and these numbers come jumping off the page
at you, the question is, once you accept the basic premise of
two urban Hilo districts, a North Hilo district, two Puna
districts, a southern districts, a Kailua district, urban district,
a northwest area which is in our plancs called District 8, and
a north district, North Hawaii which is, then the question is,
how do you divide these districts up to meet constitutional
parameters. And that’s why the...what we call the Hawaii
county constitutional redistrict plan which you're not
calling the CERG plan which has been called all kinds of
things, but its this one (pointing to map), that’s the reason
we chose to do this.
Now when we did this plan, we did it without regard to any
incumbents and where they lived, in fact, most of the
incumbents we don’t know e\where they live and we don’t
care where they live. We did it without regard to political
parties, I had to explain to someone before this meeting, that
I personally am independent. I’m not a Republican, I’m not
a Democrat, I'm not Green, I'm not purple. I’m just an
independent. I vote for the person that I think is best for the
position. And when we did this map, we did not care about

A 105
a political party, and in fact in our County Elections in the
future they’re not partisan. So it makes no differenct. What
some of these political persuasion is.

Excepting the basic premise that the County had to be
divided up as I have described it, and that Kohala has 20 %
too many people to keep inside of one district, we haven't
decided where in Kohala to draw a line. And what we chose
to do in this plan is to draw the line between North and
South Kohala. We...we felt because of the people we knew
in the Waikoloa area, Waikoloa being an upscale suburban
area was appropriately placed into the North Kona district,
northwest, if you want to call it something else , this district
here (pointing to map), because of the demographics of that
area. We had heard through some of the public testimony
that was very important to people in Waimea that Waimea
stay together. And so when we drew our line we made sure
that we kept all of the town of Waimea together. Unlike the
County Commission’s plan which divides the town of
Waimea which we think is an inappropriate division. Not
only inappropriate but unnecessary. You know you can get
to ...the difference between illegal and you can do
inappropriate and you can do if not necessary. That's a
continuum and you want to get to a point of that
continumum...continuum is the most reasonable choice.
And we felt that to make the most reasonable choice we
should keep Waimea as intact as we possible could. And
that’s why we chose to make the line the way we did. We
consider the sociodemographics of the North Kohala area as
being close to Hamakua.

Now I need to correct another piece of misinformation you
were given this morning. The 79 or 80% depending on
which fraction you use, if you round off or round down, this
is North Kohala’s (pointing of map) district as it stands
today, plus 79% of the population of Hamakua which is
located on this side of the North and South dividing line,

A 106
we kept it with, in this area because its physically closer to
Waimea. I’m not saying that people don’t work in Hilo, I
live in South Kona and I work in South Kohala, that doesn’t
mean that I should have a representative from South Kohala
representing my interests. Where I live should be
represented by a person who lives in a same community as I
do, not where my paycheck is coming from..
(end of tape)
... There’s the Volcanoes and the craters, and the military
bases, you know, there’s no people. Swapping land around
in this area to make it more reasonable doesn’t matter,
because its emply. It doesn’t matter. So what we did when
we went to this plan is the first area that we felt really
needed major, major help was Puna. If there’s a community
that has ripped to shreds in the last ten years, its Puna. Just
look at the map that you propose, you're doing exactly the
same, not exactly, almost the same thing, by taking portions
of Puna and putting it in other districts. Those districts
today, if you're doing a snapshot, those districts today are
dominated by Hilo which is not right. There’s no reason to
have more Puna dominated by anyone, they are legally
entitled to their own council representative. You can’t have
it both ways, you can’t say we’ re gonna disregard the future
growth in different areas, and because in sometime in the
future, they're gonna dominate these three districts. You
can’t use that argument and then say its okay to fracture
them and let them be dominated by Hilo. It is no more
correct for Hilo to dominate Puna than it is for Puna to
dominate Hilo. ‘

On multiple occasions, I’ve explained to one of your
Commissioners, Mr. Van Pernis, that it is no more correct
for South Kona to dominate Puna than it is for Puna to
dominate South Kona, or Ka’u. First of all, Puna and South
Kona are not contiguous and despite the fact this map has

A 107
been drawn in this manner, this is completely unnecessary
way to cut this map up.
In the map that we have drawn, you will notice that Puna
stops and only the Volcano portion, Volcano Village area is
attached to Puna. It is only 15 miles from Puna, their
centered interest is Puna, but when you get down to Ka’u,
those people have a community interest that is more aligned
with South Puna as they have said many times in many
meetings, not just in Puna meeting-, but other meetings. It’s
time to put these communities together, its time to make
sure that these communities are not dragged across the
Island. | heard one person say in a private meeting, that
well, if you want to continue doing this, why not just
drawing lines radiating out from Hilo, and have all the
Council people living within a few miles from each other
from Hilo and dominating these other sections, That’s not
appropriate it was a very facetious remark, but its not
appropriate. For any areas dominating another area because
we draw lines, so they can be dominated. We need to draw
the lines so communities of interests stay together.

When we did our preliminary report, we were chastised
because we had divided one of the subdivisions inside of
Puna. We went back to the drawing board. There is no
subdivision in Puna that has any divisions in it at all. All
subdivisions are intact. That was one of the goals that we
went back and corrected. We followed all the constitutional,
State Law, County Charters, and federal case law to do this
map the best way we could. We feel this map is better than
the County map, and I'll give you a reason, you have a
spread currently on this map you're proposing of 9%, You
go from a plus 5 to a minus 4%.

The map that we submitted on October 8, has a spread of
5%. 5%, there’s a 4% improvement with just this map in the
deviation. Right there, there’s an improvement. It means

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you don’t have to cut up, pardon me, you don't have to cut
up all these different districts in all of these strange ways,
and you can still improve the deviation factor. And we think
that that’s something that you should be looking at. Why
does your deviation factor have to be a spread of 9% when
you were given a ...given a map, not a perfect map, but a
good map that had a 5% spread six weeks ago. That map is
thrown out. There's also been some misinformation
presented to you about one of your original maps, that on
the west side shows something similar to this. As I said in
multiple meetings and to Mr. Van Pernis before this
meeting, you cannot consider just one area of the Island.
You have to consider the entire Island because one side of
the maps may look similar to somebody’s map, this side
(pointing to map), it doesn’t make any difference if you
screw the other side of the Island, or you screwed the some
other district, you have to be willing to do some
compromising, and you have to be willing to consider the
best interest of all the different areas. We believe that we've
done that. We’ve never said that this is the one and only
perfect map, we’ve never said that. There is no such thing,
and you know it, more than anyone else. You guys have
been going through this really horrendous process.

But in our process we did something a little different and
that is we got the maps that we did not have the benefit of a
computer program. We had to sit down and tape maps all
across my living room floor and literally crawl around in
these maps and pulled the census blocks off one at a time.
And because we did that and I don’t recommend it, its very
bad on the health of the back, not to say one’s disposition,
but once you get down to the census block areas, census
block levels and you start moving these things around, you
can see where there are serious problems in a particular
community, as far as the census. For instance, there are
blocks in more than one side of the Island, more than one

A 109
place on the Island where the census blocks even though
they meet the parameters of between 503 thousand. It makes
no difference. ‘The blocks are huge geographically, they may
have way too many people in them, or too few people in
them, and you can’t divide a census block without this
Commission going and saying to the U.S. government we
want to buy this census block, I believe you have that right.
You can’t do it so you wind up taking a census block that
maybe has one or two thousand people in it and having to
move it in mass to something else. And we ran into that
problem in Hilo, and we ran into that problem in urban
Kailua. It’s a very big problem. But we did the best we could
but the fact that we are in a spread of 5%, compared to 9%,
tells us we did something pretty good because or deviation
isn’t as bad.

Now, there was another piece of information presented by
one of the Commissioners here about the south Keauhou
area dominating, what we are calling District 6, and the
district numbers are immaterial. They can call it “A to F”
“A to J” or whatever you want to call it, it makes no
difference, but the blue area on this map. Commissioner
Van Pernis specifically say...said that the Keauhou area was
going to dominate this entire district because they had more
numbers. That’s not true. The truth is, those people in that
area, that slight bit of that area south of Keauhou have less
than 3,000 people. Well, the district itself has over 16, 400 or
500 people, depending who number you want to use, people
in it. Ka’u itself has almost 10,000 people in it. So whose
going to deminate that district, it doesn’t make much
difference, but it isn’t gonna 3,000 people in Keauhou unless
they have a candidate who can convince the other rest of the
district that they can adequately represent the

Or

A 110
rest of the district. That’s what our political process is about,
having people campaign each other for the right to
represent a district. And numbers isn’t the only thing that
gets it, after all Julie Jacobson was in Puna and she got
everybody...enough people to vote for her that she had this
whole district (pointing to map). So its more than just a
number situation. So | ...[ have to tell this Commission that
it really pains me to have to come here and correct
misinformation and untruthful statements and it really
bothers me the community has not really been listened to. I
know people say, oh, we're listening but we're being
disregarded.
More than that, we've been treated very, very rudely. Our
elders have been maligned in public, we're here to give you
our input and tell you why we want something the way we
want it. Well, they we’re right or whether we’re wrong. And
it is the job of this Commission to evaluate our comments
and to use them in the best way possible.

I propose that at this point in time, and I have...ah..this map
that has been supported by the a lot of the members of the
community, both in Puna and West Hawaii, and I hope
Kohala will understand and support this map, as well, that
right now with the deviation of spread only of 5% this map
is a better map and causes less concern for the communities
than the map that is currently proposed by the Commission.
Thank you.

CHAIR: Thank you, Ms. Ford.

Does any member of the Commission have a question for
Ms. Ford?

M. VAN PERNIS: I have one question. Um...
CHAIR: Mr. Van Pernis.

Alll
M. VAN PERNIS: You agree...seeing from your map, as
well as the present council district map that you're in
agreement that the West Hawaii districts should include the
area all the way up to Saddle Road?
B. FORD: Because of the numbers in North and South
Kohala, we had to move 20°% of something into another
district. We chose because of the demographics in the South
Kohala area, to move that area into the...what is currently
the North Kona, we call it District 8, northwest Hawaii.
M. VAN PERNIS: Well, I notice that...that the Council
proposal, the Commission’s map and the proposed map
runs the Kona, um...your pink district um...line up to the
Saddle Road. Am I right?

B. FORD: Yes, we heard from people that they...that they
would like to have that and get the military base into
District 8 and we took that into consideration, no people
there and we did it.

M. VAN PERNIS: Yeah, there’s no people there but the
watershed in the... you felt ...

B. FORD: Yes.

M. VAN PERNIS: ...should be in West Hawaii controlled?
B. FORD: Yes.

M. VAN PERNIS: All right, so at least we agree on that
point.

B. FORD: Yes.

M. VAN PERNIS: Thank you.

CHAIR: I have a couple of questions. Um...your proposed
map divides the Hamakua judicial district, isn’t that right?
B. FORD: Yes.

CHAIR: And um...did you solicit any comment from the
folks in Hamakua?

A 112

B. FORD: All right.

CHAIR: The other thing is that your District 1, the North
Hilo District, reading again the letter of November 6
addressed to me, signed by Peter Martin, actually your
name doesn’t appear on it, but I believe you’re aware of it.
B. FORD: That's right, I believe he sent the letter, but I don’t
feel competent to comment on a letter written by another
person.

CHAIR: Let me quote from the letter, then Ill ask you tc
comment on that. It describes District 1, the North Hilo
District and the primarily agricultural rural district
consisting of 21% of southern Hamakua, all of the current
district of North Hilo, and portions of South Hilo, north of
the Saddle / Kaumana Road.

B. FORD; Right.

CHAIR: Its Saddle, Kaumana, Waianuenue, it all the way to
the ocean, isn’t it? That dividing line.
B. FORD: Yes.

CHAIR: So I'm concerned when its described as a primarily
agricultural rural district when I know that...

B. FORD: There’s a....

CHAIR: North of Waianuenue there’s a huge apar*~-ent
district.

B. FORD; Yes, yes, there’s a huge suburban area.
CHAIR: All right. Thanks, I just wanted to make sure that
we agree on that.

B. FORD: Yes.
CHAIR: I don’t have any other question.

Are there any other...
P. KAHAWAIOLA’‘A: I do, sir.
CHAIR: Mr. Kahawaiola’a.

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P. KAHLAWAIOLA‘A: | only thing, Ms. Ford, that I have is, |
think you and I discussed it in Kona. That the rumbers you
used for your 5% deviation...

B. FORD: Right.
P. KAHAWAIOLA’A: As opposed to the numbers that we
used... (INAUDIBLE)..

B. FORD: Right.

P. KAHIAWAIOLA’A: ...is your numbers still basically....
B. FORD: My numbers are same...and

P. KAHAWAIOLA’A: Can I have that numbers again?

B. FORD: Yes. The gross numbers that we used with the
exclusions of the military and the non-resident students are
147, 877. That’s 800 people that are legally required to be
excluded, and I just need to report to this Commission, I did
give a download of a file from the State that has all three
exclusions. Unfortunately, it is not convertible to a data
spreadsheet, so I’ve had to re-request that file to be sent
down again. When that file comes down, this number of
147, 877 will drop by some number. Now, this map
(pointing to map) all the documentation supporting it,
including all the census block data, in hard copy forum was
submitted to this Commission as part of the official record.
And when we get the new file in a convertible form, so that
we can redo it, we will redo this map, I’m sorry, not redo the
map, we'll redo the database to include all 3 exclusions, and
resubmit it to the County.

CHAIR: Okay.

Mr. Ferguson.

]. FERGUSON: Yes, you stated that we are legally required
to exclude those people? What law do you....

B. FORD: State law.

A114

J. FERGUSON: State law states that we cannot count those
people?

B. FORD: Yes. And in fact, the State Reapportionment
Commission just changed their position on that.

J. FERGUSON: That was military, | believe.
B. FORD: It....3 things, military, non-resident military
dependents and non-resident students.

CHAIR: Ms. Ford, in your opinion, is the...does the
inclusion of those folks change the proportion of the
variations so that in any district it exceeds 5% plus or
minus?

B. FORD: The sure answer is no.
CHAIR: Thank you.

Any other questions?

Page 84-91:

L. BARTON: I have a motion.
CHAIR: Yes?

L. BARTON: I motion that we um...get the numbers that are
on Brenda’s and Chucky’s map because I think there are a
number of issues that are touched on by far too many
people and I myself, sitting on this Commission can no
longer live with myself, listening to how many people are
upset and the overwhelming evidence that ah...although it’s
not easier for us as a Commission or especially for staff, that
I feel we need to have that now.

P. KAHAWAIOLA’A: Um...that’s a motion, Mr. Chairman,
so I'd like to... because ah...I'd like to second it for a matter
of discussion, and I think now would be appropriate for you
to have said what you said, Lisa. Reason being, that’s what I
need to hear, after I heard testimony today.

A115

CHAIR: All right, so there is a second. And the question is
now open for discussion.

Mr. Kahawaiola’a.

P. KAHIAWAIOLA’A: | would ...now would like to ask the
staff, based, just based on this map (pointing to map). If you
was to take this map, look at other lines drawn and
extrapolate the numbers out of your computer, because |
heard Ms. Ford mention that its basically the same software
or some kind of, you know, that can be interfaced, or
not...couldn’t be interfaced, | am now using computer talk,
but can you go and take this to a number also, and I think
that will satisfy Ms. Barton’s motion, so that we can come
back, and at the next meeting be able to prepare to do this,
or that. Something in that matter, | shouldn't say this or that
but at least get some numbers. Right now, we're hearing
...that’s my reason for asking, excuse me, Ms. Ford, about
the numbers that we use. :

CHAIR: Patrick, I believe, Ms. Ford has told us that she
provided the numbers, so the numbers are here.

P. KAHLAWAIOLA’A: No, I'm...I'm not disputing. You
know, I’m just trying to get numbers here...

L.. BARTON: I think this is a land description thing...

P. KAHLAWAIOLA’A: Yeah.

L. BARTON: And its going to be very time consuming
description, um..some of them do follow the same lines and

thereabouts, and they won't have that much of a problem.
Also they are (INAUDIBLE), so I’m....

P. KAHAWAIOLA’A: That's all I would want to ask of the
staff for the purposes of discussion.

A 116
CHAIR: Let me see if | can um...restate the motion, and
with your permission, Ms. Barton, is your motion a request
to the staff to produce a map on their equipment with their
software that follows the...Ms. Ford’s map for lack of a
better title. | keep forgetting what it is today, um...and at
the same time provided a written legal description that
corresponds with that map?

L. BARTON: Yes, Iam. The motion is exactly that.
CHAIR: So that’s your motion?
Is there a second to that motion?

P. KAHAWAIOLA’A: I would second the motion with the
caveat again. I need to go back to the maker of the motion,
as you expressed it to provide the legal description, I...that’s
what is going to be the problem. I would prefer to go and
follow Ms. Ford's lines, and go find out what's in the...
what's inside the blue, green, and red. And the legal
description, | mean, you know, I mean, threats with the
lawsuit is a drop in the bucket. I’m just saying if we don’t
leave the deadline, will then the Court going to come in? I
don’t know.

L. BARTON: Is the Court going to come in and make a
better map anyway?

P. KAHAWAIOLA‘A: No, that’s my point. That’s why I
want to address the Counsel. Excuse me the Corporation
Counsel.

M. VAN PERNIS: Question. Question.

We certainly shouldn't be operating on the basis of the
threats from....

P. KAHAWAIOLA’A: No, no. Mr. Van Pernis, I believe, Mr.

Chairman that I have the floor, so that’s all I wanted to say.
To draw the numbers, bring it back again, and if we

don’t meet the....I’m....that’s what I'm saying, I’m not
worried about any threats of a lawsuit, I'm trying to get to

? A117
the end of the Commission.. If we don’t meet the December
31st deadline does that automatically mean that the Court
will do that? Or does it automatically mean that we can go
and extend it and get these things done. Again...

M. VAN PERNIS: The Courts will draw a map.
P. KAHAWAIOLA‘A: Ah..what?

CHAIR: Excuse me, Mr. Van Pernis. Why don’t we let the
Corporation Counsel answer that question.

D. AKAMA: I don’t know the answer to that.

CHAIR: Okay.

P. KAHAWAIOLA’A: Can you please....[ need to know the
answer by the next meeting.

L. BARTON: Well, I just want to clarify that the request is
not made on the basis of the lawsuit. The question was on
something sitting in my mind for a long time.

CHAIR: I appre...

L. BARTON: The last meeting we had, I made the same
motion basically, without the land description. I’m just
saying, I think we should have done all and we've been
putting it off. And I’m just unhappy with myself not having
done it sooner, or something like that. Because one out of 9
can’t see...that it doesn’t have to have a name on the plan.
That's all, I’m just looking at logical reasons from within all
the people that have voiced their opinion. And actually, it
was more so on the guy that came speaking on behalf of
Kohala, because...

P. KAHAWAIOLA’‘A: That's my...

L. BARTON: ...because I sat at the meeting and listen to
what | thought a majority of people saying Kohala should
be stuck...should stay together, whereas, I live in Hamakua
and feel very attached to Kohala and the background of the
people there, I guess that’s where my thoughts were coming
from. Sorry.

A 118
CHAIR: We’ re in the mode of discussion now, so, I'd like to
ask you a couple questions.
L. BARTON: Yes.

CHAIR: What are the proposals in the map proposed by Ms.
Ford, splits the Hamakua judicial district.

L. BARTON: I realize where it splits and I actually like it.
CHAIR: And why is that.

L. BARTON: Well, if I give you my reason, it won't be in
accordance to our redistricting. It will be very personal and
that is, we have a school district in Laupahoehoe, our
boundary ends on the curved bridged. Does everybody
know where the curved bridge with the flashing light is...

CHAIR: Ookala.

L. BARTON: ...it’s a gulch, called a gulch. Okay. We don’t
necessarily...ah, always have the population to sustain a
school and are threatened quite frequently with ...we’ve
asked the line be moved to incorporate Paauilo, and so bus
kids a little further down the road, then they’ re bussed for
about a mile or two. That’s not going to change it. These
lines won't change that, I don’t believe, but that’s where, I'm
like going. It makes much more sense, that’s all.

CHAIR: Let me ask the staff then with regard to the request.
Is that feasible, is that possible and in order to meet the
deadline, we are going to have one other meeting in which
we will, and at that meeting we intend to adopt our final
plan. The proposal essentially requires, if adopted, would
require the staff to provide us with two alternative plans
and we would then be faced with the proposition of
adopting one or other. I think you've expressed your
opinion with regard to putting together the legal description
and the maps incorporating the changes that we've just

adopted.

A 119
Let me ask you the same question with regard to the plan
that’s been proposed by Ms. Ford and others. Is it feasible to
get those completed before our next mecting and adopt
reapportionment plans within out deadline.

P. NAKAMOTO: With the legal description, you're asking?
CHAIR: Yes, with the legal description.
P. NAKAMOTO: We wouldn't be able to get it.

CHAIR: All right. Are there any other questions with regard
to the motion?

Hearing none, let me call the question. All those in favor of
the motion, signify by saying, aye.

L. BARTON: I wanted to...

P. KAHAWAIOLA’A: | lost tract of the motion.

CHAIR: The motion is...is Ms. Barton’s motion. And I
believe the motion as restated was that we’re instructing the
staff to produce maps and the legal descriptions that follow
the proposals made by Ms. Ford. Um, so that’s the motion
before the Commission at this point.

All those in favor of asking the staff to produce those maps
and the legal descriptions, signify by saying, aye.

ALL: Aye.

J]. FERGUSON: You need hands.

CHAIR: We may.

All those opposed? No?

L. BARTON: Oh, do that one more time.
CHAIR: I think so.

We are going to ask ....

L. BALBERDE: We'll just raise hands then.

A 120
CHAIR: All those in favor of the motion, signify by raising
your hand? One, two, three, four.
THOSE RAISED IN FAVOR: Jeanne Fuller, Lisa Barton, Pat
Kahawaiola‘a, J. Fernandez.
THOSE OPPOSED: Jack Ferguson, Mark Van Pernis, L.
Balberde.
CHAIR: I have not voted. I will, in defeasance of the staff,

vote no. That leaves us tied, Mr. Pavao is not present. Mr.
Akama, what do we do now?

D. AKAMA: That means that there’s no action, so the
motion dies.

A 121
HAWAII COUNTY
REAPPORTIONMENT COMMISSION
25 Aupuni Street, #100
Hilo, Hawaii 96720
Phone: 961 8277
Fax: 961 8673

(Partial Transcript)

LLOYD VAN DE CAR LAWRENCE BALBERDE
Chairman & Presiding Officer STEVEN PAVAO

MARK VAN PERNIS JACK FERGUSON
Vice Chairman JOHN FERNANDEZ
JEANNE FULLER
PATRICK KAHAWAIOLA’A
LISA BARTONTRANSCRIPT OF MEETING
ON
Tuesday, December 18, 2001
10:00 a.m.
at
Hawaii County Office of Liquor Control Conference Room
101 Aupuni Street, Suite #230
Hilo, Hawaii 96720

CALL TO ORDER

The meeting was called to order at 10:06 a.m.by Vice Chair
Mark Van Pernis presiding for Chair Lloyd Van de Car who
presence was excused. In attendance were as follows:

Patricia Nakamoto, Elections
Gina Haina, Elections

Ed Kozohara, Elections

Al Konishi, County Clerk

A 122
Patricia O’ Toole, Deputy Corporation Counsel
BrendaLynn Domondon, Commission Secretary

A roll call was taken of the Commissioners in attendance.
Page 9-14:

B. FORD: I brought in...my name is Brenda Ford and I live
on 81- 6195 Napoopoo Road, Captain Cook, Hawaii. I'm
circulating the final results of the Hawaii County
Reapportionment numbers, which ...] hope we’re all
looking at the same thing. Does everyone have a copy? (A
copy is attached as #1)

S. PAVAO: Not yet.

B. FORD: Okay. I'd like to start at the very bottom of this
page and kinda work up to the top. If you look at the
bottom section, it shows that the U.S. Census gross
numbers. These are numbers that the council, I’m sorry, this
Commission is using for their numbers. Shows that this
Island has 148, 677 people living in the County.

\

When Charles Flaherty and I turned in our first map on
October 18th to this Commission, we had removed the
active military and non-resident students which were the
only two exclusions that we were able to get from the State
which lowered the number to 147,877. We have now
received from the State the exclusions for the active military,
the non-resident students and the non-resident dependents.
So the total...the legally mandated exclusions is 147,806 and
that’s the number our map is based on at this time. Nothing
changed on our map, just the numbers changed. If you go to
the center section, you will notice that there are 738 non
resident students, 62 active military which you know from
previous testimony, those two numbers and the new
number is 71 for the non-resident military dependents.
Again this did not make any changes

A 123
in our map. While most of these numbers come out of the
Hilo area, not all of them do, there’s a few coming out of the
north Puna area, and I mean, very few, less than 10. But
most of these are coming out of the Hilo area and you will
notice that a number of 871 is a couple of percentage points
in the population for a particular district that these would
impact. So | would suggest that the numbers you are using
again are not legal numbers and you have not reduced the
mandetate...mandated exclusions and therefore, your
deviations will be off.

The top section of the final numbers for the County using
the 147, 806 number, you can see that the allotment per
district is-16, 423 and based on that number and the
numbers that we have in each one of the areas, based on the
exclusions being removed, you can see where our deviation
is. We now have a deviation spread of 6% well within the
spread of plus or minus 5, for a total of 10%. We are still
well within that on the map that we have suggested.

If you have any questions on these numbers, I'll be glad to
talk to you about them and answering questions. I am also
here when we finish with this one, I have two presentations
of two other people.

VICE CHAIR: I note that there is ah...Mr. Boyd who has
been signed up (inaudible-speaking away from mike)...is
that correct?

B. FORD: That's correct.

VICE CHAIR: Mr. Boyd has testified before and Mr. Boyd’s
testimony was given in writing as well. So we appreciate
that you can testify for Mr. Boyd and you're just going to
read his statement, and | point out that we have his
statement and it might be part of the record.

A 124
B. FORD: I appreciate that you're going to make it a part of
your record and I still would like to read it in because that’s
the request that Mr. Boyd made of me,to read it out loud to
this Commission and the public.

VICE CHAIR: All right, please proceed then.
B. FORD: I'll read quickly.

In fact I'll start reading while this is circulating. This is the
testimony of Richard Boyd who has requested that I read
this into the record. (See Attachment 2 incorporated herein)

(Ms. Ford proceeded to read testimony)

Thank you. Anyone who does not have a copy, I have
extras.

VICE CHAIR: I also notice that you have been asked to
testify in behalf of Mr. Charles Flaherty.

B. FORD: Yes.

VICE CHAIR: I also want to point out that Mr. Flaherty has
testified on several occasions before us so you will read his
statement.

B. FORD: I am going to read his statement, | don’t have any
copies of it, he asked me to read it into the record today and
1 will leave this copy with this Commission. This statement
is written for CERG, Citizens for Equitable and Responsible
Government dated December 18, 2001, and it’s given to me
by Charles Flaherty, to read.

(Ms. Ford proceeded to read testimony, see Attachment 3
incorporated herein).

It is signed by Peter Martin, Sandra Scarr, Stan Boren, David
Holzman, Charles Flaherty and Betty Meyerson, all on the
Steering Committee of CERG. I guess I

A 125
.. (INAUDIBLE-SPEAKING AWAY FROM MIKE)....give it
to you or....

VICE CHAIR: Thank you, Ms. Ford. Are you finished?

B. FORED: I have one other statement. This is in response to
the comment you made at the beginning about the one map
that was designed by this Commission that had an urban
Kailua district and your persistent comments about how
similar that map is to the one that being supported by
CERG. While it is true that the CERG map is supporting an
urban Kailua-Kona district, the east side of the CERG map
bears no relationship to the illegal drawing of 4 districts
controlled by Hilo that this Commission is supporting. One
more time I'm telling you that you do not have the legal
population to support 4 Hilo controlled districts. What
you're doing is wrong. I urge you to change this map or
adopt the CERG map which shows the legally allowed limit
of 3 Hilo controlled districts. Thank you.

VICE CHAIR; Any questions of Ms. Ford? I have one.

What 4 districts on the map, you are saving are controlled
by Hilo?

B. FORD: The....yvour number |. Your section number I, like
ours is the North Hilo suburban area and the rural areas of
Hamakua, your district 2, 3, and 4 and you will notice if you
compare that to the CERG map that you do not need
districts 2, 3 and 4. You need just 2 districts in that area and
North Puna is entirely deserving and has the population to
justify its own council member. You have ripped apart
North Puna into 1, 2, 3 different districts in order to keep 4
districts controlled by Hilo.

A 126
VICE CHAIR: Are you saying then that the District | that
goes... (inaudible)...to Honokaa to Waipio Valley is
controlled by Hilo?

B. FORD: Yes,-you have a large suburban population there
that is controlling that district.

VICE CHAIR; Thank you.

Page 16- 17:

B. JACOBSON: Good morning, folks. Thanks for having me
again and | won't try to be repetitive, so I'll take that to
heart certainly. Unfortunately, there was some certain
repetition that’s been going on at each of these meetings and
its been said that all plans....well, I mean, all the plans have
merit, [ would just say your plan has very little merit
compared to the CERG plan. Secondly, I'm sort of
concemed, I look at this today and there’s no numbers on
the plan where they just compare the numbers of
population....

VICE CHAIR; Does that mean the percentage from the
ideal?

B. JACOBSON: Yeah, I don’t see that in today’s hand out at
all.

]. FULLER: It’s the last page.
(INAUDIBLE-PEOPLE SPEAK SIMULTANEOUSLY)
S. PAVAO: Maybe they don’t have that page.

B. JACOBSON: Well, they're not available to the public
today evidently.

VICE CHAIR: I'm sure its availavle from the staff.

A 127
B. JACOBSON: Well, before everybody testified, it certainly
wasn't cause I, again I don’t have it here and | got it on time,
so. Ah...one more thing...] just have to give you the opinion
that the CERG plan certainly does not resemble any of your
plans other than what Brenda pointed out that the central
Kailua urban district is on one of the earlier plans but again
the way they handle Puna so separately despite the fact that
we have adequate numbers of people to justify two legal
council members to Puna, that has being denied. So I think
that is unfair and I think you all know how I feel. Thank
you.

VICE CHAIR: Any questions of Mr. Jacobson? Now I call
upon Julie Jacobson.

Page 17-27:

Again, we’ ve heard from Ms. Jacobson several times so |
hope we can avoid repetition.

}. JACOBSON: Aloha, thank you all for being here. I think a
special thank you to, I wasn’t at the last meeting but to those
of you courageous enough to vote to take a good look at the
CERG map at the last meeting. I really thought that was
impressive, that 4 of you actually see that so | think that
shows that there is certainly quite a bit of dissatisfaction
with the map you proposed, so | just start with the fact that I
consider your proposal flawed in so many ways that I think
you need to just throw it out and start over again and I think
the best -!ace to start over again is with the CERG map and
{ think they did a good job at looking at the needs and
analyzing it and seeing the big picture. So that’s my basic
recommendation to....you have the chance right today to do
the right thing. And that would be to reject this map and put
the CERG map before you and develop a map if not
identical but with the basic main features that they have
suggested for that map.

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And the other thing I'd like to start out with is that its just
very disheartening to me, having gone through this whole
process and attended almost all of the mectings, the last one
we had a Council meeting which certainly was my first
priority to attend to my attend to my Council business, but
that each of them, just today for example, the process begins
with Mr. Van Pernis from the chair making an opinion
which is generally not the appropriate way according to the
Roberts Rules of Order to comment from the chair about the
article in the paper about Kohala. That certainly shows the
bias going into it, this is the section where you hear from the
public.

Um... and the second thing is that along... mean the
process, still to this day, you have not had maps that the
public can understand available to us at all. | basically had
to have the kindness of the press to let me look at theirs and
coming into the kindness of the council staff to let me,
excuse me I mean the Elections staff to let me come and look
at their maps but your actions have not provided adequate
information ever throughout this process. And the most
recent example of it, you know I provided you with a very
crudely made map with cross references that could show
the different districts, but your map to this very day that
you pass out, you cannot distinquish the lines between two
and three on your insert map. And just you just learned just
now you did not have the percentages, so the process
continues to be flawed, in terms of basic Sunshine rights to
have information before the meeting and to be able to study
and react and provide input ahead of time. That's never
been able to be done on this and um...ah, and then to the
basic issues here, and again why | am even telling you we
shouldn't be repetitive.

Well, [just want to remind you that it was Mr....it was your
Chairman Mr. Van de Car that specifically told me if my

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plans were to be...if my proposal were to be considered,
well, what [needed to to do was to go to each meeting and
present it. So Twas told to do that by you, and so I consider
it, you know, adversarial for you to start your meeting with
the statement that we should not be repetitive when your
Chairman directed me to do that. And to the idea that you
have considered, you said 11 maps, well, the fact of the
matter is we made request to you to actually have the staff
draw them up and you have consistently refused to do that,
although the 4 of you think vou did ask for that at your last
meeting. But to summarize that you did that is an incorrect
statement. You will with a tie vote-you were able to reject
doing that process. So its not as though you have given
them consideration, you haven't given that map equal
consideration because you haven't done the technical work
to give it the consideration its due.

Ah...and then now I'm going to go into the Puna problem
which started me with this in the first place. As you know,
you are both fracturing and packing districts. And as I said
before the irony is that the district you packed for me
is...increases my likelihood of getting elected in terms of the
results of the last two elections and analyzing the precinct
data. So I suppose I should be saying thank you but to me
justice is more important. By, you know, if I get by a car
today, | want to know if I did the right thing and stood for
justice no matter what it does for my political chances.
Um...and then so you packed it and then in terms of the
political encumbrance. So [ believe you generally have done
that for other districts although I don’t know the specifics of
the precinct voting patterns. But more, even more critical to
me is the fact that you fractured the Puna community and
you have basically put Puna people in one controlled by the
Hilo districts. To debate what is controlled by...the very
process that the State rejected canoe districts based on the
idea that that areas are very

A 130 ~
different, Maui and the Puna areas and Hilo, and they
realize that they had the majority of the population on the
Maui side and I believe that’s on the Maui side I think was
58%, they realize that that was not allowing for proper
representation, that would be too much of the borders
would be in one area and not the other And so that’s what
you're doing with your arrangement with 3 and 6. You are
splitting...and I just want to remid you that the Puna district
border with Hilo is roughly near...its roughly near the 5
mile marker near Macadamia Road on the highway.

So your map draws the 3 and 6 lines way up on the Kulani
Road on the makai side of the highway. And Peck Road,
Peck Road in on the 16th mile marker you have 10 miles of
Puna along the highway in on the mauka side, and there are
many subdivisions in that area. There are many people that
are affected by this. You have fractured the town of Mt.
View. You have Mt. View School in the 6th District on the
makai side of the highway and just a few hundred feet up
the road, you have Mt. View Post Office in the 3rd District
because its still Hilo side of Peck Road. So you have split the
town of Mt. View, having the Post Office a few hundred feet
from the school and in different districts is just wrong, this
town is fractured.

And then I come to the point that I made earlier that I don’t
think you ever addressed, and that is this whole issue of the
fact the way the resources and the way County government
is currently organized is around judicial districts, the State
judicial districts, our fuel taxes are led by that, our figures
on property tax are described in terms of the judicial
districts. Our Parks and Recs are organized by it, and our
Public Works Department. And so this is....so when you
make them drastically different from those, | mean you have
the population range of 17 some hundred people to 47
hundred some people. So each district of course is going to

A 131
be one but to the extent that you can not divide them up, not
throw 3 different districts and not mix them up like this, you
would be able to do a better job of keeping tract of recourses
and insuring the equity of the resource dispersal.
Um...and....I guess these are just my nain points and then,
of course, the same factor that you have never address the
length of the 6th District, and you've also created a kind of
interesting phenomenon that you might not think about that
you can say that it is technically contiguous, all the way
down to Kealakekua Bay, all the way up to the back corner
of Hawaiian Acres on the 9 and G road. But in order to
travel on a paved road, you know, and not take another
extra hour of travel time bouncing around on the back
roads, you have to leave the district in the Hawaiian Acres
end at about the 10 mile marker and drive almost 6
miles...well, around between I1 and 10 and 11, and up the
other one at 15 and 16, but you have to drive 5 miles on...to
drive on pavement you have to drive 5 miles outside of the
district to get back into it again at the one end. So if you flew
by magic carpet, I guess that’s contiguous, but if you travel
by road, you have to go out of the district and back in it
again. And you may have a few spots where you have to do
that for a short distance. But you don’t have anything
glaringly like that, like you do in the 6th District. And so I
just urge you to do the right thing because it is just a
foregoing conclusion, you will face this in court and I think
that as Brenda has pointed out, it is just a terrible waste of
taxpayers money and a terrible distrust you give to the
public when, you know, we all know that the vast majority
of the public had told you this plan doesn’t work, and the
vast majority of us have come together on another plan, and
you know, that’s what 90 some per cent of the public has
told you particularly interestingly the public that comes
here in person to tell you this. The public that goes to every
meeting and tells everybody what they think out front, that

A 132
part of the public is here, and has been here. The public that
you get letters from that you read their written testimony,
you know, maybe some of you have said, well, there’s a
whole bunch of that, and I suppose we can go and look at
your minutes and try to sort out well, just how much of that
is there compared to this. But in terms of your meetings and
the process where we worked ostensibly supposed to
present our testimony, its been clear and decisive. And so
again, I urge you to just do the right thing today, its not too
late and each of you have the intelligence and if you, and I
think if you listened to the real reason behind all of this,
you'd see that that what you're doing is against the public
interest and it’s a very deep and disturbing thing to....to
prevent justice that will affect us for 10 years. And its very
hard to, just as I thought we did it wrong the first time in
1992, and all we’re doing is exasperating that and its very
hard to change tract so if we have to have another ten years
of this wrong what's made worst than what we what we
already have, you know you are really undermining the
public trust, the public confidence in government, and we
certainly don’t need that with the scarce resources and the
difficult problems we have all the way up to the
international level . Its time to...if you want to show
solidarity with the people of your island you know what to
do, and that is to reject this plan and to create a plan, if not
identical to largely similar to the CERG plan the Hawaii
Constitutional plan.

Thank you very much.

VICE CHAIR: Any questions for Ms. Jacobson?
S. PAVAO: Thave.

VICE CHAIR: Mr. Pavao?

S. PAVAO: This is a point of clarification, Ms. Jacobson. I
heard you say something, and I want to make sure that I

A 133
heard the right thing, but are you saying that 7 to 10 people
testified at the public hearing is the vast majority? I heard
you say that we heard from the vast majority of the public
and the vast majority of the residents of this island.

J. JACOBSON: No, I didn’t say that the vast majority
actually came to the meetings, I’m saying in the meetings.
For example I think the most notable one is the Puna
meeting, where 26 people testified...in fact I don’t think we
were looking at the CERG plan but it’s a plan that my
husband and | proposed, and that was...actually what |
remember is that even no one that I've heard from the
public came out and said: we love this plan, let’s do it. The
most that I've heard was, even this, the majority of the
people saying was presently seated council members saying:
we can kinda live with it, we trust you doing a good job, we
support what you're doing. And then some of you of the
public who were not council members said: well, take a
good look and you're looking at this and then some council
members to their public testimony to you did not take a
specific position.

S. PAVAO: Wouldn't you....

J. JACOBSON: And that’s what I call that when you have

um..in terms of the people who came to speak here, I call
that the vast majority...even with the people who came to....

S. PAVAO: Wouldn't you...
J. JACOBSON: ...even with the people who came to....

S. PAVAO: When you say its true that you know, in Puna
mauka and Puna makai you did numbers with 30,000
people and 26 people speaking at a public hearing still is not
indicative of the vast majority of the residents of the district.

A 134
J. JACOBSON: I'm saying that the conclusion you should
draw, the public testimony you got leads you to this being
what the people supported. The only way I would back out
from that is if you....excuse me, what am I...those people
should have come who don’t approve of it, and I don’t
know why you have to cut...why you have to think you
have to wonder about what people ah...people could’ve
come to ali these meetings, people could've read all of this.

S. PAVAO: Well, I don’t think the issue is wondering what
the other people are saying or not, we all live in districts, we
all talk to people in our districts day in and day out and they
have different opinions as opposed to just hearing from
public hearings we have input from other areas as well.

J. JACOBSON: Ah yes, and I would assume that they should
be on the record and...

M. VAN PERNIS: I think we covered the subject.

J. JACOBSON: And I'd like to say this, but there’s literally
hundreds of people...

M. VAN PERNIS: Excuse me, we have a question pending.
Ms. Jacobson.

J. JACOBSON: ...who have told me that they don’t like the
plan....

M. VAN PERNIS: Ms. Jacobson, please. We have a question
pending.

Any more questions from the Council...excuse me, the
Commission?

L. BARTON: I have.
M. VAN PERNIS: A statement or question?

A 135
.. BARTON: A statement to what she’s saying.

Clearly, I just want to say that this morning when you said,
“a lot of people have come out”, | do agree. A lot of people
have come out in support of our plans, and they also have to
say that its been my experience, and | think you may be
aware of this that on this Island is, when you have the
mectings those that don’t come are basically saying, they’ re
not...there’s not enough interest, they’re not opposed,
because when they’ re opposed, that’s when they come.
That's all | wanted to say, and so as far as support for the
plans, it’s the lack of support we are hearing of the plan
right now. The majority of not supporting is staying at home
and saying and saying: whatever that’s fine.

]. JACOBSON: But I want to comment that you cannot make
the leap that the majority are staying home, has studied the
issues, knows about it, has an opinion about it.

M. VAN PERNIS: As I understand it, you are now in favor
of the CERG plan and are basically not advocating the plan
that you and your husband submitted earlier in the
proceedings?

J. JACOBSON: I’m supporting the CERG plan. There may be
details where one plan has some benefits and another plan
has some benefits, to summarize that I think particularly for
the Kona area, I did not consider that | have the expertise,
and I’m sure theirs is vastly improved in terms of their
intimate knowledge of that area.

M. VAN PERNIS: So we should take your testimony in
supporting the CERG plan...

}. JACOBSON: Yeah.

M. VAN PERNIS: ...and basically the drawing that you
are...the earlier plan that you and your husband submitted.

A 136
J. JACOBSON: Well, that’s not the issue to me to withdraw. I
gave you the proposals. Now my point is that their plan is a
desirable plan, a very good plan, and I support it.

M. VAN PERNIS: Thank you.

Any more questions of Ms. Jacobson? Hearing none, I'll next
call Mr. Mikahala Roy, please.

Page 37-41:

A. KONISHI: Good morning, Mr. Chairman, good morning.
Commissioners. For the record, my name is Al Konishi, and
I have spoken to you before. For those in the audience, |
would say this again.

Just for...to disclose where | am coming from, I am a
political appointee appointed by the Council members.
Having said that, yeah, I also want to say that according to
the Charter, my role is to provide you with logistical
support and as you know, as a political appointee, one of
the things that I have done is, I have gotten out of the way
and made sure that myself and the other political appointee
of the department, Mr. Ikeda, we have had nothing to do
with the drawings of the line. In fact we kind of banned
ourselves from the room where Mrs. Nakamoto and Mr.
Kozohara are doing the lines. I just want to say that just to
clarify that for the record. Having said that, you know, I
hate to be the bearer of bad news, okay. But this morning |
had a chance to check with Mayor Kim outside his office,
and we were just shooting the breeze, and we talked about
the concept of telling it like it is even though it is not
popular. So I’m sorry to disappoint a lot of people in the
room but as a person providing you with logistical support I-
gotta give you some bad news.

First of all, the deadline that’s imposed on you is December
31st, that’s 13 days\away. That's is not a deadline that I

A 137

made, its not a deadline that staff made, its not a deadline
the HIGEA made, the Council or the Mayor. This is a
deadline that the people of this Island voted for on...in
November of 1990. This deadline has been known, therefore
for 11 years, from November 1990 to now. This December
31st deadline is known.

Second thing. This deadline is not a matter of convenience
for the staff or for myself or the candidates. State Law which
no one in the County has the authority to supercede. It says
that Mrs. Nakamoto and her staff have to have maps,
descriptions, nomination papers available for candidates in
February. Okay?

Here’s the bad news. If you make any major changes to this
map that is behind you, they are not'going to make the
deadline. Now I'm not here to ask for your sympathy, but
we have our workers working an average of 14 hours a day.
They simply cannot put more hours in the day and make
this deadline. They simply can’t. In fact, Mrs. Nakamoto
quite does not want me to reveal this. But we are ina
situation now where we can't finish it without her, she’s
facing a situation where she’s going to lose accumulated
vacation time because we just don’t have enough time to do
anything else. So today is, | know I heard a very, very nice
presentation by the previous speaker about delaying...I'm
sorry, | gotta break the bad news to you. We can't do it. If
you re going to make the deadline of December 31st, you
gotta go today. And you know, again, I just want to also
state something for the record, because | heard Mrs. Ford
mention this and I read it in the article.

Just for the record, folks, you know, a lot has been said
about what is Constitutional and what is not. And Mr.
Ferguson, Mr. Van Pernis are legally trained. Burns vs. Gill
is not the controlling authority in this Reapportionment

A 138
situation. Burns vs. Gill was decided in 1970. | am only
saying this because, you know, I want to reassure you
Commissioners. Burns vs. Gill was decided in 1970, the
issues it had were whether or not State legislative districts
would cross over the water. Also, they talked about the
issue of multi-member districts. In Burns vs. Gill , the
Hawaii Court...oh, I'm sorry./..the U.S. District Court I
believe talked about the history of Reapportionment in
Hawaii. In the recitation of the history, they taiked about
how a committee of the Constitutional Convention went
ahead and did their reapportionment plan. And in that
recitation they mentioned the factors that, that particular
committee used. Now, Mr. Van Pernis and Mr. Ferguson
know that a holding by the Court, in other words, its
something that is put right to the Court, the question is, you
know, can they do this or can’t they. That is the ruling in the
court, in the case Burns vs. Gill does not stand for the
proposition which I've heard them alluded to. I think, in my
opinion, the controlling authority is the case of Kawamoto
vs Okata which took place in 1994 in which residents in
Waipahu were upset because they said their district was cut
into three different pieces. Now, that’s not what’s quite on
point, but I think that would have more authority than
Burns vs. Gill. In fact, there are two excellent articles on
reapportionment in Hawaii. One being called The History of
ReApportionment in Hawaii, the other one is How to
Challenge a Plan or How to make a Plan. One appears in the
Hawaii Bar Journal and one appears in the University of
Hawaii log. Burns vs. Gill is hardly cited. Okay.

I just wanted to mentioned that in case some of you
wondered whether or not there are constitutional questions
about the particular plans that you worked on. Again, you
know, as a political appointee, | don’t want to get into the
specific plans as to whether or not, I think they are

~

A 139

constitutional. I just wanted to make that clarification that
and you could, you know, if you want to consult with your
attorney, you can do that, too. But in my opinion, Burns vs.
Guill is not controlling, its Kawamoto vs. Okata. Anyway, |
am sure, you know, again in keeping my effort to keep this
apolitical, I'm gonna leave the room after having stating
this. We have excellent staff people, on the question of
integrity etc, they can fill you in more about some other
columns they would have if you made any major changes to
this map here. Again, | want to make it clear. Its not because
lam supporting this map, whatever map you have behind
you today, what I'm telling you is, if you make major
changes, whether it may be the CERG map, Mrs. Jacobson’s
map, maps 1-9, you make major changes today, you're
gonna have a very difficult time making a December 31st
deadline. And again, that’s not a matter of convenience for
us. Its State Law and it’s the County Charter.

S. PAVAO: May I ask Mr. Konishi a question?

VICE CHAIR: Any other questions Commissioners have for
Mr. Konishi?

S. PAVAO: Can you briefly tell us what are the Court's
fiindings in Kawamoto vs. Okata?

KONISHI: Okay, in Kawamoto vs. Okata, Calvin Kawamoto
who was then the head of the Neighborhood Board, now he
is a State Senator, said that Waipahu had been split up and
it was discriminatory, violated the people's equal protection
rights, etc, etc. Now what the Court did there, the Hawaii
Supreme Court, is what most Courts do, in
gerrymandering...alleged gerrymandering cases. Most
times, unless a Commission had done

A 140
something so outrageous, they would not get involved,
because Courts don’t like to draw lines. Okay. So they have
looked ai the first issue. They said are there huge population
deviations? Okay, and the answer was no. So therefore...
then the Courts said, okay, if you’ re basically saying that the
people of Waipahu formed this group that is somehow
getting their rights discriminated against, so they broke it
down a couple of ways.

The first point was is there an identifiable group? And the
feeling of the Court was, Waipahu is so diverse in ethnicity,
in socio-economics, in occupations, that it is so nebulous,
that what group are you discriminating against? And the
Court noted that most times on the mainland, where people
allege discrimination, is basically racial discrimination, and
those things are readily identifiable. Okay. But in the case of
Waipahu, Calvin Kawamoto was just saying, well, we don’t
like the fact where they split up three different ways. Also,
the Court then said, what is Waipahu? You know. Where
does Waipahu begin and end. What about just about got this
case memorized. What about Village Park? What about
SeaView? What about the community of Waipio? Okay, so
the Court say, gee, Cal you can’t even show us on the map
where Waipahu is. Okay.

And I...I1 can’t remember the last point but so what the
Court did was found that the City and County

Reapportionment Plan was valid, it was not...it did not
constitute gerrymandering, and it did not discriminate
against any so-call unidentifiable socioeconomic group.

Again, you know, Mr. Pavao, if you're kinda interested,
there are some excellent law review articles on the subject,
they are kinda understandable, even though they are
drafted by lawyers. Usually I don’t recommend yhings....or
lawyer's right but just basically just what they decide in
Kawamoto.

A 141
S. PAVAO: Thank you.

VICE CHAIR; Any more questions of Mr....?

P. KAHIAWAIOLA’A: I do. And my only question to Mr.
Konishi, is what's the bad news? So what's the bad news,
you came in with some news. What's the bad news? I guess,
you're giving me the idea that we knew the deadline was ....

A. KONISHI: No. I know....

P. KAHAWAIOLA‘ A: ...the 31ST of December, so 1 mean, I
just hope that...and I only speak for myself, I just hope that
ah...I knew the deadline was there, I know the crunch time,
and the knew the staff had...I'm not going to put....be
prepared to put the staff under that kind of situation. If
someone's going to lose big time, and they’re working 14
hours, and don’t get so see, you know, their families during
the holidays, by the same token, that’s why I’m saying, that
in my opinion, there’s no bad news. We're prepared, you
know, we gotta do what we gotta do, we took it on and
ah...or I took on this job...ah assignment to do this till
~December and make sure that ah..we can come and
constitutionally say, you know, the threat was there, and the
threat is still there. I heard it twice tonight...today, that it
may be resolved in the Courtroom. So be it. If that’s the way
its going to be done, this is supposedly, this is America, and
that’s the Constitution that they prepared to, to, to use, and I
heard the 14 Amendments and I put a record, and I'll make
it clear for the record, as a native Hawaiian living on
Hfawaiian Home Lands, the 14th Amendment does not
apply to the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act. | can make
that categoric and clear. !t does not apply to the native
Hawaiians that live... that are living under, that are
qualified under the Hawaiian Homes Commission

- A 142
Act. That's a sad case to mention, but its...its clear in this
County, so | don’t want to start that...go into that tangent,
however, | am prepared just to do what is fair for the rest of
them because not all of my ohana, my family, qualifies as
native Hawaiians, and therefore, they live in separate parts
of this Island. So I just needed to make it clear, I just thought
it as a matter of ah...to break this seriousness that you have.
I didn’t hear any bad news, I just heard that we just have to
keep it going.

A. KONISHI: Well, you know, I want to thank you, thank
you, Patrick. I just want to review another conflict I have,
Patrick and Mr. Balberde. No, I don’t have a prejudice
towards Keaukaha so I'll reveal that for everyone now. I say
that because I know a lot of, you know, people are not
happy in the room, and a lot of statements have been made
but the reason I said bad news is because at that other
meeting, | want to point out that yourself, from East Hawaii,
from Keaukaha, the great community of Keaukaha, Mr.
Balberde from _Waiakea, Ms. Barton from the eastern side.
You guys were the ones who voted to take a look at the
CERG map. So when I say bad news, I know you guys did
your best to try to get their concerns out, you guys didn't
have the votes. And when I tell you because of that track
record of being open like that, I just wanted to tell you that
even if you wanted to look at it at this point, I'm sorry, its
just too late. So again, because you guys had voted for that
CERG thing the last time, I just wanted to throw that out for
you,

Page 90:

J. FERGUSON: ... I feel that what we have done here is
nothing unconstitutional, as | said, people may differ. They
feel differently about what we have done, and they have
their options and I encourage them to use them. Not just for
the sake of saying, gee, we lost, lets go to court, but because

A 143
you truly believe in what you're doing. I don’t think that
there’s anyone, anyone who is proposing these different
plans in what we have talked about here on the
Commission, has any particular political agenda in mind, |
think most of these people believe that their idea is better
than ours. And they’re certainly entitled to that opinion. I
would like to state for the record, that I personally did
consider all the maps that we presented including the CERG
map and Ms. Jacobson’s map, and I know that the other
Commissioners did, too. They were discussed here at the
meetings and we did hear all of your arguments, you were
not shut out, we listened to whatever you had to say, we
just don't agree.
Page 86
VICE CHAIR: So then the motion will be so amended. Is
there any further discussion? ...
VICE CHAIR: All right, | would then ask that all those in
favor of the proposed...excuse me... All those in favor of the
2001 Council District Plan as presented in Mr. Pavao’s
motion, please raise their hand.

ALL HANDS RAISED.

I note the unanimous 8 votes. Mr. Van de Car, of course,
being absent.

Thus the plan and the motion passes, and the plan is in
effect.

x — A144
United States Election Project

Dr. Michael McDonald
Department of Public and International Affairs
George Mason University
4400 University Drive - 3F4
Fairfax, VA 22030-4444
Office: 703-993-4191
Fax: 703-993-1399
Email: mmcdon@gmu.edu
Enhancing Competitiveness in Redistricting

(Partial Text)

One of the fundamental characteristics of democratic
government is that voters have a meaningful choice among,
candidates on the ballot. The 2002 congressional election
sorely tested the degree of democracy in the United States.
Pundits widely reported the 2002 congressional elections as
the least competitive in modern history. Only 40 - plus or
minus a few - out of 435 House races were considered close
enough going into election night that the outcome was not
known with a high degree of certainty.

How can the country regarded as leader of the free world
host legislative elections whose competitiveness is nearly on
par with one-political party dictatorships such as Cuba, old
Iraq, Libya, and the old Soviet Union? The answer lies in
how the districts are drawn. Districts are redrawn every ten
years in a process known as redistricting. Only in the
United States do the politicians have so much say in how
their districts will look. Democracy is turned on its head
during redistricting - instead of the voters choosing the
representatives, the representatives choose the voters.
Naturally, they choose voters that will further their political
goals, not enhance democracy.

A 145 .

How to create competitive districts? To answer this
question, the goals of those drawing the districts are
examined here so that their motivations may be understood,
and why they prefer to create non-competitive districts. The
genius of the federal system of the United States has
produced multiple redistricting criteria and processes across
the fifty states, and thereby provides examples of what does
and does not work to enhance competitiveness in
redistricting. These are broadly defined into: redistricting
criteria, redistricting procedures, and electoral procedures.
Each item within these categories is briefly described below,
including a discussion of its effect on competitiveness and
prospects for reform.
Overall Recommendations for a Commission System
A proposed redistricting process that will produce
competitive elections is a commission system. These
recommendations are based on the Arizona commission
model, with lessons drawn from elsewhere...

3. The selection procedure should insulate members

from political influence, while at the same time

providing for partisan representation on the

commission.. Members should not be allowed to run for

election in the districts they create...

8. The commission should have a competitiveness
requirement in drawing districts, as so much as that
requirement does not conflict with other legitimate goals
of redistricting, such as population equality, adhering to
the Voting Rights Act, ete...

9. The commission should not be allowed to know the
location of incumbent homes when drawing districts.
Information regarding partisan voting is necessary,
however, in order to gauge the competitiveness of
districts. ..

What is Gerrymandering ?

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A special word has been devised to describe manipulating
district boundaries to affect a political outcome -
gerrymandering - in dubious honor of a state legislative
district proposed by Massachusetts Gov. Elbridge Gerry in
1812 that bore a striking resemblance to a salamander.
Redistricting affects the careers of politicians and the
representation of political parties and racial groups.
Incumbents, political parties, and racial groups all have a
role in the redistricting process, so understanding the
motivations of these players and how their motivations
interact with one another is important to understanding
how the redistricting process operates in practice and
shapes outcomes.

The three types of gerrymanders are:

e Partisan gerrymandering: The goal of a partisan
gerrymander is to gain partisan advantage through
redistricting. Partisan gerrymanders occur when one
political party controls the entire redistricting
process. For a state legislature, the goal of a partisan
gerrymander may be to secure majority control,
while for congressional districts, it may be to
maximize the number of seats a party will win ina
state. These two goals are subtly different, but have
generally the same effect on redistricting.

The strategy behind the ideal partisan gerrymander is to
“pack” and “crack” supporters of the opposing political
party. Opposition supporters are “packed” into extremely
safe districts in order to waste their votes in pre-determined
elections. The gerrymandering party efficiently distributes
their supporters across the remaining districts, placing just
enough in each district to comfortably win, but without
stacking itself. Opposition party supporters are “cracked”
across these districts, wasting their votes in elections that
their party's candidate cannot win.

A 147

Districts created in a partisan gerrymander tend to be non-
competitive. The opposition party’s districts will tend to be
extremely safe while ironically the gerrymandering party's
districts are a little less so, so that their supporters may be
more efficiently distributed throughout a jurisdiction.
Sometimes the practicalities of the political geography of a
state will limit the partisan gerrymander, enabling the
creation of a few competitive districts currently represented
by the opposition party that the gerrymandering party
hopes to pick up in the following elections.

e Incumbent protection gerrymandering: The goal of
an incumbent protection gerrymander is to secure
reelection for incumbents. Often this form of
gerrymander represents a compromise between the
two political parties, a situation which is forced
when one party does not exclusively control the
redistricting process.

Redistricting is one of the few political processes that lends
itself to bipartisan compromise. Two representatives from
different parties, whose districts adjoin, are willing to make
mutually beneficial trades. A Democrat representative is
willing to swap with a Republican representative,
Republican voters for Democratic voters. Both
representatives gain electoral security through this trade.
Incumbent protection gerrymanders tend to produce the
least competitive elections.

Racial gerrymandering: The goal of racial gerrymandering
is to secure the election of candidates of choice of a
particular race...

None of these three types of gerrymanders results in
competitive districts. Incumbents prefer a certain and
decisive win, not only to retain their job, but also to frighten
off future challengers. Political parties prefer certain

A 148
victory to the possibility that the other party will win
elections. Racial groups prefer their candidates win with
certainty, rather than the chance that they will lose. As
these interests often have control over redistricting at some
point in the process, the deck is stacked against the creation
of competitive districts...
Enhancing Competitiveness in Redistricting...
Redistricting Criteria...
2. Compactness

Description: Compactness is another generally accepted
criteria for redistricting that is often encoded into state
constitutions. Together with contiguity, compactness
reflects the not

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/documents/brief%3Amicro_IA40386008_0672%3A2. Public record. Not legal advice.