Census results will drive legislative redistricting

It’s been 10 years since the last U.S. census results were made available, but it will be three more years before Montana residents will learn how the state’s legislative districts could be redrawn.

Montana’s 989,415 residents must be “apportioned” among 100 state House districts, ideally with no more than a 5 percent deviation from an average of 9,894 residents per district. Other goals adopted since 1974 included keeping counties intact, maintaining communities of interest, following geography and trade areas, aligning state districts with congressional districts when Montana had two U.S. representatives, keeping districts compact and contiguous, and protecting minorities.

Put simply, the goal is to stick to the democratic and republican principle of “one person, one vote.”

For nearly two centuries, however, political parties have tried to use the redistricting process to gain political advantage. Ignoring geographical and community lines is called “gerrymandering” after the boundary of one state senate district created by Massachusetts Gov. Elbridge Gerry in 1812 resembled a salamander.

Montana also has a long history of gerrymandering. Seeing that the legislature by the 1960s was unable to handle the redistricting task, members of the 1971-72 Montana Constitutional Convention called for the creation of an autonomous — and hopefully bipartisan —  five-person Districting and Apportionment Commission to be responsible for creating the district boundaries.

Last year, two members of the commission were chosen by Republican legislative leaders — Linda Vaughey, of Helena, and Jon Bennion, of Clancy. Two members were chosen by Democrats — Joe Lamson, of Helena, and Pat Smith, of Missoula.

It’s left up to the commission to choose the fifth member, but in the five times since 1972 that the commission was formed following a federal census, only once were the four members able to agree on a fifth member. The Montana Supreme Court chose the fifth member the four other times. Three times, the Court chose a Democrat, including the highly contentious choice of Janine Pease Pretty on Top in 1999.

Last year, the Court chose former Supreme Court Justice Jim Regnier, of Lakeside, to chair the bipartisan commission. Since leaving the Court in 2004, Regnier has worked as a mediator and an adjunct law professor at the University of Montana. He endorsed Barack Obama in 2008 and contributed to Democratic candidates John Morrison and Sen. Jon Tester.

In a May 14, 2009, letter to the Supreme Court, Vaughey and Bennion noted that the one commission able to agree on a fifth member — the third commission in 1989-1993  — eleven of 13 votes on various plans were unanimous. All major votes by the fourth commission, in 1999-2003, went along 3-2 partisan lines, with the Democrats overriding the Republicans.

“The Court could not have foreseen how partisan the last commission would conduct itself,” Vaughey and Bennion said, “including the record use of population deviation for partisan purposes, a lack of openness in drawing up the plan that was ultimately adopted, and the intentional use of political data and election results.”

Montana Senate Minority Leader Carol Williams, D-Missoula, disagrees that the 2003 redistricting plan was gerrymandered. She points to the makeup of the Legislature over the past 10 years and notes how only two seats typically divides the parties in power.

After nearly a year of wrangling between a Democratic-controlled commission and a Republican-controlled legislature, the 2003 plan was approved on schedule. One of its innovations was the creation of House District 15, which joins the Flathead and Blackfeet Indian reservations, even though the two communities are on opposite sides of the Continental Divide and separated by the Bob Marshall Wilderness.

Here in the Flathead, the communities of Whitefish and Columbia Falls were joined in a single senate district. In addition, precinct lines were allowed to cross city lines to include urban and rural areas. In a valley known for being dominated by Republicans, former state Sen. Dan Weinberg, D-Whitefish, won election in 2004 in the new Whitefish-Columbia Falls senate district.

According to a work plan adopted by the Districting and Apportionment Commission in September 2009, redistricting hardware and software was purchased and tested by staff by last spring, and three public hearings seeking public input were held across the state in April.

U.S. Census Bureau figures will be available by April 1, 2011, at which time commission staff will start crunching numbers and begin the process of adopting new state legislative districts.

A public hearing on the final plan will be held at the Capitol in late 2012, and the plan will be submitted to the legislature for review on the 10th day of the 2013 session.