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What officials are considering when they're redrawing the Y-K Delta voting districts

Bethel resident Mary Peltola testifies on the redistricting process at a public meeting with the Alaska Redistricting Board at the Yupiit Piciryarait Cultural Center on Oct. 19, 2021 in Bethel, Alaska. Seated left to right are Board Chairman John Binkley and board members Melanie Bahnke and Budd Simpson.
Anna Rose MacArthur
/
KYUK
Bethel resident Mary Peltola testifies on the redistricting process at a public meeting with the Alaska Redistricting Board at the Yupiit Piciryarait Cultural Center on Oct. 19, 2021 in Bethel, Alaska. Seated left to right are Board Chairman John Binkley and board members Melanie Bahnke and Budd Simpson.

Appointed officials are in the process of redrawing the boundaries of Alaska’s voting districts. They have to be adjusted each decade to account for population changes found in the U.S. Census. There are six maps the Alaska Redistricting Board is considering. Board Chairman John Binkley and two other board members came to Bethel on Oct. 19 to gather public comment and answer questions about the maps and the redistricting process. He explained that process and the feedback the board was receiving to KYUK.

Transcript:

Binkley: It's great to be home here in Bethel. My wife and I lived here for a number of years. We lived here in Bethel. We had a tug and barge business. Very involved in the community, served on the city council, was representative in the House of Representatives for this area, and then a much larger area in the state Senate as well. This is back in the late 70s and 80s.

KYUK: Have you served on a redistricting board before?

Binkley: Never. First time. First time for all of us. It's really very unusual, because it only happens once every 10 years. So there's not really much institutional memory from one census cycle to the next. It happens in a very short time period, based on what the [Alaska] Constitution and the statutes dictate. And so we're all scrambling to learn it and to make the best decisions possible. To reach out to people in communities to really learn what they feel and think would be the best way to draw the lines in their communities in the regions.

KYUK: Who appointed you to the board?

Binkley: I was appointed by the president of the Senate [Republican Cathy Giessel].

KYUK: Since you have served as a representative for this area, as a senator for this area, what do you think is important for this area in particular when considering the boundaries of the redistricting?

Binkley: Well, we're tasked by the [Alaska] Constitution. That really is the guiding principle for us.

KYUK narration: Under the Alaska Constitution, the districts must be compact, contiguous, of equal population, and socioeconomically integrated. Compact means they can’t have odd appendages. Contiguous means that you can travel from one part of the district to the other without leaving it. Equal population based on the latest census means having 18,335 people per district. Socioeconomic integration is more subjective and something the board encourages people to help the board better understand.

Binkley: And we really look at those socioeconomic integration areas. So the people of the AVCP [Association of Village Council Presidents] region really are kind of one unit that I would look at. However, there's more population there than the 18,335. So we're really bound by that as well. So then that means that not everybody in the AVCP region can be in the same house district. And so that's a lot of the difficulty that we find in trying to figure out what is the best lines to draw around the region to kind of capture the heart of the area and still make sure that they're well represented in Juneau.

KYUK: You have six maps here. At the end, Nov. 10, there will be a final map that's presented. On Nov. 10, will it be one of these six maps, or will it be a new map?

Binkley: Probably won't be one of these specifically, because we've learned as we've gone around. We've listened to what people have had to say. So we had to come up with something so people can comment, and that's what you see in these six different proposals. Two came from the board, four from third party groups. And now we're taking it out to the people of Alaska to get their comments. Then we'll take all that back, and then we'll come up with one final map.

KYUK: I know you just arrived here in Bethel, but have you been getting any feedback from this region?

Binkley: We have been getting some feedback from the region, particularly some of the villages up towards the mouth of the Yukon River: Hooper Bay, Scammon Bay, Chevak, that area. Currently, they're in a district that is part of the Nome district as well, all of that north, south, and middle mouth as well as Scammon, Hooper, and Chevak, and they want to really be in the Bethel district. The problem with that is when you pull them into the Bethel district, then you have to take somebody else out of the AVCP region on the other end, because the population gets too big. And so that's the balance: who stays in this district and who is not in the district.

KYUK: One thing that I always think of when I look at these redistricting maps is the variability of the sizes because of the population limits. You are supposed to have just over 18,000 people in each district, which means some in a city might occupy a very small area, and then some might occupy what looks like half the state. You, having served as a senator where you're supposed to be representing a giant landmass, how do you do that effectively?

Binkley: It's difficult in my Senate District, which included Bethel and the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. It also extended all the way through the Interior to the Canadian border. I had 74 different communities in my Senate District, and really the only way I could get out to all those communities was to fly my own plane. I have my own plane, and I would really live out of my plane and just fly from village to village. And I had my office in my plane, my file cabinets, and that's the only way I could really serve the constituents in such a massive geographical size. It was the same square miles as the state of California and the state of Washington combined. One Senate District, 74 communities.

KYUK: That's so immense.

Binkley: It was challenging.

KYUK: As you are going around to other areas of the state, this isn't the first meeting that you've had, what have been the common themes of feedback that Alaskans are concerned about that they want to see when they look at these maps?

Binkley: I think they want a fair process. I think most people understand that every community can't get exactly what it wants. It's a really difficult task to be able to put everything, all the building blocks together to make 40 relatively equal districts and keep everybody where they want to be. So I think that they want a fair system. They want to be heard, and to the extent that it's possible to try and accommodate what their needs are. But in the end, we can't do it all. And that's why every time it happens, somebody is not happy. And usually there's litigation that follows. We have over 1,000 pages of comments, and we read all of those and we take them very seriously. And we'll look at them carefully to try and do the best that we can and in coming up with a fair map.

KYUK: John, thanks so much.

Binkley: You bet. Thank you.

You can find the proposed maps on the board’s website at akredistrict.org. You can e-mail your public testimony to testimony@akredistrict.org.

Anna Rose MacArthur served as KYUK's News Director from 2015-2022.
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