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In Calista redistricting case, plaintiffs claim dilution of voting power and defense claims attempted gerrymandering

The Alaska House voting district 38, as adopted by the Alaska Redistricting Board in November 2021.
Alaska Redistricting Board
The Alaska House voting district 38, as adopted by the Alaska Redistricting Board in November 2021.

An Alaska Superior Court Judge heard closing arguments on Feb. 11 in the trial challenging the outline of Bethel’s voting district in the state House. The trial came after the Calista Corporation, along with two private individuals from Scammon Bay and Hooper Bay, sued the Alaska Redistricting Board.

The plantiffs’ attorney argued that the Alaska Redistricting Board was diluting the voting power of the Calista Regional Corporation’s shareholders by the way it divides the region into multiple house and senate districts.

To change that, the plaintiffs want to add Hooper Bay and Scammon Bay to the Bethel house voting district 38. Those communities are currently located in the Bering Straits house voting district 39. To satisfy the requirement for equal population in districts, the plaintiffs want to transfer the communities of Quinhagak, Kongiganak, and Kwigillingok into the house district 37 that contains Bristol Bay.

Plaintiffs’ attorney Mike Schechter says that this arrangement better aligns with all the communities’ socio-economic ties, and would also place all of them in the same senate district.

“We’re not here because the Calista villages want to be in a district with their buddies and family. We’re here because the region is one of the poorest in the state and suffers as a result of the lack of representation,” Schechter said during his closing arguments.

The attorney defending the Alaska Redistricting Board accused Calista of seeking to gerrymander the region in a way that would give voters in the Bethel house district 38 increased voting power to elect a state senator, at the disadvantage of voters in the Bristol Bay house district 37. Both districts share the same senator.

Defense attorney Lee Baxter argued that the board did not single out the Calista region to break into multiple districts. Instead, the region’s large population requires it, and the defense said that the board did not dilute voting powers. That might be true if it broke up local government boundaries, but Alaska Native Corporations, like Calista, are not local governments.

Baxter pointed out that in its proposed maps, Calista itself breaks up its own region into three house districts and two senate districts, just like the state redistricting board does.

“It cannot be a violation of Equal Protection for the board to place Calista region villages in the same amount of house districts and the same amount of senate districts as Calista desires,” Baxter said during his closing arguments.

The defense also claimed that the current district boundaries align with the region’s socio-economics by following school district boundaries.

The judge aims to release a decision by Feb. 15.

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