Redistricting Lawsuit NewsReturn to Redistricting Lawsuit page
http://www.argusleader.com/news/Saturdayarticle4.shtml
Don't split Indian district, S.D. urged
By TERRY WOSTER
Argus Leader
published: 9/29/01
Preserve Cheyenne, Standing Rock boundary, women tell legislators
PIERRE - Lawmakers drawing up a new legislative district plan should preserve a
feature that creates a two-reservation voting district with a strong majority
of Native American residents, two Eagle Butte women said Friday.
Brenda Blue Arm and Madonna Thunder Hawk told a legislative committee involved
in redistricting that the area created in 1991 and including all of the
Cheyenne River Indian Reservation and the South Dakota portion of the Standing
Rock Reservation has given Native American people more reason to vote.
"At this point, our people are realizing how important it is to vote,'' Blue
Arm said. "I would really like to see it stay the way it is.''
Thunder Hawk said she and others have struggled for years to get Indian people
to vote. Now with a majority of Indians, their district finally elected a
Native American, Rep. Thomas Van Norman, D-Eagle Butte, in 2000.
"To me, this is something South Dakota did, one of the few times I've been
proud to be from South Dakota,'' Thunder Hawk said.
The redistricting committee is trying to draw new legislative boundaries to
reflect population shifts in the past 10 years. As nearly as possible, each
district is to have an equal number of residents, in line with one-person,
one-vote court rulings. The ideal district, based on the 2000 census, is 21,567
people.
The last census also showed a continuing trend of people moving away from the
farms and small towns in the center of the state toward the Sioux Falls area
and other growth spots on the east and west borders. Most parts of the state
that include Indian reservations also grew.
Lawmakers intend to finalize the new districts during a special session that
begins Oct. 23. Should the Legislature fail to finish its job by December, the
state Supreme Court is charged with drawing the new boundaries.
The state has 35 legislative districts. With the exception of the Cheyenne
River-Standing Rock area, each district has one senator and two
representatives. The Cheyenne River district is part of a six-county district
that stretches across northwestern South Dakota from the Wyoming border to the
Missouri River.
One senator is elected from that entire area, but the district is split in two
for House elections. One House member comes from the west half of the district,
the other from the reservation area to the east.
Some proposed redistricting maps have suggested splitting the reservations,
keeping Cheyenne River, which encompasses Dewey and Ziebach counties, west of
the river but moving Standing Rock's area, Corson County, to link with several
north-central counties east of the river.
A district including both reservations would be about 78 percent Native
American, while a district with only Dewey and Ziebach would be about 59
percent Native American, Legislative Research Council staff members said.
Van Norman said it's important to keep the Indian vote together.
"The fairness I'm seeking is to those Lakota voters out there,'' he said. "The
interests are strong between Cheyenne River and Standing Rock. I think it would
be a disservice to split them.''
If Corson County can't be moved to help create a district east of the river,
legislators will have difficulty reaching equal numbers in districts they
create in that part of the state, Sen. Don Brosz, R-Watertown, said. He asked
if the two reservations, comprising different tribes, really had common
interests that overrode other map-making considerations.
They do, Thunder Hawk said. Four separate bands of Lakota people live in the
two reservations. Many are part of related extended families, she said.
"State lines, reservation lines, county lines, whatever, all run through our
extended family,'' Thunder Hawk said. "We have to deal with a lot of boundaries
that aren't relevant to who we are.''
The committee started the day with the goal of making some final decisions on a
map to be presented to the special session. Instead, panel members agreed to
offer the public three possible statewide maps, as well as possible districts
within the cities of Sioux Falls and Rapid City.
The Sioux Falls proposal would give the city seven legislative districts
instead of the current six. Sen. Gil Koetzle, D-Sioux Falls, said citizens need
time to study the proposed configuration and to offer suggestions or reactions.
After that, Sioux Falls area legislators will return to the committee and make
a final plan for the state's largest community.
The three statewide proposals, as well as the Rapid City and Sioux Falls
configurations, will be refined by LRC staff and posted, with accompanying
explanatory material and population numbers, on the Legislature's Web site.
Maps should be available at http://legis.state.sd.us/index.cfm by Tuesday or
Wednesday, LRC Director Jim Fry said.
The committee plans to meet again on Oct. 9 to talk about public reaction to
the proposals and to finalize a recommendation for the full Legislature.
Besides the reservation areas, a trouble spot for map-makers arose near Rapid
City. Several people from western Meade County asked the committee to reverse a
tentative decision that would take the Black Hawk area of their county and
place it with Pennington County.
"We want to keep Meade County as unified as possible,'' County Commissioner
Curtis Nupen said.
The committee had tentatively decided to create five legislative districts from
Custer, Fall River and Pennington counties. To gather together enough
population for five districts, the panel was going to reach into Meade County
as far as Black Hawk, in the southwest corner. The rest of Meade County would
then be the right size for a district of its own.
Nupen and others suggested that instead of raiding Black Hawk, the panel should
shift the part of Ellsworth Air Force Base that lies in Meade County into the
Pennington districts. "Ellsworth Air Force Base has little interest in local
politics,'' Nupen said.
Rhenda Strub, who lives north of Blackhawk in what she called the Piedmont
Valley along Interstate 90 between Rapid City and Sturgis, said keeping the
valley unified is the only chance the area has to have a government. Neither
Blackhawk nor Piedmont are incorporated towns, so the only local government in
the area is Meade County, she said.
"We're talking about a vast unincorporated area that's becoming urbanized,''
Strub said.
Among the maps to be posted on the Internet are versions that move Black Hawk
into the Rapid City group and others that keep it within Meade County.
http://www.argusleader.com/news/Sundayarticle4.shtml
District mapping delicate process
By TERRY WOSTER
Argus Leader
published: 9/23/01
Politics may play a big part
PIERRE - A decade after she lost a bid for re-election to the Legislature,
Rapid City lawyer Linda Lea Viken remains convinced that Republicans used the
redistricting process specifically to get rid of her.
"They put me in such a Republican district, there was no way I could have won
the next election," the former Democrat state legislator said. "It was as
classic a case of gerrymandering as you'll find, and it worked. They got me."
"Gerrymander" refers to the process of drawing political boundaries to gain an
election advantage. The term comes from a salamander-shaped district drawn in
Massachusetts in the early 1800s, when Elbridge Gerry was governor. But Viken
said it fits her situation after the 1990 census, too. That's one reason she's
closely following the current Legislature's efforts to draw new district
boundaries to conform with population shifts over the past 10 years.
"It's a completely political process, and a fascinating one, and too few people
understand how important it is to political fortunes for the coming 10 years,"
she said.
The constitution requires redistricting every 10 years. The goal is to give
each citizen representation that is as nearly equal as possible, adjusting
political boundaries to match population shifts shown by the most recent
census. But it's not an easy task, considering South Dakota has seen dramatic
shifts in population from the center of the state to its borders. In addition,
the U.S. Justice Department monitors closely how the state's Native American
population is treated.
A 15-member legislative committee has been working on possible redistricting
plans for months and will meet Friday in Pierre to finalize at least some of
the proposed new districts.
The legislators understand the importance of the process, said Republican Rep.
Bill Peterson of Sioux Falls.
"It isn't simply a political exercise," he said. "We know its impact. I think
legislators generally want the process to result in the best possible
representation for the citizens."
That's all lawmakers tried to do back in 1991 as well, said Jerry Lammers, a
Madison lawyer who was House Republican leader then.
"The grim political reality is, when you have to stretch boundaries to make
them as equal as possible, not everyone winds up happy," Lammers said. "It
happens in every state."
A few votes' difference
What difference does it make how legislators redraw district lines? Consider
this:
In 1994, Republican Lee Schoenbeck of Webster won a Senate seat by 11 votes
over Democrat Paul Symens of Amherst. Had the four-county district been
fashioned to include 50 or 100 more registered Democrats, would Symens have
won?
In 1998, Republican Hal Wick and Democrat John McIntyre finished a Sioux Falls
recount with 3,229 votes each. If the district had been drawn another block one
way or another, a winner may have been clear.
Last year, Democrat Julie Bartling of Burke won a recounted election by 33
votes over Republican Ken Kredit of Platte. With 7,700 votes cast, could one
party or the other have suggested a different five-county district
configuration to put a few more of its voters inside the boundaries?
Tentatively, the committee of legislators has made several recommendations,
which include:
Creating individual districts for the cities of Yankton and Watertown.
Splitting Aberdeen into two separate districts.
Carving five districts out of Custer, Fall River and Pennington counties.
Adding a seventh district in Sioux Falls.
'Incumbents' disease'
South Dakota has 35 legislative districts, each with one Senate seat and two
House seats. The new census shows that 21,567 people would be the perfect size
for a district in this state. On that legislators can agree. But once the
boundary shifting begins, many incumbent lawmakers go to great lengths to make
sure any proposed district boundaries work in his or her favor.
"You can get incumbents' disease," said Jennifer Ring, executive director for
the American Civil Liberties Union of the Dakotas.
You sure can, especially if you are the majority party, said Viken. She served
as a Democrat from Rapid City's District 32 in the House in 1990 with, among
others, District 33 Republicans John Sears and Carole Hillard of Rapid City.
After the 1991 redistricting, Viken was in the same district with Sears and
Hillard. She finished a distant third in the general-election voting in a
district that had about 3,500 more Republican registered voters than Democrat.
Another Rapid City district had a 600-vote GOP edge.
"They really had to work hard for mine," Viken said.
Statewide that year, 49 percent of voters registered Republican, 42 percent
Democrat, yet three-fourths of the new legislative districts had a GOP edge,
she said. "That isn't how it should be. The point here should be to look at
what is fair and appropriate, almost completely separate from politics."
Legislators tried, Lammers said.
"There's always a domino effect," he said. "Take a piece of some county and
move it, and you have to move something else to balance. You're restricted in
how creative you can be."
And, he said, for all the talk of GOP scheming in 1991, Democrats won a
majority in the Senate the next election.
Native Americans
One of the redistricting committee's first decisions this year was to leave
unchanged a southwest district that included the Rosebud Indian Reservation and
part of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Shannon County and Todd County are
joined in a district by a land bridge across southern Bennett County. The
result is a district with a nearly 89 percent Native American population.
That's the way the 1991 plan handled that area.
Ring said that might be difficult to defend in court, since it packs a minority
population into one district when other map configurations could be used to
create at least two districts with a voting majority of Native Americans.
"They've almost locked themselves into one Native American majority district,
and that ignores the opportunity to provide a better representation for that
population," she said.
Republican Sen. Eric Bogue of Dupree said the decision doesn't lock the
Legislature into only one Native American district.
Because that part of the state is of interest to the federal government, the
committee wanted to make a decision and get Justice Department approval as
quickly as possible, he said. Such pre-clearance is required in that area, he
said.
"The other reservation areas have not been addressed yet by the committee but
will likely be discussed at the next meeting," Bogue said.
Republican Rep. Dick Brown of Sioux Falls expects legislators to be fair.
"I don't like the implication that legislators can't approach this with an open
mind. I think we can," Brown said. "South Dakota continues to change, and this
process will in the end reflect a contemporary perspective that is fair and
equitable. The new districts need to honestly reflect the reality of the
changing nature of its population and where people live and work."
That doesn't mean mapmakers must ignore the existing scheme completely, Brown
said, but "we can't approach it as trying to protect every incumbent
legislator."
Drawing new districts is like putting together a puzzle, says Legislative
Research Council Director Jim Fry. It works best if the corners and borders are
handled first.
"It's a little tough to try to start in the middle, and when you get to the
edge, ask Montana or Minnesota if we can have a few townships to make things
even out," he said.
The center of the state is where the odds are greatest that incumbent lawmakers
will be tossed together, said Sen. Arnold Brown, R-Brookings. "You have to
reach out so far and in so many directions to keep the 21,567 number intact."
Until 1981, legislators handled redistricting late in their regular session.
The result was an often tumultuous, contentious end to the annual lawmaking
gathering. Final decisions in 1981 came almost as the sun rose after the final
day. An Associated Press preview of the 1991 special session looked back on the
1981 experience in an account that began:
"All were weary, many were bitter and some were drunk when South Dakota
lawmakers finished redrawing the boundaries of the state's legislative
districts just before dawn on a March day a decade ago."
http://www.rapidcityjournal.com/display/inn_news/news04.txt
Redistricting coming to Pine Ridge, Rosebud
By Denise Ross, Journal Staff Writer
Although most residents of the Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations are
satisfied with their state legislative districts, the South Dakota Legislature
almost certainly will change the boundaries.
Evolving federal case law on minority voting rights is likely to convince state
lawmakers that districts established in 1991 are not legal now.
A 14-member legislative committee charged with redrawing the state's
legislative districts held public hearings at Mission and near Pine Ridge on
Tuesday.
State lawmakers nationwide must redraw legislative districts every 10 years in
the wake of the U.S. census population count. The entire South Dakota
Legislature will meet in special session Oct. 23-25 to set the new district
boundaries.
Just two citizens made comments at the Tuesday hearings. District 27 lawmakers
said that low turnout indicated American Indians feel a stronger tie to tribal
governments than to state legislators, that reservation residents largely are
satisfied with the current boundaries and that reservation voters believe their
elected officials should speak for them.
"I guess that's the trust they put in us, and we're very proud of that trust,"
Sen. Dick Hagen, D-Pine Ridge, told the committee in explaining the lack of
attendance despite wide publicity about the hearings.
If lawmakers retain the District 27 boundaries - Shannon and Todd counties
connected by a strip of mostly uninhabited land in Bennett County - the threat
of litigation is strong, state legislative policy analyst Reuben Bezpaletz
said.
"A lot of people want to keep the current district, but it is clearly packed
and to a certain extent gerrymandered," Bezpaletz said. "The ground rules have
changed since 1991. We are now operating under much more nebulous case law."
Gerrymandering is a political maneuver to create a legislative district
favoring a group or party. "Packing" refers to the grouping of minorities into
a few districts so their influence won't be as strong in remaining districts.
American Indians make up 8 percent of South Dakota's population. Five of the
state's 105 legislators are Indian.
Recent federal-court rulings do not favor packing, but Bezpaletz said those
rulings involved African Americans or Latinos and might not apply to American
Indians.
With almost no case law specific to American Indians, committee members will
have to try to apply the other minority voting-rights court rulings to
redistricting here.
The general guidelines have shifted from the idea that about 65 percent of the
voters in minority districts should be members of the racial minority in
question. District 27 is 89 percent Lakota.
"Their thinking was that minorities were under-represented for too long and you
should do everything you can appropriately do to encourage election of
minorities through the redistricting process. The Supreme Court has had second
thoughts about that," Bezpaletz said.
The thinking is changing to favor the creation of more districts where racial
minorities might not be a majority of the population but are such a large
voting bloc that any candidate seeking election would have to win most of their
votes.
Meanwhile, the Oglala Sioux Tribe has appealed the census count because tribal
officials believe Shannon County was grossly undercounted, tribal official
Bernadine Blue Bird said.
Instead of the 12,466 residents who were counted, Blue Bird said tribal
officials believe the true number is closer to 38,000. The federal Indian
Health Service in Pine Ridge serves about 25,000 different people, she said.
If the tribe's appeal is successful, that would change South Dakota's
legislative districts, Rep. Mike Derby, R-Rapid City, said. Based on the 2000
Census, the state's ideal legislative district would have 21,567 people. If it
has more people, Shannon County would be part of more than one legislative
district.
Former longtime Oglala Sioux Tribal Council member Gerald Big Crow told the
legislative committee it should spend several days on the reservation to have a
thorough discussion of legislative districts, treaty rights, economic
disparities and cultural differences.
Remaining committee meetings will be in Pierre, with the next one set for Aug.
20-21.
home : mission statement : contact : site map : search : store : links
DLN coalition : DLN issues : DLN nation : related issues Any reprints are under the Fair Use doctrine of international copyright law : See http://www.dlncoalition.org/fair_use.htm.
|
