Apportionment board gets earful

Trust issue in district-drawing

Tensions were high Tuesday during the state Board of Apportionment meeting in Pulaski County, where several participants questioned officials about gerrymandering, the need for accountability and the lack of hard data points when it comes to redistricting decisions.

Multiple board members told those who attended the almost-two-hour meeting, held at the Jack Stephens Center in Little Rock, that they would do their best to follow the criteria laid out to them by state and federal law after being consistently asked about how they could be held accountable for the promises they made in regard to not gerrymandering.

“It’s a human process not a mathematical process,” former state Rep. Doug House, a representative for the attorney general’s office, told an audience member who demanded that the board explain its quantitative procedure, not its qualitative procedure. “Redistricting is a human activity. These are human decisions.”

The board, which will redraw legislative districts, is almost ready to begin the process after unveiling actual 2020 census data earlier this month. The public meeting was the last one in a series around the state in recent weeks.

Census data showed that cities and counties throughout Central Arkansas have grown over the past decade, but many audience members questioned the motives in the past when it comes to how the maps were drawn and how to prevent problems in the future.

“That is why we are redistricting, to bring them into balance using present information,” House said. “If someone doesn’t like that they can bring forward a lawsuit where people are held accountable for not doing the right thing.”

Accountability was the theme of the night as board members asked the audience to trust them with the map decisions, but multiple audience members demanded more than just trust.

“I don’t intend to be a part of that,” Betty Dickey, coordinator of the Board of Apportionment and former Arkansas chief justice, told the audience after being asked multiple times about anti-gerrymandering measures. “If we do see that, then I will come out and say I failed. If I don’t have my word then I don’t have anything else.”

The concept of computers being used to map out the template when it comes to redistricting was also discussed, but multiple board members insisted that humans need to be involved in the decision process.

Shelby Johnson, geographic information officer for the Arkansas Geographic Information Systems, said technology has progressed to a point where redistricting could be done on a computer, but the software and data won’t recognize community interests.

“The software doesn’t recognize cultural differences and community interests like humans do,” he said.

An audience member mentioned how community interests are usually just neighborhoods close together, and it shouldn’t be hard to implement that type of data.

“You make it sound so easy,” Dickey said, while multiple audience members yelled because it was that easy.

Census results, which usually are delivered months earlier than they were this year, will be used by the state Board of Apportionment over the next few weeks to redraw legislative districts. They also dictate how federal dollars will be distributed for the next 10 years.