The Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission simply refuses to crumble, thanks this week to a stout defense by the U.S. Supreme Court.
That’s a good thing: Two commissions in a row have designed maps that so far have passed muster with the courts. That’s a better record than the Legislature had in designing congressional maps over the previous four decades.
But all the assaults on the commission have shown it already could use some renovation, at just 15 years old.
In 2000, we voters received finished blueprints for the commission as a ballot initiative and approved them. The law requires that the commission be made up of two Republicans, two Democrats and an independent, and that the independent be the commission’s chair.
Tucsonan Colleen Mathis became the chair in 2011, and that’s when the excessive power invested in the position became excessively clear. She sided largely with the Democrats, turning the key votes into 3-2 votes that the Republicans lost.
Republicans had prevailed as the first commission drew maps, starting in 2001, but now they filed suits in protest and tried to have Mathis removed. Still, there was nothing, legally, they could do about it. The problem is in the system — as Mathis herself acknowledged to me Tuesday. It put too much power in and pressure on one person.
“Because there is just one person in that independent role, I do think that person becomes the swing vote, oftentimes despite numerous and tireless efforts to try to bring everybody together in consensus,” she said.
Not only does the commission’s makeup put too much power in the sole independent’s hands, it also under-represents independents. Unaffiliated people make up 36 percent of Arizona’s registered voters, to the Republicans’ 34 percent and the Democrats’ 29 percent.
So how is it fair that there’s only one independent, especially compared to the Democrats’ two?
It isn’t. And there seems to be some coalescence around an idea for raising the number. A Republican state representative, a Democratic state senator and Mathis all told me they think the commission would be better served with nine members: three Democrats, three Republicans and three independents.
“That’s what I’m planning on introducing next session,” said Rep. Warren Petersen of Gilbert, who last year introduced a bill attempting to raise the number of commissioners to six.
Sen. Martin Quezada, a Phoenix Democrat, introduced a bill last session to raise the number of commissioners to nine. It didn’t get a hearing, but he, too, plans to pursue it next session.
“There were a lot of people upset because basically the maps were going to be decided by one person,” Quezada told me. “The Democrats were going to go one way, the Republicans were going to one way, and the one in the middle would determine the entire map.”
“My thought was: Expand the commission,” he said.
Of course, it’s not a simple proposition. First, the Legislature has to pass the bill and send it to the ballot, then the voters have to approve it.
Raising the number of members also creates problems of its own. First, there’s the simple problem of finding meeting times for a group of volunteers from around the state, most of whom have jobs. Mathis said that wasn’t easy with five members.
Second, there’s the problem of increased complexity, as Steve Lynn, the Tucsonan who was the first commission’s chairman, starting in 2001, told me.
“Every time you add a person to the equation, you increase the difficulty geometrically, not arithmetically,” Lynn said. “It reduces the amount of air time each person has. It makes things more complex, meaning you need more structure.”
The other key area of possible changes is in how the commission is selected.
“It’s all about the five people who sit in those chairs,” Lynn said of the commission’s performance.
As the system exists, people apply to be members of the commission. The state Senate president, the state House speaker, and the minority leaders of each chamber pick one member. That takes care of the four party members.
The Commission on Appellate Court Appointments chooses five independents as finalists for the fifth seat, then the four existing members of the commission choose one of them as their chair. To be considered, a person must not have been registered in the Democratic or Republican parties in the last three years.
While there are some checks, especially in the commission vetting the candidates, you can imagine that party members will try to get their allies picked as nominally independent members of the commission. Republicans would say that happened already in the case of Mathis.
But there are interesting ways around that problem, too. California’s redistricting commission was picked in a multi-step process. First, an applicant review panel picked 60 candidates, then legislative leaders were allowed to strike 24 candidates, leaving 12 Democrats, 12 Republicans and 12 independents or minor-party members.
Of those 36, three Republicans, three Democrats and two independents were chosen randomly, then those eight chose the commission’s remaining six members from among the 28 leftover candidates.
It’s complicated, yes, but it introduces an element of randomness that Arizona’s system lacks and could use if we’re to avoid future manipulations.
Adding some independents to the commission, diluting the power of the chair and introducing some randomness into the selection process could help make the commission an edifice that will last.
