Colleen Mathis: Redistricting’s Greatest Monster
In a recent publication, Colleen Mathis, the Chair of the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission (“AIRC”) during the 2011 redistricting, wrote her own hagiography, invoking a quote from historian David McCullough to suggest that she is one of history’s greatest, unrecognized figures — and that history proves it! All Ms. Mathis has “proven,” however, is that she still has not read or understood the Arizona constitution, thinks a lot of herself, and is full of bad ideas.
The thrust of Ms. Mathis’s argument is that the last AIRC drew maps that somehow better represented the state or that were “more balanced.” In making that false claim, Ms. Mathis substitutes her own “high-minded” goals for the explicit goals set forth in Arizona’s constitution.
Since the founding of our nation, jurisdictions have used a district system to allocate representation. In a district system, geographic areas are assigned to representatives. Each representative is beholden to the voters in his or her district. The district system upholds values very different from the notion of “proportional representation.” Nevertheless, any state could require its maps to reflect “proportionality.” None has, including Arizona.
The Arizona constitution decides what is “fair” in terms of redistricting, not Ms. Mathis. It requires districts to be drawn to meet six mandatory goals. These goals are “values” to be infused into each district.
None of those values include proporational representation.
None of those values include “reducing supermajorities.”
None of those values include any view to the ultimate partisan outcome of elections.
Indeed, most of Arizona’s redistricting goals work COUNTER to the notion of proportionality. Yet Ms. Mathis has the hubris to substitute her goals for the goals written in Arizona’s constitution.
The promise of AIRC was that it was to “take the politics out of redistricting” and make redistricting “transparent.” Oddly, however, Ms. Mathis admits – and here correctly – that politics will always be a part of redistricting, undermining the AIRC’s entire raison d'être. Presumably, Ms. Mathis thinks that this dismissive waive of the hand excuses her and her Democrat accomplices’ efforts to impose their own partisan objectives through redistricting. It does not. AIRC commissioners are not elected by anyone. They are appointed to discharge specific duties as written in the Arizona constitution and nothing more.
Mr. McCullough would blanch at Ms. Mathis’s skewed approach to history. “Taking the politics out of redistricting?” Conducting the redistricting in the “bright sunshine of public hearings?” These were not the hallmarks of Ms. Mathis’s administration. Ms. Mathis neglects to mention that litigation involving her commission revealed that commissioners were drawing maps outside of hearings, in living rooms and on kitchen tables, with outsiders present, including the interim head of the state Democratic Party. These custom designed maps were the adopted wholesale by her AIRC.
She also conveniently forgets to mention that members of Arizona’s congressional delegation admitted – in an article published in the Arizona Republic in November 2012 – that congressional districts were drawn to favor Democrats, detailing the steps taken to achieve that end – essentially redistricting by remote control with the AIRC as the agency. Ms. Mathis omits that the Governor and two-thirds of the Senate correctly removed her from office for misconduct related to the state’s open meeting law but that the state supreme court faulted the Governor’s removal letter for not using the correct terminology. (It is somewhat rich that Ms. Mathis believes the partisan makeup of the court adds weight to its opinion.) Ms. Mathis omits that all important actions of her AIRC were imposed by a 3-2 vote, with Ms. Mathis joining her Democrat accomplices in the majority.
Ms. Mathis has proven that so-called independent redistricting is anything but. Ten years ago, her disastrous AIRC proved that independent redistricting can be opaque, hyper-partisan, unrepresentative, and overtly political. And it is not just Arizona seeing these problems. In other jurisdictions that use commissions in conjunction with redistricting, we see deadlocks, missed deadlines, accusations of partisanship, and contrived and phony “public comment.” There are ways to constrain and manage redistricting, but Arizona’s scheme is hardly the vehicle to do so.
We are seeing some repeats of the misconduct of Ms. Mathis’s commission with the current commission. Already we have a commissioner stating that her “goal” is to draw a map that yields a “15-15” state senate – an overt, extra-constitutional, partisan objective. We have seen commissioners weaponize the Voting Rights Act for partisan purposes. We also have seen commissioners selectively apply Arizona’s goal that each district be made “more competitive” on the maps, giving this “value” to certain to voters while affirmatively denying it to others. When Democrats focus on a small number of mythical “balanced” districts, they are disguising the fact that their goal is to give themselves a leg up with their more limited number of voters outside the VRA districts. By selectively applying the competitiveness goal, Democrats justify packing as many Republicans as possible into other lopsided districts. Even the current AIRC’s mapping experts agree that this is a classic form of political gerrymander.
The people of this state have good reason to be concerned, not hearten, my Ms. Mathis’s conceit. She should learn from the mistakes of history before attempting to foist new electoral fetishes on Arizonans.
