Voting here today sign outside Montpelier City Hall. VTD/Josh Lakrin
It’s that time of the decade again. Vermont’s political boundaries for House representatives and Senate members are being redrawn to match new demographic information from the U.S. Census.
The process is known as apportionment. District lines for members of the General Assembly are subject to new interpretation, based on shifts in population. Areas of Vermont that have a growing number of residents, such as Burlington or towns in the Upper Valley, could gain more seats, while those municipalities with fewer Vermont residents, such as Greensboro, could see a drop in the number of House and Senate seats representing.
Members of the Apportionment Board will convene Thursday and a second map will be presented that changes district lines.
Every 10 years following the Census Bureau report, every state in the country is given an opportunity to reassess district lines for state representatives and senators. The district lines are split up according to population size. The denser the populous is, the smaller the district size will range geographically. The one exception to this is if a district has a two-member district, in which the populous is doubled.
The process of developing a mapping system that reflects fair representation of the districts is no small political feat. The Vermont Apportionment Board is made up of two members from each of the three major parties – the GOP, Democrats and the Progressive Party. Once they come to consensus on a map, it will be sent to the towns for approval. The map’s final destination is the Vermont Legislature, which is dominated by Democrats who will have the final say.
Although the board is in charge of readjusting both the House and the Senate district, the main focus currently is creating district lines for the house. After the census numbers are released, the state is responsible for analyzing how populations have shifted and how many citizens will be represented in a given district. For the House, the “ideal number” is 4,172 residents to every one house representative. For the Senate, it’s exactly five times that number.
Each district is given a positive or negative percentage based on whether it exceeds or falls short of the ideal number. The number that swings between the state’s highest and lowest percent of every district is the deviation. According to population figures from the Secretary of State’s office, Vermont’s deviation is currently 45 percent. Tom Little, the chairman of the board, said that percentage should ideally be in the teens, and he attributes the high number to population flux throughout the state.
“Population shifts that Vermont has seen in the last 30 to 40 years are still happening,” Little said.
Most of the population growth over the course of the last few decades has been in Chittenden County.
Because there is an obvious need for reapportionment to satisfy these standards, the board is taking two different ways: One methodology is to tweak the district lines just enough to meet the standards; the other is to break the districts down into more districts with single House representatives so there would be a more representation in government.
According to Megan Brook, one of the six members of the board, the positive impact that smaller districts would have would be more diversity in government which would then, in turn, improve the democratic process in Vermont. Brook also suggested that if candidates were responsible for a smaller amount of constituents, more people might try to run for a legislative position.
“It’s easier to find candidates to run when the task seems less daunting,” Brook said.
Steve Hintgen, a fellow member, agrees with Brook and advocates that smaller districting would make life easier for Vermonters as there would be easier access to representatives, a direct accountability and smaller relationships between the voters and the lawmakers.
“In a two seat district, you (candidates) spend a lot of the summer going from door to door,” Hintgen said.
Hintgen also says that because some two-member districts might have one big town surrounded by many smaller towns, candidates from the larger towns are more likely to be elected, which then makes it easier for incumbent candidates to stay in office.
Eric Davis, a retired political science professor from Middlebury College, is strongly in favor of keeping two-person districts because he believes breaking them into single-member districts would create an artificial divide in towns. (Brook said they were determined to keep towns whole while redistricting.)
“Local officials in almost all of those towns prefer to keep it a two-member,” Davis said.
Davis also suggests that the whole process is an “academic exercise” as the boards partisanship does not represent the current legislature body and as soon as the proposal gets to the house, divisions that end up breaking up incumbent lawmakers will be changed back, even though both the board and the lawmakers are supposed to ignore influence of partisanship, according to the reapportionment statute.
“I think the House is going to do what they want to do. I want to give them an alternative proposal,” Brook said, adding that if the House were to make changes they would need to justify them for the good of the state, not for their party.
After the board agrees on map of redistricting, to be finished by July 1, they are to send it to the Board of Civil Authority all over the state so that towns can put their two cents into what they think about the changes made. The BCAs are to send the proposals back to the Reapportionment board for redesign. By August 15, the board will submit their final proposal to the House of Representatives to begin the legislative process.
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Two member representative districts should be done away with. These districts can disenfranchise voters, and weed out otherwise highly qualified and desirable candidates due to time and finacial requirements.
The 2010 elections in the Orange-1 District provide a great example of the first case. This district consists of Chelsea, Corinth, Orange, Vershire, Washington and Williamstown with Williamstown being the relative behemoth on the block. There were four candidates on the ballot for Orange-1 representative of which three (all older white males) were from Williamstown and one (a woman beyond her 20s) was from Washington. In the end the voting broke down as follows:
The top vote getter was from Williamstown and enjoyed solid support across the district.
Number two was from Washington, and while she enjoyed overwhelming support from five of the towns she received extremely little from Williamstown.
Number three (from Williamstown) received extremely little support outside Williamstown but got so many Williamstown votes he came within 3 votes of being number two.
Number four wasn’t at the end of the day in the running.
The latter claim comes from personal experience (regarding the time and expense part only – I’m not laying claim to ‘highly qualified’ or ‘highly desirable’). In 2000 I made a true effort to be elected to the what was then the Orange-2 representative district (Williamstown, Orange, Washington, Vershire and Tunbridge). Because I had time and not money to spend on this endeavor I made my strategic centerpiece a plan to visit every door in the district. I was lucky – I had the time. Had I not had the time I would have needed the financial capacity to reach out to folks – getting elected is all about communications.
Most people don’t have the time or money to even make the choice.
Two member districts in Vermont are antithetical to grassroots driven democratic republics. Williamstown came within several votes of determining the representation for the entire Orange-1 district; and these larger districts are geographically overwhelming when it comes to people truly getting to know their candidates.
No two member districts.
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The old Orange-1 District should have read as including the following towns: Williamstown, Orange, Washington, Chelsea, Vershire and Tunbridge – I left Chelsea out above.
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One member districts would encourage more candidacies and would create a greater communication opportunity between the representative and the constituency. Small towns are always going to have to combined. It is no less a disadvantage to have large towns split along natural population boundaries.
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Multi-member districts are bad for the parties as well. An example is the (two-member) Franklin County Senate race in 2010. Incumbent Randy Brock (R) was running for re-election, and expected to be the top vote-getter. Incumbent Sara Kittell (D) was also running, as was a second motivated and credible Dem, and a second Republican who didn’t seem too active.
In this case, the best change that the Dem challenger had to go to the Senate was to knock out fellow Dem Kittell. Kittell had no incentive to campaign with her fellow D–in fact the more help she gave him, the more likely it was that she’d lose her seat.
With single-seat districts, a Dem could have directly challenged Brock without running the risk of defeating a fellow incumbent. He could have expected support from Kittell, and more from his party.