This commentary is by Shayne Spence, a member of Johnson’s Board of Civil Authority who was a Republican candidate for the Vermont House in 2020.
Vermont’s Democrats are seeking to carry out an end-run around democracy, and you probably haven’t even heard about it.
Don’t feel bad. Very few have, and the Democrats would love to keep it that way. But thanks to VTDigger’s coverage and a couple of Republicans, these actions are coming to light.
Let me explain a little bit. As I’ve written before, every 10 years our legislative district maps get redrawn in the wake of the federal census. That process is now underway, and in Vermont that process has three major components.
First, the Legislative Apportionment Board receives the census data and uses various mapping tools to draw maps that are as close to equal (in population) as possible, finally voting on various maps until one has majority support.
Then, those maps are sent out to each town’s Board of Civil Authority for review and approval or rejection.
Finally, the Legislature gets the last bite at the apple, after towns have had their chance to weigh in. The Legislature can either uphold the will of the people it has asked to carry out this work, or overrule it as it sees fit. This year, the Legislature seems poised to do the latter.
You see, this year the Legislative Apportionment Board approved a map that moved Vermont to all single-member House districts. This is a smart move, as Vermont is one of very few states that continue to use multimember districts, and such districting practices have been associated with gerrymandering and racial vote suppression.
It would have the added benefit of ensuring these districts are as representative as possible, and live up to the tenet of “one person, one vote.” Everyone, no matter where in Vermont they live, would have the same amount of representation in the Statehouse, something that has not been true for many years.
So why would the Legislature want to go against the will of the people in order to preserve an archaic system with a checkered history?
Convenience, of course, is part of it. The other part is power. Making a switch to single-member districts would have the inconvenient effect of forcing some legislators into districts where they would be competing against their current seatmate — and it just so happens that the majority of those legislators are Democrats.
So, in order for Democrats to ensure their current dominion over the Legislature, it helps for them to hold on to this districting strategy that has done very well for them. The will of the people, and good government, be damned.
As a member of Johnson’s Board of Civil Authority, I was present at the meeting where we were asked to consider the map that the Legislative Apportionment Board put forward. While there were concerns raised by some of those at the meeting about potentially losing our current representatives, others pointed out that these multimember districts were outdated and unrepresentative, and ultimately our Board of Civil Authority voted to approve the single-member map presented by the Legislative Apportionment Board.
Both of our current representatives were in attendance at that meeting, and watched as we voted to approve the map. The same is also true of another town they represent, Hyde Park, where the single-member map was approved by a 10-1 ratio with both representatives in attendance.
However, on Jan. 14, as one of the first actions taken in a new legislative session, the Vermont Democrats advanced a version of the redistricting map that preserved multimember districts, despite that map being rejected twice by the Legislative Apportionment Board and never seen by the towns’ Boards of Civil Authority.
When Republicans Casey Toof and Heidi Scheuermann offered an amendment to reinstate the map approved by the Legislative Apportionment Board and the Boards of Civil Authority, that amendment was rejected on a 90-32 vote, most likely along party lines. Unfortunately, that can’t be confirmed, because instead of being open and transparent about who voted which way, the House decided to just take a tally of votes and leave them anonymous.
So the only way for us to know whether our representatives voted in line with the will of the people, or in line with their own partisan interests, is to ask them. So I’m asking my own representatives, here and now. Rep. Dan Noyes and Rep. Kate Donnally, how did you vote?
