The Blue View: Redistricting receiving more attention
By Mary McCarthy
Originally published April 28, 2021 in Seacoast Online.
At the April monthly Zoom meeting hosted by the Hampton Democratic Committee, state Senators Tom Sherman of Rye and Rebecca Perkins-Kwoka of Portsmouth provided an update on their efforts to ensure a transparent and non-partisan redistricting process. A recording of that meeting is now available on the Hampton Democrats YouTube Channel at https://youtu.be/HrgaloY4uRM.
The United States Constitution requires that a national census be taken every 10 years. In addition to determining the apportionment of seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and federal funding estimated at somewhere between $675 billion and $1.5 trillion per year, the results of the census are also used to draw New Hampshire's legislative and Executive Council districts.
Normally, final 2020 census data needed for redistricting purposes would have been released by the U.S. Census Bureau to all of the states by March 31, 2021.
Because of COVID-19, that date has been pushed back to September 30, 2021, which means that the NH Legislature will have to delay the final redistricting process until later this year. The process will have to be completed by June 10, 2022, since that is the date candidates must file for state legislative primary elections.
In New Hampshire, each state representative represents about 3,300 individuals. Towns or wards near that average population for one or more seats constitute whole districts; additional population may be combined in overlapping, or floterial, districts. New Hampshire towns determine for themselves whether they wish to split a multi-member district into multiple single-member districts or wards.
Hampton, for example, is currently represented by five state representatives; four who are at-large representatives and represent only Hampton and one who represents Hampton, Hampton Falls and Seabrook.
Hampton has chosen not to establish wards, each with its own state representative, like many cities do and instead each of their representatives represent Hampton as a whole.
Following the 2010 census, Republicans gained control of both chambers of the New Hampshire Legislature and passed a redistricting proposal that many Democrats in the state found extremely partisan and drawn to give unfair advantage to Republicans. Then (Democratic) Governor John Lynch vetoed the proposal, however, Republicans overrode that veto and their plan became law. That is when Portsmouth was removed from state Senate District 24.
When Democrats won control of the N.H. House and Senate in 2018, they introduced several pieces of legislation to ensure that redistricting after the 2020 census would be fair and equitable. In 2019, Governor Sununu vetoed a
redistricting reform bill, House Bill (HB) 706, which had passed the Legislature with bipartisan support. This bill would have created a 15-member independent redistricting commission. An attempt at overriding the veto failed.
In 2020, after the House and Senate passed HB 1665, Governor Sununu vetoed that redistricting bill as well. That bill would have created a 15-member advisory commission, establish ranked redistricting criteria, and set public input rules. The effort to override that veto also fell short.
Following the 2020 election, when Republicans re-took control of the N.H. House and Senate, they have opposed efforts to reform the redistricting process and prevent partisan gerrymandering- the redrawing of congressional districts to provide an unfair political advantage.
Senators Tom Sherman and Rebecca Perkins-Kwoka co-sponsored Senate Bill (SB) 80, which was another attempt to establish an independent non-partisan advisory commission on redistricting, with commissioners appointed by the NH Secretary of State. That bill was defeated in the state Senate along partisan lines when all 14 Republicans voted against it and all 10 Democrats voted in favor of it.
“Rejecting an independent, transparent redistricting process in favor of corrupt partisan gerrymandering is seriously bad for our democracy,” Sherman said in a statement on Twitter. “We must restore faith in [government] by opening the process to the public and making sure politicians aren’t picking their voters.”
Perkins-Kwoka, was also “disappointed” that it failed to pass. “This bill was a commonsense approach to ensuring basic fairness and transparency in the redistricting process,” she said in a statement. “Once again, my Republican colleagues have voted against the additional transparency and equity that this bill would have added to this critically important process, regardless of which party was conducting such process.”
“Absent legislation of the kind sponsored by Senators Sherman and Perkins-Kwoka,” said Chris Muns, chairperson of the Hampton Democratic Committee, “it is critical that the process the legislature will follow over the coming months is transparent and provides for the maximum amount of public input possible.”
Legislation to establish new legislative districts will initiate in the N.H. House of Representatives where a Special Committee on redistricting chaired by Representative Barbara Griffin, R-Goffstown, has been established. “At the last meeting of the Special Committee on Redistricting, Representative Griffin indicated that the committee would be meeting again in April,” said Muns. “So far, no meeting has been scheduled.”
To learn more about and follow redistricting efforts in New Hampshire visit https://bit.ly/3e0p3Af For more information about the Hampton Democratic Committee visit www.hamptonnhdems.org.
McCarthy lives in Hampton and is a member of the town’s Democratic Committee.