Following the U.S. census at the beginning of every decade, the state Reapportionment Commission looks at Hawaii’s population data and redraws districts to ensure fair boundaries for state senators and representatives.
Most states merely take the Census Bureau’s numbers to draw their political lines — but here, a 1992 state constitutional amendment limits the population base to "permanent residents" of Hawaii. The federal census, though, includes people who are not permanent residents in the states where they are counted.
So ever since Hawaii’s constitutional requirement was made, the military and college students from out of state have been extracted from the state’s population.
This year, however, when the current Reapportionment Commission convened to draw the new lines between legislative districts, it decided to severely limit that extraction, essentially including about 92,000 military and out-of-state students into the mix.
Hawaii island plaintiffs promptly sued, arguing that too many "nonpermanent residents" were counted to allocate seats, causing their island to lose a valued Senate seat to Oahu. The Hawaii Supreme Court agreed, sending the commission back to the drawing board. Literally.
Now, the commission is set to meet again this week to finalize the maps, amid more political ire and anger about the district boundaries it has since redrawn for elections later this year. The clock is ticking: The state Elections Office says it needs to have the maps this week in order to begin processes for the Aug. 11 primary election.
Commission Chairwoman Victoria Marks said she expects to continue being warned about the state’s departure from federal constitutional requirements of one person, one vote. "I think we have some risk there," she said. "We’ve been hearing rumors all over the place. Everybody that disagrees with us says they’re going to sue us."
In its Jan. 6 ruling against the commission, the state Supreme Court found that the 16,000 military personnel and out-of-state college students extracted by the commission from Hawaii’s census figure "wasn’t enough," said Marks.
"We came up with our first set of maps based on testimony we had heard from many people. We did not get information from the military in the same form that they got 10 years previous," said Marks. "The military did not give us the information."
That information did come following the court ruling, she said. "We go back to the military, we go back to the universities, we get data that is more useful to us, and so based on the Supreme Court opinion and the additional data we received, we’re extracting 108,000," not merely 16,000. Not included, she said, were "a good portion of military dependents" with Hawaii roots.
Esssentially, Marks said in exasperation, the justices said that "you have to extract everybody who is a non-permanent resident, And they, by implication, said ‘everybody’ means active-duty military who have declared a state other than Hawaii as their home state, all of those people’s dependents, regardless of whether they own a house here, are licensed as nurses or doctors or teachers here, you know, forget looking at a factual basis.
If they’re attached to an active-duty military person that’s declared a state other than Hawaii as their home state, extract them, take them out."
The dramatic results today: The new proposed political maps shift a Senate seat from Oahu to Hawaii island, and leave two Democratic incumbents to vie for the same Senate seat in Makiki-Moiliili.
For the state House, at least five pairs of incumbents find themselves in the same districts, creating an equal number of vacant seats in surrounding areas.
Clearly, the high court’s ruling that reinstates the practice of subtracting military members and their dependents and out-of-state students from the census in determining political boundaries, is highly significant.
Stanley Roehrig, a Hawaii island attorney for state Sen. Malama Solomon, who was lead plaintiff in the court case, noted that while Hawaii County’s population grew by 24.8 percent during the 2000s, Oahu’s numbers grew by only 8.6 percent.
That difference, without including military or college students, results in significantly wider political boundaries on Oahu, Roehrig said.
When it began its work, the commission had tried to gather information itself to determine the breadth of permanent residents. Marks said many people who were born and grew up in Hawaii had been considered out-of-state upon marriage to a soldier, sailor or Marine from the mainland, and were thus excluded from the electorate base.
"So we went back to the census numbers and we subtracted out people living in group quarters on base, we subtracted out some of the students and we tried to subtract out others living on base," Marks said.
"And remember, there are nine people on the commission; you have to get five to agree on something," she said. "And so the only agreement we could get was an agreement to subtract out roughly in the neighborhood of 16,000 military dependents and out-of-state students. So those people sued saying that wasn’t enough."
Those in the military who the commission decided were most clearly nonresidents of Hawaii were active-duty military members living as groups in barracks and non-resident students located by street address or zip code.
Military personnel and out-of-state college students are counted by the Census Bureau among each state’s population. All but two states — Hawaii and Kansas — accept those population figures in determining legislative districts.
The Kansas Constitution specifically requires that the number of nonresident military personnel and nonresident college students be subtracted from the census population in apportioning districts for state representatives and senators. Out of a population of 2.8 million, those total less than 120,000, of which fewer than 14,000 were subtracted from the Kansas census in determining district boundaries. Nonresident military in Hawaii also number about 120,000, in a population of 1.3 million.
Retired University of Hawaii political science professor Neal Milner testified before the commission last week that the new boundaries could violate the state Constitution’s prohibition of drawing districts to unduly favor a person or political faction. That’s because in four of the situations where incumbents would end up in the same House districts, they involve dissidents of the state House who have sought to oust Speaker Calvin Say.
"I don’t have a feeling one way or another," said Marks, who retired from the bench three years ago after 21 years as a state circuit judge and family judge. "In actuality I have not seen the kinds of issues that (Milner) raised."
However, Marks suggested a federal challenge may be in the offing down the road. The 14th Amendment states that "representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state."
"I think if there’s a federal lawsuit that’s brought," she said, "there is some potential that the state constitutional position may not withstand federal constitutional scrutiny."
