Oahu could lose a state House of Representatives seat to Hawaii island after new numbers for military members who are not permanent residents of Oahu were released over the New Year’s holiday.
The numbers were presented Monday at a state Reapportionment Commission meeting.
Every 10 years, Hawaii is tasked with redrawing the district maps for state and congressional lawmakers according to new census data. The maps dictate whom lawmakers will be representing, and in turn who will be voting for them.
Hawaii, unlike most states across the country, uses a reapportionment commission of private citizens instead of the lawmakers themselves to redraw the map. The idea is that it would decrease the opportunities for gerrymandering, manipulating the district boundaries to benefit one party over the other.
The Reapportionment Commission is required to request data from the military about the number of military members living in Hawaii who were counted in the U.S. census but are not permanent residents. It also counts the number of full-time students who are not permanent residents. The commission then extracts that number of people from the map.
The extraction number that the commission has been working with to draw the maps is 64,415. However, the new number that has been presented to the commission is 99,617.
In comparison, in 2011 the Reapportionment Commission extracted 95,447.
The military extraction number usually affects
Oahu’s population most because most military members are located there, compared with the other islands across the state.
“So an increase of what is at roughly 30,000 is more than enough to shift a seat,” said Royce Jones, who does mapping/GIS support at the Hawaii State Office of Elections.
“Indeed, that’s the change that you can see down here on the state House level. One seat does change from Oahu to Hawaii. … The population has changed largely on Oahu.”
Hawaii island currently has seven House districts, while Oahu has 35.
Jones said the first numbers sent to the commission from the military did not include military spouses and dependents. The updated numbers that were transmitted in late December did.
“They took all spouses and dependents with ZIP codes
in Hawaii, and then they worked backwards to see if their sponsor declared a state other than Hawaii as their legal residency,” he said.
“But the previous two extracts went the other direction.”
In 2011 the new district maps were successfully challenged in court due to the military extraction number being too low. The court ordered the state to extract the appropriate number of military members and adjust the maps accordingly.
That is why the Reapportionment Commission decided not to take any action on the current proposed maps, which take into account only the old, lower extraction number.
The commission went into executive session for over an hour to discuss which of the numbers should be used and how people should be extracted from each census block.
Commission Chairman Mark Mugiishi said the commission will do more research on the topic and discuss the matter Thursday at the next scheduled meeting.
The commission must submit a final map by the end of February. However, Chief Election Officer Scott Nago urged the commission to submit a plan as soon as possible because elections will need to be conducted in 2022 with the new district maps.
“Basically, March 1, and when tentative filing starts, in order for us to get there, we do need to update the voter registration database, which means reassigning all voters with their proper district precinct. We can’t do that until lines are drawn,” he said.
“With this being an all-mail election, it’s very important that we do have clean rules and we do not mail out ballots to voters who are not there.”
The commission will need to have at least two more meetings until a final map is selected. The other main points of contention on the current proposed maps raised by community members are District 51, which combines parts of Kailua, Waimanalo and Portlock, and the breaking of Mililani into several different districts.
