Reapportionment vote postponed

Final approval for new political boundary maps is not expected until next week, after the state Reapportionment Commission on Friday again delayed a vote to further study whether changes are needed to address accusations of gerrymandering.

Members plan to meet again Tuesday, when the commission’s technical committee is expected to make its recommendation. If no changes are requested, a final vote could come then. Any changes would put off a vote until at least Thursday.

Delays are putting voter notification efforts at risk for the Aug. 11 primary election.

"We may have confusion at the polling places," Chief Election Officer Scott Nago said.

Nago previously said his office needed the maps by the end of last month to begin establishing precincts, assigning polling places and sending notification cards to inform more than 600,000 registered voters of where they are to vote.

In 2010, for a September primary, the office needed about five months to complete those tasks after starting in January. The primary was moved up this year to comply with federal military and overseas voter notification requirements.

"It’s just something we have to deal with," Nago said. "We have a compressed time schedule. We just have to do everything that we have to get done in the compressed time schedule.

"It’s one of those things where we plan to measure twice, cut once, but it looks like we may just have to cut."

The commission was prepared to vote on the final proposal at its meeting Wednesday but delayed action to study a last-minute proposal submitted by a faction of House Demo­crats who accused the commission of gerrymandering because the maps were more favorable to the leadership of Speaker Calvin Say.

The so-called "dissident" faction, which has been trying to oust Say as speaker, said new districts placed more of their members in races against fellow incumbents and inserted more of their members into districts with greater numbers of new voters.

Under the current boundary proposal, seven pairs of lawmakers were put into new districts — six in the House and one in the Senate — meaning incumbents would have to run against each other. In the six House districts in question, four involve members of the dissident faction.

Dissidents presented an alternative map for Oahu that they said was based primarily on the plan approved by the commission last year that was eventually tossed out by the state Supreme Court. Commission Chairwoman Victoria Marks agreed to take time to study the plan.

Members of the commission’s technical committee, those charged with drawing the maps, said the dissidents’ proposal was not viable, but still asked for additional time to study whether the current proposal before the commission could be improved.

"We recognize the significant time constraints that the Office of Elections is under, the pressures that it is facing, and we recognize the enormous challenge that it has ahead of it," said Commissioner Calvert Chipchase IV, a technical committee member. "However, this commission’s job is to draw the best possible redistricting lines it can, and (the technical) committee feels that additional time is needed to do so."

The commission approved a reapportionment and redistricting plan last year. That plan was tossed out Jan. 4 by the state Supreme Court, which agreed with Hawaii island plaintiffs who argued that too many nonpermanent residents were included in the population base used to draw boundaries, negating population gains that should have resulted in Hawaii island gaining a seat in the state Senate. Oahu would lose a seat.