Redistricting Chair resigns as commissioners deadlock on intervening in federal lawsuit

The 2021 Wash­ing­ton State Redis­trict­ing Com­mis­sion con­tin­ues to be a case study in how not to redraw a set of leg­isla­tive and con­gres­sion­al boundaries.

At its lat­est meet­ing, the four mem­ber com­mis­sion, which is even­ly divid­ed between Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans — lost its non­vot­ing chair, Sarah Augus­tine, while the com­mis­sion­ers dead­locked on respond­ing to a fed­er­al law­suit that alleges the Vot­ing Rights Act was­n’t fol­lowed when the new maps were drawn.

“While I hope my pres­ence on the com­mis­sion for the past thir­teen months has con­tributed to our shared work, now that the pri­ma­ry dri­vers of the process are exter­nal to the com­mis­sion, I believe my role is no longer rel­e­vant. In addi­tion to this con­cern, I must recuse myself from fur­ther par­tic­i­pa­tion because of the cen­tral­i­ty of my com­mu­ni­ty to cur­rent lit­i­ga­tion,” Augus­tine said in a statement.

She also lament­ed that Sec­re­tary of State Steve Hobbs, Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader Andy Bil­lig, and House Speak­er Lau­rie Jink­ins — all Democ­rats — have declined to defend the Redis­trict­ing Com­mis­sion’s work prod­uct against a fed­er­al law­suit filed by the South­cen­tral Coali­tion of Peo­ple of Col­or for Redis­trict­ing, even though the Leg­is­la­ture vot­ed to adopt the Com­mis­sion’s work prod­uct last month with minor and tech­ni­cal changes by a two-thirds vote of each chamber.

(Hobbs, Jink­ins, and Bil­lig are the named defen­dants in the case.)

“By fail­ing to defend the redis­trict­ing plans agreed to by con­sen­sus, state author­i­ties have cho­sen to under­mine the process and dis­miss the com­pro­mis­es under­tak­en in the pub­lic inter­est,” Augus­tine said.

That is a curi­ous state­ment, giv­en that the Redis­trict­ing Com­mis­sion itself flout­ed Wash­ing­ton’s open meet­ing laws and failed to get its work done by the con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly man­dat­ed dead­line. For a brief peri­od, com­mis­sion­ers tried to pre­tend that they had suc­ceed­ed when they had­n’t, even­tu­al­ly real­ized that was­n’t going to work, and then informed the Supreme Court of their failure.

A few weeks lat­er, the Supreme Court inex­plic­a­bly and irre­spon­si­bly threw the hot pota­to back into their hands and said it was­n’t going to get involved, even though the Con­sti­tu­tion requires the Court to take over map-draw­ing respon­si­bil­i­ties in the event of a fail­ure by the com­mis­sion to get its work done on time.

It is also a curi­ous state­ment giv­en that the Com­mis­sion itself could not reach a con­sen­sus on defend­ing its own work prod­uct. As the state­ment released by the Com­mis­sion goes on to admit: “In a 2–2 vote, Com­mis­sion­ers split on the deci­sion to have the Com­mis­sion inter­vene in the law­suit, essen­tial­ly decid­ing not to inter­vene. The ini­tial hear­ing on the law­suit in U.S. Dis­trict Court is on March 25th, where the pre­sid­ing judge will enter­tain a motion for a pre­lim­i­nary injunc­tion against using the new maps until the case is decided.”

The com­pro­mis­es the com­mis­sion agreed to last year were under­tak­en in the inter­est of the Leg­is­la­ture’s four cau­cus­es, who are pri­mar­i­ly inter­est­ed in incum­bent pro­tec­tion, not the pub­lic inter­est. Our team does­n’t know any­one who has been fol­low­ing the redis­trict­ing saga who would agree with Augustine’s char­ac­ter­i­za­tion. How can some­thing pos­si­bly be defend­ed as being in the pub­lic inter­est when the pub­lic was exclud­ed from the delib­er­a­tions and denied the oppor­tu­ni­ty to pro­vide any com­ment or input on the final maps?

And since Novem­ber, the Com­mis­sion has con­tin­ued to shun pub­lic input.

Every meet­ing of the Com­mis­sion since the Novem­ber imbroglio has been closed to pub­lic com­ment. Notices sent out with each meet­ing announce­ment have said:

There will NOT be a pub­lic com­ment por­tion of this meeting.

That’s nine con­sec­u­tive pub­lic meet­ings, count­ing Novem­ber 15th, with no pub­lic com­ment allowed or accept­ed. But sure, go on and insist that this process has involved “com­pro­mis­es under­tak­en in the pub­lic interest.”

Wash­ing­ton is hard­ly the only state strug­gling with redis­trict­ing this cycle, of course. But unlike swing states like Penn­syl­va­nia, which have clash­ing Repub­li­can leg­isla­tive majori­ties and a Demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­er­nor and Demo­c­ra­t­ic State Supreme Court major­i­ty, Wash­ing­ton has a Demo­c­ra­t­ic state­house trifecta.

Wash­ing­ton’s redis­trict­ing process would like­ly have gone bet­ter if the House and Sen­ate had sim­ply drawn the maps them­selves, as hap­pened in Oregon.

What is abun­dant­ly clear is that the bipar­ti­san Four Cor­ners con­trolled com­mis­sion mod­el is not serv­ing Wash­ing­ton well. The state needs a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment to over­haul how it draws con­gres­sion­al and leg­isla­tive dis­trict maps.

An inde­pen­dent com­mis­sion con­sist­ing of a pan­el with an odd num­ber of vot­ing mem­bers and rep­re­sen­ta­tives who aren’t cho­sen by the cau­cus lead­ers (like what Cal­i­for­nia has) would be a far supe­ri­or sys­tem for the 2031 cycle and beyond.