Technology opens door for mischief
By Jerry Burris
Advertiser Editorial Editor
With selection of a chairman, respected banker and lawyer Wayne Minami, the work of the 2001 reapportionment commission begins in earnest.
This year will bring a new twist to this exercise in political power distribution. Technology has firmly caught up with the process.
Powerful computerized mapping tools, combining electoral, census and other demographic data, will make it easier than ever to draw maps.
Reapportionment used to be as much art as science. Those who understood the math of population apportionment and who had a keen sense of politics and the geography of neighborhoods had the upper hand.
Upper hand for what, you ask?
Upper hand in drawing lines that did the most good for their particular interests. That means protecting incumbents and then, creating maps that do the most good for your guys and the least good for the other guys.
Hawai'i's reapportionment commissions are evenly divided between the two major political parties, so it is impossible to ram anything down anyone's throat. Usually, horse-trading and compromise gets it done, When there is a stalemate, it is the chairman's job to cast the deciding vote in the nine-member panel.
With the advent of high-tech mapping, one might think that the process would — if anything — be even more fair.
But the reality is that the technology can open the door for more, not less mischief. The software allows the politicians to handpick voters with greater precision than ever before.
Steven Hill and Rob Richie of the Center for Voting and Democracy recently wrote that the today's technology will allow gerrymandering of incredible sophistication and detail.
One of the biggest weapons folks had in the past to sniff out gerrymandering was subtle numerical differences between districts that suggest something other that pure numerical even-handedness was at stake. The computers offer a way around that particular problem.
"The technology is so good, you can draw districts with absolutely equal numbers of people in them and yet create virtually any kind of political breakdown between the districts that you want," said Stanford law professor Pamela Karlan.
Where does this leave the general public? Perhaps not as far out of the picture as you might assume.
The Hawai'i reapportionment commission wants to put baseline data and at least a limited version of the mapping software on the Internet, so regular voters can follow along.
While the site is not yet up, those who are interested are invited to drop by the reapportionment office ( Room 411 at the State Capitol) on Tuesdays and Thursdays between 1 and 3 p.m. to see the software in action.
This could be incredibly important. In a subtle way, it could return some power to the people, should they decide to use it.
And they should. Voters like to flatter themselves with the thought that they choose their candidates or their representatives. The truth is that, through reapportionment, it is the politicians who choose us.
