2021-10-12 00:00:00 - Special Joint Committee on Redistricting
2021-10-12 00:00:00 - Special Joint Committee on Redistricting
(Part 2 of 2)
SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
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And communicating with me, threw me uh to other members of the body and took outside advocacy groups. Uh it was really a team effort as it was 10 years ago because I think in the end, one of the things I've learned about this process is the more people you have involved and the more people you have sitting at the table, um the better result you will receive. Um So uh to my co chair uh Senator, do you want to say something before I start? No, I would just want to reiterate my thanks to all the members of this committee and uh I'll add more later in the way of many things that I need to give. But let me refer you to get going. All right. So I will69 start from the top. I would like to start71 by thanking all of the members of the Joint Committee on redistricting. Uh and particularly I'd like to thank um the Senate Vice chair, the gentle lady from Spencer uh as well as my Vice chair in the house. The Gentleman from Lawrence, I believe you to have attended every single hearing that we've had and you've been great vice chairs um to my co chair Senator Brownsberger from Belmont, a special thank you to you.
Uh We again, when we began this journey, committed to conducting a fair and open transparent process where everyone who wanted a voice was given one and where advocates were not only asked their opinion, but their suggestions were implemented into the final draft that you will see today
REP MORAN - After the very difficult 2020114 census delays and getting us the official numbers, timelines that needed to be adjusted and then readjusted and all of the problems that came along with Covid 19, I am happy to announce126 that today we will be releasing the proposed house maps of our 160 house districts. My formal involvement in this process began in the spring of 2019 while working with Pamela Mont of Common Cause and Beth Wang of the Mass voter table. We were attempting for the first time ever to secure state funding in the 2020 budget for the purposes of creating a census complete count program. We eventually secured $2.5 million, that money was to be distributed by the secretary of state to local nonprofits and community organizations in hard to count areas167 and communities so that they would not be undercounted as they have been in previous years.
Well, based on the 2020 official census176 numbers, I think178 it is accurate to say that that program worked. The 2020 census count was 7,029,917 residents of Massachusetts. No one, not the census, not any outside group had us exceeding 7,000,000 people. I want to thank my colleagues in the House and Senate for funding that program. The 2020 census figures showed us a changing demographic in Massachusetts. The white population in this state which is now four million, 748,897 had decreased by 7% points. The black population in this state, which is now 457,055 people increased by almost 17%. The Asian population is now almost a half a million at 504,900 people, that was an increase of 45% and the Hispanic population, which is now 887,685 people also had a large increase of 41%. These populations figures reflect the diversity of the commonwealth and the many faces of Massachusetts.
What you're going to see in these house maps is a reflection of those257 numbers. Next in the process258 came the public input in the listening and learning part of the process. We were committed to improving on the successes of 10 years ago in making this process in even270 open and more transparent one, to do that, our website this time around provided the ability for anyone,276 who anyone who went to it to translate that that site into 110 different languages. We held for the first time ESL hearings with translators in Spanish Cantonese, Mandarin, Cape Verdean, Portuguese, Haitian, Creole, Compere and Vietnamese speaking residents. We live streamed our hearings so that anybody who wanted to watch them could go on our website and simply click a button and watch these hearings in real time. In addition, we kept a lot of work 10 years ago.
Our website was robust. 35,000 people viewed our website and on that website you could get case law, you have the ability to draw your own maps, you can submit testimony and you could watch hearings that had already been recorded if you happen to miss them. We held 19 hearings, six more than we did 10 years ago and in total, 548 people signed up to give testimony during these hearings. Way back when we first started this committee, we created a charge, a special charge of the committee on redistricting and it said that we were going to be mindful of federal and state redistricting case law, equal voting opportunities established by the voting rights act, the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, the United States constitution, the Massachusetts constitution, traditional redistricting principles and they told us that we had to hold hearings across the commonwealth to solicit views of interested parties.
I believe the maps were released today for public comment, reflect that charge and the input received through the hearings and comments submitted through the website we listened to. So now it's on to the maps, I am happy to report that because of your involvement, elected officials, outside advocacy groups are our municipal partners, all who was involved, we have created 33 majority opportunity districts in the house, that's up from 20 before this process started. I want to, if I can right now explain to you and this is an important piece of this what we are calling a the majority minority opportunity districts. A majority minority opportunity district is where the non Hispanic white percentage is less than 50%.
Let me say that again, where the non Hispanic white population is less than 50% of the total population in the district. We are considering that to be a majority opportunity district and there are436 33 of those that we438 drew. Inside those 33 majority opportunity districts, there are majority Hispanic and majority black districts. Those are to be defined as any district where 50% of the total population is black or Hispanic. We draw 10 of those, 10 of the 33 are either459 majority Hispanic, there are eight majority Hispanic and there are two majority black, that is part of the 33. It's important that you think about that in that context. So you have a better understanding of the difference between a majority Hispanic, majority black and a majority minority opportunity district. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
So now I am going to disappear from the screen and I am going to put up A slide show that I will be explaining and we are going to go through the 33 districts uh in the house. Uh so that everybody has a full explanation. I can give you a full explanation of what those look like. Uh Mhm. Mhm.
MORAN - This is the current map,532 there isn't much to stay here other than this map you see is the new map of the commonwealth with all of the districts in it. Next slide will be this is an important slide because it gives you a lot of context on what happened on the map. If you look out here in Western Mass, you will see all of those districts out there, needed population, all of the light brown colored areas were areas that you needed population, all of the darker color brown areas are areas where there was excess population. Its most fundamental piece of this of this of this process is you need to reapportion all of those districts so that they fall between 41,740 and not as high as 46,134.
So that's the reapportioning part of this of this process. Now we have to adhere to all of the principles that and the charges that we outlined in the beginning of this process. Next, you will see the majority minority opportunity sections of the map. These are areas where we saw where there is 50% or more people that are classified as majority minority living in an area where they can create a new or strengthened an existing district. I want to be very clear by when I say this, there is not an area and this is something that I think we can be very proud of with this map, there is not an area on this map where you could draw 50% of any population, whether it be a combination of black, Hispanic and Asian or just black or just Hispanic, there's not an area on this map where you could draw it and we didn't draw it.
So 33 is the646 maximum amount of districts that you could do when you understand the fact that our guide for this is that if you have over 50% of the population, you have to draw it. So those are the areas were focusing on on the next slides. Let's first put up Springfield, this is the Springfield area and these are the districts in Springfield. Let's start with the top district of top667 here which is Orlando, Ramos and he represents the 9th Hampden District. What we had673 to do here was reconfigure a bunch of precincts on the Eastern part of of Springfield and we had to remove some people who represented pieces of Springfield to recreate this district from a new and make it majority Hispanic.
So this is690 one of the 33 majority minority opportunity districts, that is specifically Hispanic. This means that the Hispanic population in this district is over 50% of the total population. You can go to the next slide which will show you actually the district, these are the precincts that are in that that 9th Hampden district. Again, if you look at the ledger on the side, you will see uh the720 population there of Hispanic and you will notice that the Hispanic population in that district is 51.2%, the non Hispanic white population which is essentially everybody that isn't classified as white by the census is 27.9%. This is a new district in Springfield, that is majority Hispanic. Okay, next we have the 10th Hampden district.
This district is currently represented by Carlos Gonzalez. We didn't have to do much here because this was already a majority Hispanic district, but we had to do is we had a level it off so that whatever we gave up the top here to the 9th Hampden District, we needed to grab some population down here to make sure that it was within the plus or -5. This too is also a majority Hispanic district. Next we have the 11th Hampden, the 11th Hampden is in the middle of Springfield which is currently represented by Bud Williams. This district we had to reconfigure down here a little and up here a little and this district is majority minority opportunity, with the two biggest populations in this district being Hispanic and black.
Moving down, I want to go to the Holyoke and Holyoke district. This district was challenging to draw simply because all of the towns outside of Holyoke tend to have802 a large percentage of non Hispanic whites, the only Hispanic piece that we could go to, because this is a section two district, this is a majority Hispanic district, we went into Chicopee and using census blocks in precincts, we were able to get this population into the plus and -5% and keep it Hispanic. So that's how we826 were able to keep this a Hispanic district. Moving down, we'll go to Worcester, so this is all the area of Worcester.
This area here, this was the only majority minority district in all of Worcester but with the great, they had a very strong census count, we were able to reconfigure a bunch of precincts here and instead of having one majority minority opportunity district, Worcester now has three majority minority opportunity districts and we'll go through them very briefly. This right here is the 15th Worcester district, which is currently represented by862 Mary Keefe, this district again, by maneuvering some populations867 in this district, we were able to keep this the strongest majority minority district where the percentage of non white Hispanic is 36.4%. This is the strongest of the three districts in Worcester.
Next we go to the 16th Worcester district which is represented by currently by representative Dan Donohoe. Again, moving some precincts around on the Western side of the district and a little bit at the top, we were able to keep this district or make this district majority minority where 47.8% of the population is non Hispanic white. Lastly, we have the 17th Worcester district. This took some work, so this is the town of Leicester. This used to be entirely in this district, but because of the strong population growth in Worcester, we kept these two precincts in this district and we reconfigured this part of the district, making this a majority minority district where 43.9% of this district is non Hispanic white.
So Worcester after this process goes from one majority minority opportunity district to three. Next, we'll move down to New Bedford. The New Bedford area was very challenging and the fact that we really had to break some precinct lines here and go to census blocks and when you look along the water here, you will see that there is a number of non Hispanic white population that when when put together got us to a majority minority district, this959 is a new one that we constructed. It's not incumbent free, but it's new, when you look, this is basically the water, these areas were added down here, some areas over here which got us to a new district which is 47.8% non Hispanic white. Moving out of New Bedford, we will move over to the Randolph area.
There was a lot of talk about hearings985 about Randolph, let me say from a larger perspective,988 we looked at this over and over again, there was thoughts that we could create a black district down here using Brockton. There was thoughts that we can reconfigure this in some way that Randolph request could be honored, but in the end of the day, the Randolph issue is, in my opinion, is there's a large population of majority minority population in Boston and a very large one in Brockton. So what we did is we split Randolph in two, we brought them down to two reps from three, so they used to have three, now they're down to two. You have this district, the first district which is the first Norfolk district which encompasses Quincy and Randolph, where that is a majority minority opportunity districts. The second one in Randolph is the 7th Norfolk which has a clean line going down the middle.
Both of these districts are majority minority opportunity districts and we go from three reps down to two reps. Next we'll go to Framingham. It's an oddly shaped district, but this is an incumbent free, there is no incumbent in this district and it is a majority minority opportunity district. So come next election cycle, this district here will will have the ability to elect a new person of their choice in a district that is majority minority opportunity and that is roughly 41% non Hispanic white, which means it's obviously 59% minority majority opportunity. That is a1073 new district that we drew and that is going to be incumbent free. Let's move up to Lowell, Lowell has three representatives that represent Lowell, two of them are majority minority, one of them, let's go to the 17th Middlesex District, this district is currently represented by Van Howard and one of the1097 things we did here, which is something that all of you on this committee will remember, the Chumps furred area was not happy that they had the amount of reps they had.
So we were able to take Van Howard out of chumps furred and move this district over and add her to Tewksbury, keeping this a majority minority district where 47% of the part of the population is non, Hispanic white. The neighboring district, which is we really didn't touch at all because we didn't have to, this is Rady Mom district, it's the 18th Middlesex district. This district is the largest Asian district in this area. The Asian population accounts for 31% of this district, so 31% of1154 this district is Asian and it is 32% non Hispanic white. We didn't really have to do much to keep that district in the position it was in. Next, we'll go to Everett, this is the Everett Malden area. Right now, this district here is represented, the 28th Middlesex District represented by Joe McGonagle.
This region in particular of Chelsea, Everett and Revere had a really strong population count. Again, hopefully it was because of the work that we did by creating that fund, but there was a lot of population. All of these districts were heavy when it came to population. So we reconfigured some districts, we took this precinct out of this district and added it to the Chelsea district and we did some census blocks here in this district here is a majority minority district where 33% of the population is non Hispanic white. The next district, which is the 33rd Middlesex district, we didn't really have to do much here. This is currently represented by Steve Ultimo, this is now a majority minority district, with 39.7% of the population is non Hispanic white.
So this district in particular, has sort of matured this way over time, so we didn't really have to do much and nothing at all of that district. Next, we'll go to Brockton. This is, if you heard me when I talked about Randolph, we did a lot in Brockton, we have three districts in the city of Brockton, two of them are majority minority opportunity. You can flash in on the first one, which is the 10th Plymouth. This district is currently represented by Michelle Dubois, this district had a number of the towns outside of Brockton, the Bridgewater's, were all in this district, we took them out of this district and we put it entirely in Brockton, so that this district is majority minority at 31% non, Hispanic white and it's entirely in Brockton and we felt like that was making the city of Brockton whole, and we thought it was the right thing to do for that reason.
Next, this is the second of four incumbent free districts. This is the middle of Brockton, basically sandwiched between two other districts, but this is the middle of Brockton. This district is 17% non Hispanic white, where the largest population in this district is African American or black and it is 38% of this district. So this district here is incumbent free and come next year, a year from this January, somebody from this district will be a new member of the house chamber. Okay. Moving into Suffolk County and particularly area of Revere, the 16th Suffolk District. If you look at this, this is pretty much Revere beach and this population along here was added to this district down here, which is Winthrop making this districts non Hispanic white go up and then we reconfigured some precincts in1409 the middle here, making this district which is currently representing Jessica, Giannino, a majority minority opportunity district where1417 the non Hispanic white percentage is 48, so this is a majority minority opportunity district that we've crafted out of this.
Next, we'll go to Boston, this area here has a lot of changes; some of them were a lot, but some of them are none, but let's do the easy one first, which is the first Suffolk district which is currently represented by Adrian Madaro, it's all of East Boston and it is a majority Hispanic district where the Hispanic population is the majority minority and the white population is 36.5% and that would be the non Hispanic white population, so we didn't have to do anything there, that's just mature that way over time. Let's go to the 5th Suffolk district, this district is currently represented by Liz Miranda, this is a majority minority district. Now, this was challenging because next to this district right here is the district that Dan Hunt represents which is the 13th Suffolk district and then next to that is water.
So, you know, you're dealing with some geography here, that's kind of challenging. So we were able to between these two districts, you know, trade off some precincts that were more favorable to add to this districts and get back to this precincts that were more in line with what this population wants. So you get this 5th Suffolk district, this is probably a good time to talk about some of the challenges with this census data, there was a high other population in this in this area, you know, so this traditionally would have been a black district, I think most of us that look at the data or most of us that live in Boston know that this is a black district, but because of the very high other, we were not able to get the black number over 50%.
Now I do want to point something out here, I want to point this number right here out to you, the non Hispanic white district, which is essentially what we define as white people is 6%, so if this is 6%, this is a pretty strong district that is black, but unfortunately because of the way some people answered the census this time around, it was challenging to get that to over 50% but I would point out this number here that this is a very strong district and will likely, you know, well the person of their choice may very well be a black candidate. Let's go beyond that and now go to the 6th district.
This district is currently represented by Russell Holmes, these three districts were challenging because some of them dropped1571 in populations, so we had a final population. The 6th district actually dropped its black population by 10%, which was kind of surprising to me at least and the district above that I just just mentioned was Liz Miranda's District which was after we applied that ,the census numbers to have brought it down to 41% black, we're able to bring that1591 up a few points, but this district here still remains a very strong district, majority minority opportunity district that is, majority black and the black population in this district is 58% black. Again, a very strong district that I think will more than likely reelect Russell or if Russell decides to leave, will probably have another black person in the membership that will be representing it.
Let's go to the 7th Suffolk, this district is currently represented by Chynah Tyler, because of some of the shifting populations in Boston on this side, Representative Tyler had to pick up some of this area here in the 7th Suffolk, had to pick up some of this area here and pick1630 up a little bit of Mission Hill but the strongest, this is a majority minority opportunity district with the strongest population in this district being black. So the black population is still a very strong portion of this district,1646 which I think gets us to a good number with a non Hispanic white is at 29%. Let's go to the 9th Suffolk district. This district is sandwiched between the Chynah Tyler district, Liz Miranda district and the J Livingstone and the Aaron Michlewitz district, it's kind of in the middle of Boston.
This district was formerly represented by some of you may remember, Byron Rushing but this district has changed drastically over the last1669 10 years, but when1670 we reconfigured it and added some and took away, we still have it as a majority minority opportunity districts with the non Hispanic white is 45% and I think it's a very strong district that is in the middle of Boston Down to the south of Boston, you'll see this is the 12 Suffolk which is currently represented by Brandy Oakley. Here in Milton, we were able to curve out some more of the black population and added to this district and we gave her some more precincts up here, we took away, we didn't take her anyway, we just added some precincts here, added some here and we got her population to within the deviation where only 18% of the population is non Hispanic white and the black population represents about 58% of this district.
So we had to reconfigure this district to make sure it stayed majority black. All right, we'll move now to Representative Hunt district which is the 13th Suffolk. Again, you got to remember like I said before, this is now over here where Liz Miranda district is here, Russell Holmes comes in here and Brandy Oakley comes here. To make sure that remained a majority minority opportunity district we took this district out of Quincy, we added some population here and we had to add this precinct here, which is the UMass campus, Boston campus and this, you got1751 to remember the1752 geography is tough here, you've got all of these majority minority districts in majority black districts here, you have water here, so this is kind of where this ends up.
This district is 42% non Hispanic white and it's a majority minority opportunity districts. Moving on to the 14th Suffolk district which is representative Rob Consalvo who represents us now. Not much change here, we had to push him north a little up here to grab some precincts up here. I think, you know, that was all we did here, some of1784 these districts are easier to draw because there's not much change that you need to do, but we just need to add some population of his to his northern part, making his non Hispanic white 38%. So moving on past that, this is a new district, well mostly new district, it's the 15th Suffolk district currently represented in part by Ms. Malia and Nika Elugardo, takes her completely out of the Brookline, moves her into boston pretty substantially. This district was a white district before the process started and right now, it's a majority minority opportunity district where 47.2% of the1819 people are non Hispanic white.
The Hispanic population is 24%, the Asian population is 11% and the black population is 14%. But when you combine them all, you have a majority minority opportunity district here. Moving beyond Nika Elugardo, you'll go down to the city of Chelsea. This district here as you can imagine, its brand new, it's incumbent free and it's majority Hispanic. As I said earlier, the Everett, Revere, Chelsea area had a great census count. I hope again, no small part to the work that this legislature has done to create that committee to help in that vein and this district here which is all of Chelsea and the strongest precincts I could get from Everett to make this a strong district. This is majority Hispanic, incumbent free and that is a district that I think is more than likely going to get a Hispanic person of their choice that is going to being this body a year from this January. Again, it's incumbent free.
Okay, after that, we'll move up to the linear area where you have the 10th Essex and the 11th Essex District. There wasn't much, that need to be done here because of the populations and how they1900 are. We just basically shifted some population with census blocks in between here and that brought this district1907 which is the 10th Essex down and then they were able to1913 keep this precinct up here. So this is just shifting a very small amount of population1919 to keep these districts non Hispanic white population in the right space so that they both could be considered a majority minority opportunity district. The 10th Essex which is currently represented by Dan Cahill is 31.47% non Hispanic white, making it a fairly strong non Hispanic white district where 47% of the people in this district identify as Hispanic.
Let's go to the 11th Essex district, which is now represented currently by Pete Capano. Again, just switching a few precincts here and this district is 33.96% non Hispanic, white where 43.1% of this district is Hispanic. My guess is, and just having done this twice, my guess is that 10 years from now, both of these districts are going to trend in the same direction and you're likely to see one or other of these become a majority Hispanic districts. Finally, we will move up to Essex county. Essex county, we had a lot of work to do up here, the Hispanic population over the years up here has grown quite a bit and 10 years ago, we were able1985 to draw an incumbent free district up here, which was right here, which produced Frank Moran who was on this committee and with their help and really the gentle lady from Methuen, we really worked hard at this to create this district.
This is another incumbent free District that is Hispanic, this is an incumbent. We again, just to reiterate, we drew four incumbent minority majority opportunity district, two of them the Chelsea district and the Lawrence district are majority Hispanic. As you go back to the original numbers that I told you in the very, very beginning of this presentation, the Hispanic population in the Commonwealth grew by 41%, which is2033 why you saw the number of Hispanic districts and the number of current incumbent free Hispanic districts also increase and like I said in the beginning, I think you're going to see that the numbers that we received in the census are clearly borne out by these maps where we go from 20 majority minority districts, opportunity districts to 33 and we go eight of them Hispanic and two of them are minority black.
So let's go into this district, this is my vice chair of this committee and again, I want to thank him, he worked very hard to make sure that this happened and the other gentleman from Lawrence, Frank Moran really worked hard at this with me to make sure this happened. I want to thank them for all the work they did and making sure that you could draw these districts and that they were accurate representation of the population and Lawrence. This district is all in Lawrence and on top up here, it goes into handle, it is a 26% non Hispanic white where 64% of it is Hispanic origin. So 64%2176 of this district identifies as Hispanic. Again, it was there 10 years ago, we reconfigured some precincts and we and we kept it Hispanic and it will likely produce a Hispanic person of their choice in this district, that's the 16 Essex District.
Let's go to the 17th Essex district. We did cut some census blocks down here in the city of Andover, I think we cut out about 2400 people out of this precinct here because it was too big of a precinct. We took this district completely out of Methuen and it's all in Lawrence now, this district is no longer in the film and it's just Lawrence and Andover, and again, this district is 24% non Hispanic white, and 67% of the people in this district identify as Hispanic. So2229 this is a very strong Hispanic district as well. The last district is the district that we grew up here, the incumbent free district, this is the 4th Essex District. It has a is a sizable chunk of2243 Methuen and it has the northern central most part of Lawrence and when you put all this together, you get a district that is 25% of non Hispanic white and 67.4% Hispanic.
So these three districts scanning around them with Methuen Lawrence, I believe are an accurate reflection of this population that we received in the 2020 census. I want to thank all of the members of this delegation up here and the surrounding towns because you2276 know, they were they were all on board, making sure that this district was drawn and you know, I think it's the right thing to do and I think we should be proud of it. So that is the presentation of the 33 majority minority districts. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
Um I just want at this point in time, remind people that are watching this process is not over. Um we now are entering into the comment period of this process. It starts right now And it ends at five p.m. Monday October 18. So digest these maps, Look at these maps um if you have any reasonable uh
suggestions on how we can maybe make them stronger or better, I would be more than happy to take those into consideration. Um Again, I would just2346 point out that, you know, Uh the numbers on this maps, the 33 districts in total I think are accurate reflection of our population. I would at this time, also this friday at one o'clock we will be having a hearing um for anybody who doesn't want to submit the maps through the website, submit the suggestions, do website, they will be able to speak at a hearing and tell us to resume hearing. That link will be going out at the appropriate time. Um and then like I said at five o'clock on monday, all of those um uh all of those will be um comments will be looked at and and and we will digest all them and see if any of them make sense. Can you put me back up? Um Okay, so finally I just want to thank a few people I want to thank and2392 particularly the new Democracy Coalition and uh and kevin Pietersen and all those people involved, they put together a phenomenal hearing which took place at Malcolm X Park um and2404 it was quite hot out and a lot of people stayed and it was on a saturday, but it was a very good informative hearing that that that that organisation really decided to do and it was very helpful to the process. There have been many people that submitted maps. Um there's a gentleman from Fall River who quite frankly uh he submitted more maps than anybody, but we looked at all of them and his suggestions and his passion for redistricting uh needs to be needs to be unnoticed. Um And lastly, I just want to thank the drawing Democracy Coalition and all the advocacy groups for their for their assistance and help in drawing these maps. The mass voter table common cause mass vote the A. C. L. U of massachusetts, Lawyers for civil Rights, the Chinese2446 Progressive Political Action Association, Mirra was to interfaith. And uh I'm going to mess that up. So I'm just gonna say um the Worcester collaborative, headed up by uh
Gladys vega who has been who is also very helpful um2462 with that. Um my my portion of this is over. Um I want to thank again all of my colleagues on this committee for your help and assistance in doing this. And I would like at this point in time to turn it over to my colleague, my coach here, the gentleman from Belmont, uh uh Senator Brownsberger
Thank you so much mike and I want to say for the record right here that it's been a real privilege to work with you through this process. You having been through it before in 2010 has been a real asset to um me uh and to us as a team. And so it's been a good process and I'm very grateful for for all of our collaboration. Uh wah
thank you. I want, I want to um
talk about some other folks that I want to give thanks to. First of all, I want to give thanks to my staff. We've uh you2527 know, we picked up this assignment three years ago, we started going to school and particularly the National Conference of State Legislature was very helpful. And so we built a level of expertise and my team that I am very grateful for and Andrew Bendinelli and maybe twice on my team worked extremely hard. Um I want to, we've been well advised by counsel throughout the process, jennifer miller, uh Senate council. Now outside counsel, Read Weatherby Outside counsel john morrissey inside in the Senate have been with us every step of the way as we navigated this process, trying to meet all of our legal obligations2566 as fully as possible. We've also had the assistance of Moon Duchin, who is a wonderful mind mathematic mathematical statistician at Tufts was Ben, our guru on voting rights, voting rights, voting political statistics related to voting rights. Um I'm so grateful to all the members of the Senate, who have spent an enormous amount of time with me. I've visited over half of the Senate districts. And as I spent a lot of time learning about the Senate districts from my colleagues and we've tried to draw districts that reflect the facts on the ground. Um and I the I want to thank the members of this committee, especially my co chair senator and Gobi who has really led the process as it relates to the western2616 part of the state where there's been some very large changes, but I also want to give2620 a shout out to Adam Heinz, the senator from the Far west and Adam Gomez, senator from Springfield china. Chang-Diaz from boston. Um Ryan Fattman uh Senator from South of Worcester and Bruce Tyler Republican minority leader uh and Julian Sear from the Cape all of who have played a very helpful role in the committee process and our and our thought process. Um Most of all I want to give thanks to the many members of the public as my detailed we've had a lot of participation in this process and a couple of very special people. I want to give a shout out to kevin Pietersen and the new democracy coalition who really focused on the issue of the need to draw a black Senate district in boston meaning a Senate district in which the black voters have the2673 ability to elect the candidate of their choice. Um and um also and also very much so to the drawing democracy coalition coalition of statewide organizations With so many members who have advised us over the past 18 months, um you have been very actively involved in every2694 step of the way it helping us understand the districts, helping bring people into the process, helping big voices in from across the state. Um and giving us a lot2705 of very helpful tips, both about the substance and about how to get it done in a way that's most2710 transparent and most participatory.
SEN BROWNSBERGER - So let's let's take a top down in terms of issues. The big issue, the background, the fundamental goal here is to follow the constitution to make sure that every person has an equal vote in the legislative process, which means that the Senate districts, the state legislative districts have to be roughly the same size. And, in this year, we had a challenging reality, which is that there was a significant difference in growth rates across the state. So basically, every single county, every single Senate district rather west of Worcester and every single county2744 was low relative to the rest of the state. That meant that there was a significant movement across the state which kind of crests as a wave near Worcester because everybody has the furthest west district takes from the next district to make up size, that district has to take even more and so on and so the movement got especially large around the2767 center of the state,2768 Senator Gobi's district and her district has to change by more than 50% which is a very heavy load for her to shoulder and I thank for her for the grace with which she's worked through that process.
2778 So2778 that district has changed dramatically. Worcester, we've had great growth and so that starts to offset it and the trend starts to peter out, but it does go as far up resulting in significant movement for the for the center. The district that includes Lowell loses some on the west end of it and picks up break it and so that's been that population dynamics which has caused movement across all of the map. So, in fact, there are only about six Senators whose district are unchanged; they are exactly only six Senators whose district are unchanged, everybody else has significant change. So many voters and each of these Senate districts are going to have to work with the new Senators, about 20% changes about the average so that in each of the new Senate district, about 80% of the voters will be working with the same district as before, but about 20% of the voters will be encountering new elected officials and new politics.
The other major constitutional obligation revolves around race and we have a two fold obligation. Number one is that equal protection that we respect the mandate and the constitution, not the district based on race, but to follow a equal protection for people of all races and colors and ethnicities. At the same time, we have an obligation under the voting rights act 1965 to make sure that every minority that's capable of actually functioning and is large enough within a given potential district is able to elect the candidate of their choice. The district structure does not operate to deny people the candidate of their choice. So we took taking a top down view of the state and identified those areas where there was the potential for that kind of dynamic of of a minority group being denied the candidate of their choice and we've given those areas a lot of attention. So I want to talk about each of those one by one.
If I could have my my team put up the map of Springfield, I'm going to go west to east. So there's the overall map, but now we're looking at the map of Springfield. The prior district in Springfield consisted of West Springfield and a smaller portion of Springfield. The Yellow district is the new district and as you can see, it is2921 primarily within Springfield and continues to include some of Chicopee. It is possible in the Springfield area to construct a district which is more than 50% Hispanic instead of saying majority, more than 50% Hispanic citizen voting age population, however, in fact we have a sitting senator in um Springfield who is Puerto Rican, so we could not find the voting rights act violation in the sense that the district is able to elect the candidate of the choice.
The minority, the Hispanic voters of that district are able to elect there's Senator Adam Gomez and so what we've done in this district is essentially done something based on traditional redistricting principles, we2968 have grouped at all on the same side of the river, we have tried to make the district more whole and that2975 is the result, from a minority mixture perspective, it is a bit more heavily minority, but this district was drawn based on traditional redistricting principles as it is already a district in which is functionally capable of electing the candidate of minority choice in this case, Senator Gomez of Springfield. Turning next to Lawrence. Lawrence is an area that's undergone a period of change of steady change over a period of several decades and in this, in this census, it crossed a critical threshold.
The Hispanic population in Lawrence has continued to grow and in 2020, but for the first time reached the level where It is possible to construct a district in the Lawrence area that is more than 50 majority minority, it is more than 50% Hispanic by citizen voting age population. So that district, that is an area where we gave it further additional attention, very careful attention in close consultation with counsel and in close consultation with our our statistician Moon Dunchin. So here's the findings number one in that3048 district, you can draw district which looks more or less like what you see, that is more than 50% Hispanic citizen voting age population.
This is the critical finding, that the voting in that region is very, very polarized. The white voters in that region tend to vote for the white candidates and the Hispanic tend to vote for the Hispanic candidates, and the grouping is such that the Hispanic candidates from Lawrence are consistently defeated. So this is a very clear voting rights violation and one that we intent on correcting. We considered several options, one of which would be to regroup Methuen and Lawrence and Andover That only results in a district which is about 40% Hispanic Cibak. We considered grouping Lawrence, Methuen and break it, which is about works out to be about 42% Hispanic Cibak, we were advised that that would not be adequate to remedy the voting, the voter rights obligation.
So we were driven to do something which was the opposite of what3125 we're trying to do in general, which is to split a community which is to add the central downtown portion of Harveh which has a substantial Hispanic population. When we do that, we can get to a district which is just under majority Hispanic citizen voting age population and that's a district which we built we do believe based on our voter, our analysis, our simulations will be capable of electing in which in which Hispanic voters will be capable of electing the candidate of their choice. This is a very important3164 fundamental redrawing of districts that we're doing based on the voting rights act.
Let's turn to the city of boston. The city of boston is another area to which we gave enormous thought.3176 The city of boston has historically, and you see before you, there's a red district and a blue district and they are not too different in their placement from the existing 1st Suffolk and 2nd Suffolk districts. Those two districts prior to our redrawing them were both majority minority in the population sense, but approximately 60-70% minority, meaning 303200 or 40% non Hispanic white, but neither one of those districts was capable of electing the candidate of choice of black voters in that district. The black population was split between those two districts with the result that it was in general, difficult for the black voters to elect the candidate of their choice.
So what we have done is redrawn the boundaries of the 2nd Suffolk it shows as D. 29 is drawing, it's the central Blue district in this figure, that district we do believe now will be able to elect the black candidate of choice,3243 the candidate of choice of the black voters who might or might not themselves be black. It's approximately 39% non Hispanic black if you use the broader definition of black, so called any part black from the census and it approaches 50% black and that's whether you measure it by citizen voting age population or just voting age population. It is just about majority. From a modelling standpoint, we tend to focus on percentages because it's easy to talk about it, it's easier measure, but the more sophisticated analysis to do is to see how the district will perform based on prior elections and so we've looked at several dozen prior elections and model the likely performance of this district and we do believe that the black voters of this district will be capable of electing the candidate of their choice and, you know, it's our hope that the candidate of their choice, whoever that may be, will take a Senate seat in 2022.
This is an incumbent free district as Senator Chang-Diaz is stepping down. The red district is the 1st Suffolk and it is still a majority minority district and we were concerned to preserve its status as that, we didn't want to retrogressive in any sense, but it is mostly shaped by the need to move some population into the block effective district D 29, but it remains a majority minority district. The last majority minority district or opportunity district to use the vocabulary that the House and Senate jointly have decided to use, just any district, its majority minority population is the D 26 which appears at the top of the figure you're viewing, it combines Chelsea, Everett Charlestown and the Eastern half of Cambridge.
Now that is a district where we have drawn primarily based on traditional redistricting principles. That district used to stretch across the Charles at the west end of it from Cambridge into Austin Brighton sort of an appendix, that was hard to sort of connect to the rest of the district and it also used to stretch into the west end, across the river in the west end. So this is a more compact district and it also turns out to be a majority minority district and we're pleased that it that it covers both of those bases. So that is the story of majority minority districts.
There's one other important story to tell in this map, which is the3408 story of not splitting communities. As has been previously covered, this is a difficult, very difficult year really from for redistricting as a result of the late arrival of the census data, we did not get census data until mid August which is 4.5 months later than normal. So normally, we would have six months to do3430 this process in, instead we're basically doing it in six weeks and the result is that the House and the Senate are doing their redistricting at the same3438 time as local election officials are redrawing their local precincts. This creates the potential for conflicting boundaries. Whatever happens, the localities are going to have to figure out how to work with the lines we have drawn, but we want to make it as easy as possible.
To that end, both Chairman Moran and I are committed to working with the 10 communities which both of us split. Those are the 10 communities where the greatest potential for conflict between house lines, Senate lines and local lines exist, so from the Senate perspective, we have worked very hard to reduce the number of communities that we've split. We've been able to do that, it's much easier for us to do that than for the house, but we have reduced the number of are split communities from 21 to 10. So there are only 10 communities that are split in this map and only one of them is a new split and so within those 10 communities we're already reaching out to them, trying to schedule meetings for Chairman Moran and myself to work with them to minimize the consequences of us all having to work through the line drawing process at the same3574 time.
I want to close by emphasizing the same things that my friend and colleague Chairman Moran emphasized, which are number one, these are draft maps, we are here to listen, we're putting these maps out and we are really looking forward to all the feedback that we know3590 is going to come in from the public and from our colleagues, we're creating mechanisms to do that. We've got a hearing on Friday, we've got the comment page where you can submit written comments at legislature dot3600 gov slash redistricting and we're going to be doing a press availability afterwards and both were just all very eager to hear from folks and very eager to work with local officials to make sure this process goes as smoothly as3614 possible.
One last footnote, the Governor's council map and the congressional map, will come out shortly, exactly what shortly means, you know, whether that's a couple of days or a couple of weeks. I'm not, we're not sure yet. We have a little work to do in that in that respect, the timeline that we face is a little different on those, but those are coming out, will come out shortly behind these. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
So I'm again3646 grateful for all of the assistance we received from everybody we've mentioned. I'm grateful for the collaborative relationship I have with my house co chair. And I guess we are, we're looking we're going to adjourn this meeting and in 230 convene at on the asperger plaza of the3662 state House for and in person
Q. And a session with members of the press. Is that right? Chairman Miranda That would be correct, Senator.
So is that is that the end of this process? Uh Oh, here it is. Yes. And other than that, just to say thank you again to our chair of the committee members and uh and everybody who uh participated in this in this um, this presentation. And I do want to3692 add, I didn't miss, I didn't thank my staff as well. Um you know, Amanda and brian Nikki have been awesome and the members of the House who have had to work with them, I think know how they worked in the last two months to put this in a space where it's and I'm very grateful to them for all their expertise that they've gone over this process3713 and uh the ability to always be there for members if they3717 needed them. So thank you to them and thank you to all you for your support and your involvement in this process. Other than that, unless you have anything else to say senator, I think we can adjourn this move to a journal. We'll figure, say, aye, oppose. No. This hearing or informal session is now adjourn. Thank you. Everybody
thank you.
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