Reapportionment expert weighs in on gerrymandering

Oct. 31—A Norman city councilor who says a committee gerrymandered ward boundaries with partisan and racial bias will have a hard time proving it, a nationally-renowned expert on redistricting says.

As previously reported by The Transcript, the Ad Hoc Reapportionment Committee has maintained that it drew ward boundary lines according to 2020 U.S. Census Data and strived to keep district lines as straight as possible to prevent voter confusion.

The goal was to place 16,003 in each ward to provide equal representation within a 10% deviation or change. The committee considered future population growth, though not prescribed in the charter, and was not provided with voter precinct results.

Self-identified conservative Ward 5 Rarchar Tortorello demanded that Mayor Breea Clark disband her appointed Reapportionment Committee and start over following a comment from committee member Larla Turner during a meeting. Turner, who represented Ward 1 and is Black, remarked that Tortorello was "dangerous" and "it should have been considered" during the committee's decision to move part of the rural ward into the mostly urban Ward 6.

During the committee's public hearing, Turner also referred to much of Ward 5 as being populated with "white supremacists." Ward 5 residents accused the committee of failing to follow the City Charter, which prescribes that boundaries be drawn to keep wards of common interest intact.

The proposed boundaries would place 12 square miles of the largely-rural Ward 5 in Ward 6, an urban ward. Farmers and urbanites would create competing influences for a Ward 6 councilor whose constituents are largely metropolitan, residents said.

While Turner apologized for the comment, Tortorello maintained the damage was done. Three swing precincts that heavily voted for him in the February 2021 election would be absorbed into other wards.

Ward 3 Kelly Lynn also said his winning precincts were shifted to Ward 8 and packed with renters, who statistically vote Democrat, he said, citing a 2016 Washington Post survey.

Tortorello has promised to take legal action if the proposed ward boundaries are adopted.

Proof of gerrymandering is more complicated than it seems, according to Dave Rausch, professor of Political Science at West Texas A&M University. Rausch has testified as an expert witness at U.S. Senate hearings on elections and campaign communications.

The Transcript provided Rausch with existing and proposed boundary maps, the city charter and news coverage of reapportionment meetings.

Rausch speculated it would be difficult to prove that a non-partisan seat is gerrymandered, and was not certain Turner's comments were partisan.

"I'm not sure the comments show partisan bias as much as ideological bias," he said. "Some residents of Norman have differing views on the proper role of government in their lives. Could the comments be litigated? Everything could be litigated."

While city council and mayoral seats are non-partisan, national partisan issues made headway in local politics, research shows. Issues like police funding became politicized at the national level following protests against racial disparity and police brutality in 2020.

Pew Research reported 61% of Republicans favor increased police funding, while just 34% of Democrats agreed, an Oct. 26 report states. Registered Republicans Tortorello and Lynn promised voters they would reverse an $865,000 decrease to the Norman Police Department's proposed FY21 budget increase.

Allyson Shortle, an associate professor with the University of Oklahoma's Department of Political Science, studies American political behavior. Shortle told The Transcript that party labels are often visible to voters, who will vote according to their party even if the office is not partisan.

"Most people have enduring, psychologically enduring attachments to their political party, which makes them react really poorly to the out-party candidates," she said. "So, if any particular candidates — these two conservative candidates — largely view themselves as loyalists to a party, I think they have politicized this, and (are) trying to attach party labels and use these partisan arguments to politicize the conversation around municipal government. I can see where this could hypothetically work, and I think we're going to see more of it as Trump loyalists in particular start running for office and winning."

Rausch was skeptical Tortorello and Lynn's advertised party labels would prove to a court of law that voters supported the councilors for partisan ideals.

"I'm not sure the evidence is compelling," Rausch said. "Exit poll data is needed to determine if the conservatives were elected because they were conservatives, or just more likeable, or more honest or with more significant ties to their sub-community/neighborhood."

Shortle said during a typical year, she conducts exit polls, but the risks to pollsters' health during the COVID-19 pandemic prevented her department from doing so this year.

Common interest

Ward 5 residents and Tortorello believed the proposed boundary it will share with Ward 6 violated the charter's command to keep communities of interest together.

"Gerrymandering is in the eye of the beholder," Rausch said. "It is possible to put all members of a community of interest in one district. Let's say the community of interest is minority voters. I noticed that one councilor [Lynn] was concerned about losing homeowners and picking up renters, forgetting that renters tend to vote less regularly than homeowners. Is it gerrymandering to draw a district that includes most of the rental properties in a municipality?"

The Transcript obtained an email between City Attorney Kathryn Walker and Tortorello in which Walker said boundary lines could be drawn in multiple ways "to get the numbers right."

Walker added in her email that there is "not enough rural population to single the rural area out for its own ward without deviating from other ward populations by more than 10%. Drawing boundaries is definitely not a perfect science."

She also noted that Norman does have "adequate concentrations of legally protected populations."

Rausch said proof of gerrymandering is "easiest to prove if the committee drew some unusually shaped district — —I'm thinking a district stretching from Flood [Avenue] along just the south side of Boyd to Lake Thunderbird."

Uneven lines are a tell-tale sign of gerrymandering, as evidenced by several U.S. Supreme Court decisions. More recently, the court found a congressional district in Travis County, Texas in 2006 was gerrymandered to dilute the largely Democratic area. In 2002, the map showed a mostly square district, but by 2004, the district redrawn from north to south with jagged edges and uneven lines from Austin to McAllen.

Partisan committee?

The reapportionment committee is a mayoral-nominated and council-appointed committee formed to implement the results of the U.S. Census Bureau's decennial report.

According to the charter, members must be registered voters and residents in Norman. City Clerk Brenda Hall said staff do not ask for party affiliation in order to serve on any committee, and added that "party affiliation has no place in municipal board appointments."

Tortorello claimed the committee was stacked by a Democratic mayor with members who are mostly Democrats. Of nine members, voter records show the only registered Republican is Karen Goodchild, who voted not to send the committee's report to the council after she said fellow members refused to consider redrawing proposed development in south Ward 5 into Ward 1 or 7. Michael Zorba changed his registration from Democrat to Libertarian in 2016, and also voted no. Rich Lubbers is a registered Independent, while the remaining six are Democrats and voted yes.

"I like the idea of a citizen committee drawing districts," Rausch said. "The potential members of the committee are probably more attuned to the politics of the City Council than other Norman residents. Random selection, like a jury, would be a better way to select the redistricting committee."

While committee members were not provided with precinct voter results to make partisan decisions, Rausch said it was not impossible that members could find recent election results on their own.

Precinct results are available on the Cleveland County Election Board's website.

Future growth

The committee did receive residential growth via council-approved plats for housing subdivisions.

Committee Chair Aleisha Karjala told The Transcript following the public hearing that the group used plat information and the census data to predict which wards are expected to grow (which came out to wards 5, 6 and 8).

Tortorello alleged the committee should not have considered future growth if it was designed to base its decisions on current population.

"It's not in the city's [charter] to look at potential growth when deciding the boundaries," Tortorello said. He noted that platted development is no guarantee a developer will not abandon those plans, nor is it a guarantee the council will ultimately approve them.

Rausch said while it was a proactive move to consider the fairness of a ward's size between the 2020 and future 2030 census report, the decision invites speculation. The Transcript provided Rausch with existing and proposed ward maps, a link to the charter and news coverage of the committee meetings.

"Many Norman residents probably would agree that using potential growth is a good idea so that the ward populations wouldn't be too disparate well before the next census," he said. "The problem is that cynics have reason to argue that 'potential growth' is just a cover for trying to make it harder for the 'dangerous' conservative to be elected."

Gerrymandering is more easily done in large geographical areas, he said.

"A municipality, even a sprawling one like Norman, presents greater challenges to gerrymandering efforts, since there aren't as many opportunities as possible to pack or crack voters," Rausch said.

Rausch found no clear evidence of gerrymandering, he said.

"Following the charter's direction is the best way to avoid gerrymandering," he said. "All the current wards and the proposed wards look compact and, without distributing a survey, appear to include communities of interest."

The future of the committee's map remains uncertain until the council reviews it. The charter allows the council to make its own changes or adopt the committee's proposed boundaries.

Walker and City Manager Darrel Pyle have said they do not expect new boundaries to be adopted in time to impact the spring 2022 municipal elections. No council study sessions have been scheduled to discuss the committee's report, Hall said Thursday.

Mindy Wood covers City Hall news and notable court cases for The Transcript. Reach her at mwood@normantranscript.com or 405-416-4420.