North Las Vegas redistricting has downsides

A sparse crowd of North Las Vegas residents trickled into the 100 Academy of Excellence gymnasium around 6 p.m. July 28. A handful more shuffled in about 20 minutes later.

None seemed in much of a hurry to learn about redistricting — the post-census process by which state and municipal leaders draw election boundaries.

North Las Vegas officials, who had called the town hall meeting to teach City Council Ward 2 residents about a proposed redrawing of the city ward map, hardly seemed to blame them.

“Don’t go falling asleep on us,” City Clerk Barbara Andolina warned the crowd ahead of a bone-dry 20-minute presentation on state and federal apportionment standards.

“When you talk about redistricting, keep one thing in mind: You are realigning the boundaries of the wards and when you do that, at times, precincts get moved from one ward to another and people get moved around.”

North Las Vegas is in the early stages of its first redistricting effort in more than a decade, one that, if approved, would push hundreds of Republican voters out of the ward represented by the city’s sole conservative City Council member.

Some 4,291 active voters could be drawn into a new ward ahead of the June 2015 nonpartisan municipal general election.

Nearly two-thirds of those residents last voted for a City Council member in 2011 and, under the proposed redistricting, wouldn’t be able to weigh in on their new ward’s elected representatives until 2017. Council members serve four-year-terms.

The rest, around 1,650 voters, would get to cast a second municipal ballot in as many years, albeit for an entirely different council seat.

That’s thanks to staggered election cycles that see even- and odd-numbered wards land on different municipal election ballots, irking voters bounced between the two election cycles just about whenever redistricting happens.

The city’s proposed redistricting would not affect upcoming county, state or federal elections.

Community activist Jon Oats, one of those put off by North Las Vegas’ latest redistricting push, fears the city’s good faith effort to more fairly divide its voting populace could steal the vote from thousands who would have otherwise helped decide Ward 2 and Ward 4 City Council races in 2015.

City leaders still have time to reconsider the city’s proposed redistricting map. Oats, one of the voters whom the plan would move from Ward 2 to Ward 1, plans to give them something to think about with an alternate voting district map he drafted early this month.

“Those two (Ward 2 precincts) changing doesn’t affect the total number of voters, but it definitely deprives roughly 2,000 voters the opportunity to vote and gives the other 2,000 a disproportional amount of voting power,” Oats said last month. “I know that several groups are upset about it.”

SOME DISENFRANCHISED

It remains to be seen whether the city can avoid leaving some voters on the sidelines at the June 2015 municipal general election.

Councilman Isaac Barron, who represents Ward 1, said city leaders should have taken on redistricting alongside with their municipal neighbors right after U.S. census numbers came out in 2011.

Disenfranchising voters in four separate precincts could prove to be the price the city pays for not doing so.

“Clearly, redistricting was not done when it should have been,” the first-term councilman said Monday, “but we are moving forward and working to put North Las Vegas in the right direction.”

City Clerk Andolina, who watched the city miss out on a redistricting push after the 2010 census, said North Las Vegas’ redistricting efforts are dependent on coordination with the Clark County Elections Department.

She said county elections workers had their hands full with preparations for the 2012 presidential election and couldn’t help the city with its post-census redistricting.

Clark County spokesman Dan Kulin said it’s not unusual for redistricted voters to miss out on a municipal election cycle.

He added that it’s “up to the discretion of the city,” not the county, to initiate and complete a redistricting push for council wards.

Republican Wade Wagner, one of two City Council members up for re-election in 2015, said he doesn’t remember why he and other city leaders failed to put together a redistricting proposal three years ago. He represents Ward 4.

Democrat Pamela Goynes-Brown, the other incumbent up for re-election in June, said she didn’t know why the city didn’t follow through with a new ward map. She represents Ward 2.

She acknowledged that putting off the effort could result in some precinct-specific disenfranchisement but stopped short of suggesting that could scuttle this year’s redistricting plan.

Three of four precincts vulnerable to disenfranchisement under the city’s redistricting proposal lie in Brown’s ward.

Her advice to those voters? Double-check your voter registration card before hitting the polls.

“My team and I have gone through and looked at registered voters in every precinct, but we can’t take (registration) into account,” Brown said last month. “If we could, we’d keep every single one of them.

“So I would suggest that you start paying attention to those numbers on your election packet, because if your precinct changes that could affect where you vote.”

TOUGH LUCK

City redistricting consultant Frederick Kessler could not be reached for comment on how or whether disenfranchisement might be avoided in city precincts.

Kessler, who conducted the city’s last redistricting in 2004, has said the aim of the city’s latest redrawing should be to ensure voting districts better reflect the city’s minority-dominated population.

He did not volunteer an opinion on the possibility of voter disenfranchisement while pitching the proposal to City Council members in July.

City leaders held a second town hall meeting on the topic Thursday. They hope to introduce an ordinance on the plan later this month.

Until then, the takeaway for thousands of voters who might lose out on a chance to pick their City Council representative remains jarringly simple: Tough luck.

“Before (last month’s) meeting, we met with Pamela Goynes-Brown about how (redistricting) would affect the community, and we never got a clear answer,” neighborhood activist and Ward 2 voter Lydia Garrett said Tuesday.

“My own opinion is that I don’t know enough about it yet. … I don’t think (Brown) even understands it,” he added.

Contact James DeHaven at jdehaven@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3839. Find him on Twitter: @JamesDeHaven.