It's that time of the decade again. Vermont's political boundaries for House representatives and Senate members are being redrawn to match new demographic information from the U.S. Census.
The process is known as apportionment. District lines for members of the General Assembly are subject to new interpretation, based on shifts in population. Areas of Vermont that have a growing number of residents, such as Burlington and towns in the Upper Valley, could gain more seats, while those municipalities with fewer Vermont residents, such as Greensboro, could see a drop in the number of House representatives and Senate members.
Members of the Apportionment Board will convene Thursday, and a map will be presented that changes district lines.
Every 10 years following the Census Bureau report, every state in the country is given an opportunity to reassess district lines for state representatives and senators. The district lines are split up according to population size. The denser the population, the smaller the district size geographically.
The one exception to this rule is a two-member district, in which the populace is doubled.
The process of developing a mapping system that reflects fair representation of the districts is no small political feat. The Vermont Apportionment Board is made up of two members from each of the three major parties - the Republican, Democratic, and the Progressive Party. Once they come to consensus on a map, it will be sent to the towns for approval.
The map's final destination is the Vermont Legislature, which is now dominated by Democrats, who will have the final say.
Although the board is in charge of readjusting both the House and the Senate district, the current focus is on creating district lines for the House. After the census numbers are released, the state is responsible for analyzing how populations have shifted and for deciding on how many citizens will be represented in a given district.
For the House, the “ideal number” is 4,172 residents to every one House representative. For the Senate, it's exactly five times that number.
Each district is given a positive or negative percentage based on whether it exceeds or falls short of the ideal number. The difference between the state's highest and lowest percentage is called a deviation.
According to population figures from the Secretary of State's office, Vermont's deviation is currently 45 percent. Tom Little, the chairman of the board, said that the percentage should ideally be in the teens, and he attributes the high number to population flux throughout the state.
“Population shifts that Vermont has seen in the last 30 to 40 years are still happening,” Little said.
Most of the population growth over the course of the last few decades has been in Chittenden County.
Because there is an obvious need for reapportionment to satisfy these standards, the board is taking two different paths. One methodology is to tweak the district lines just enough to meet the standards; the other is to break the districts down into more districts with a single House representative so there would be more representation in government.
According to Megan Brook, one of the six members of the board, the positive impact of smaller districts would be more diversity in government, which would then, in turn, improve the democratic process in Vermont.
Brook also suggested that if candidates were responsible for a smaller amount of constituents, more people might try to run for a legislative position.
“It's easier to find candidates to run when the task seems less daunting,” Brook said.
Steve Hintgen, a fellow board member, agrees with Brook and said that smaller districts would make life easier for Vermonters. There would be easier access to representatives, direct accountability, and more substantial relationships between the voters and the lawmakers.
“In a two-seat district, you (candidates) spend a lot of the summer going from door to door,” Hintgen said.
Hintgen also says that because some two-member districts might have one big town surrounded by many smaller towns, candidates from the larger towns are more likely to be elected, which then makes it easier for incumbent candidates to stay in office.
Eric Davis, a retired political science professor from Middlebury College, is strongly in favor of keeping two-person districts, because he believes that breaking them into single-member districts would create an artificial divide in towns. (Brook said they were determined to keep towns whole while redistricting.)
“Local officials in almost all of those towns prefer to keep it a two-member,” Davis said.
Davis also suggests that the whole process is an “academic exercise,” as the board's partisanship does not represent the current legislature body, and as soon as the proposal gets to the House, divisions that end up with a negative impact on incumbent lawmakers will be changed back, even though both the board and the lawmakers are supposed to ignore the influence of partisanship, according to the reapportionment statute.
“I think the House is going to do what they want to do. I want to give them an alternative proposal,” Brook said, adding that if the House were to make changes, it would need to justify them for the good of the state, not for a particular party.
After the board agrees on the redistricting map, which will be finished by July 1, they will send it to the Boards of Civil Authority (BCAs) all over the state so that the towns can weigh in.
The BCAs will send the proposals back to the Reapportionment Board for redesign. By August 15, the board will submit its final proposal to the House of Representatives.