Boa Unable To Produce Precinct Level Info For Redistricting Map (update)

The Arkansas Board of Apportionment is scheduled to vote on proposed new House and Senate maps on Friday morning. The House and Senate maps proposed by Gov. Mike Beebe will likely pass with votes by himself and Attorney General Dustin McDaniel, whose maps closely mirror Beebe’s.  However, in spite of released PDF copies of their maps, they have still been unable (or unwilling) to provide the precinct level data for their maps.  And perhaps even more oddly, the Board of Apportionment insists they don’t even have to have this information for the final vote in less than 24 hours.

I am certainly not an expert in the Board of Apportionment process, but after observing the Congressional redistricting process, I understand the importance of the actual precinct level data – listing which voting precincts are in each individual district.  The bill passed by the state legislature had this information.  This was what I used to discover the error in the bill with the non-continuous portion of the Fourth Congressional District in Humphrey leading to an amendment to correct the oversight.

After repeated requests, Joe Woodson with the BOA tells me late on Wednesday he is still unable to provide this information.  I have also contacted the governor’s office and attorney general’s office who have both referred me to Woodson.

"Codified language is not required," insisted Woodson. "We are putting together our final report to be voted on and filed Friday. As I said yesterday (Tuesday), the information you want is not readily available in the software. Our IT guys are having to go in and pull out the information we need to describe the new districts by county, precinct and block."

Seriously, this legally is not required? Mark Myers in the Secretary of State’s office disagrees.

"The legal descriptions are required," said Myers. "There’s no way to tell what parts of precincts are in what districts. Without that data, it could be Humphrey all over again."

Who is right?  I am certainly not an election attorney, but it certainly seems that some sort of official language defining the individual districts would have to be approved by the board. But with so little time before the vote on Friday, even if they released the data now, it would be virtually impossible for anyone to comb through it in that small amount of time.

So much for transparency.

UPDATE – 7:00 pm Thursday evening and I finally have the precinct level data for the Governor’s proposed maps which are up for a vote tomorrow morning.  Ironically, it was the Secretary of State’s office that was finally able to get it to me.  The file is a big too large to post (I think) but if anybody wants it – send me a note – [email protected]. I am not sure what I will be able to gleen from it with only a few hours before tomorrow morning’s vote.