With safe supermajority, Ky’s GOP redistricting didn’t have to be as bad as it is

The Kentucky State House Republicans have unveiled their redistricting proposal for the state house. Now that they have released precinct level data, it is worth examining the effect these new maps will have on communities around the commonwealth. Using Dave’s Redistricting App, I have analyzed some of the proposed districts, and I have serious concerns about their impact on fair representation.

Some of the legislators’ map drawing decisions appear to have no logic behind them. Laurel County has roughly 62,000 inhabitants. That population is roughly enough for 1.4 legislative districts, but the Republicans have divided it among six different legislative districts. London alone is split into three districts. Legislators should explain what community of interest they are serving by dividing Laurel county with one fewer cross county split than Fayette and Jefferson counties combined.

In Fayette County, the GOP is showing their disdain for college students. The old House District 75 included the entire University of Kentucky campus, the student apartment complexes in the area, and the dorms at Transylvania University, creating a district where college students were well represented as a community. The new maps completely disassemble the college centered district. The proposed HD 75 takes on UK’s North Campus and some of the nearby apartment complexes, but it leaves out the rest of UK. The legislators did not even take the time to unify campus! The central campus, including its dorms, is moved into HD 79. Transylvania University was moved into HD 77. The old HD 75 preserved college students as a community of interest. The proposed map’s splitting the major sources of student voting in Lexington reduces their voice in the legislature, even if it does not affect the base partisanship of the districts.

Northern Kentucky also saw major changes. Covington, once kept whole in HD 65, is now divided among districts. Using two-party vote share at the precinct level from the 2016 Presidential Election, HD 65 goes from being a Clinton +8 district to Trump +14 under the proposed maps. The district’s proposed configuration is designed to take out Rep. Buddy Wheatley, D-Covington. It is obvious that the legislature is attempting to crack the more Democratic voting regions of Northern Kentucky to add additional seats to their already enormous 75-member supermajority.

HD 20 currently sits in Bowling Green and contains Western Kentucky University. The proposed maps are clearly intended to target Representative Patti Minter by drawing out WKU’s south campus and removing additional Democratic leaning Bowling Green precincts. Her district would be at least Trump +12 under the new maps. The current HD 20 is Clinton +1.6. Just as they did with Northern Kentucky, the House GOP cracked the Democratic leaning areas of Bowling Green, this time to eliminate the last remaining Democratic representative in Western Kentucky.

This entire process has lacked anything resembling transparency. After spending months secretly drawing the maps with no public input, the House GOP initially only released PDF images with no shapefiles or precinct assignments. Although the precinct assignments are now publicly available, the legislature is pushing these maps through so quickly that it is clear the main reason they kept them under wraps is to avoid dealing with public comment entirely.

The Republicans did not have much at stake with this round of redistricting, and they still found a path to hurting Kentuckians across the commonwealth. There is no possible way to draw a Democratic majority into the State House, and it would be difficult to even target their supermajority, which is why this map is so puzzling. In the Republicans’ press conference on Dec. 30, House Speaker David Osborne challenged anyone who took issue with their plan to come up with their own for the entire state, rather than complain about individual districts. This came just after he said that they had no intention of changing the map. I challenge them to do their jobs. Yes, drawing the maps is difficult, but that is no excuse for poor performance when altering the representation of over four million people.

This is a deeply flawed map that will damage the many communities’ role in government. The governor should veto this map to buy the public more time to study it. The legislature should, at the very least, create a period for public input on the map. They can at least pretend to care about fair representation for Kentuckians instead of better representation for their caucus.

Aidan O’Brien is a UK political science student.