Why 'safe' voting districts hurt Arizona

Dan Hunting

AZ I See It

Even if a legislative district leans heavily toward one political party, that doesn’t mean everyone in the district feels that way – or would vote that way.

It is already time to start thinking about the 2020 redistricting process.
More consideration should be given to the less glamorous but arguably more important legislative districts.
The next round of redistricting represents a real opportunity to create a Legislature that more accurately reflects policy wishes and choices of all Arizona voters.

With the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision permitting continuation of the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission, it is already time to start thinking about the 2020 redistricting process.

While most redistricting attention has focused on Arizona’s nine congressional districts, more consideration should be given to the less glamorous but arguably more important legislative districts.

Here’s why: The nine people we send to Congress in Washington, D.C., don’t really have the power to affect our daily lives much, but the 90 locally elected individuals we send to the Arizona House and Senate surely do.

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These are the people who, depending on your political outlook, are either bravely holding the line against higher taxes and bigger government or savagely cutting funding to education and putting our future at risk.

Either way, it’s important.

The current map of Arizona Legislative Districts does not serve the state well. Due to several factors – including preserving traditional boundaries and voting trends – nearly a third of voters are effectively disenfranchised.

That’s because the Legislature is defined by 30 districts that accentuate political party dominance, either heavily favoring hard-core Republican or hard-core Democratic candidates, with very few seats truly up for grabs. This also is despite the fact that the number of registered independents in Arizona outnumbers Republicans or Democrats.

This “safe district” format has some notable effects:

COMPETITION IS REDUCED FOR LEGISLATIVE SEATS.

Six of our 30 state senators were effectively put into office by one vote each. In other words, four Republicans and two Democrats faced no opposition from within their own parties in the 2014 primary election, and none from the opposing party in the general election.

Those six districts were Legislative District 1, covering most of Yavapai County; District 3 in Tucson; District 5 in western Arizona; District 6, stretching from the Grand Canyon to the rim country; District 9 around Oro Valley; and District 26 in Tempe and west Mesa. The end result was that 20 percent of our senators really needed no vote other than their own to clinch their election.

ARIZONA VOTERS ARE DEPRIVED OF REAL CHOICE.

Every Arizonan is represented by three people at the Legislature — one senator and two representatives per district. On Election Day, voters could and arguably should have a choice of at least six names to choose from for these three seats: two from each major party, plus the occasional third-party candidate.

However, parties are unlikely to mount campaigns in districts where there is a small chance of winning, so many seats go uncontested. In fact, in 2014 only six of the 30 districts had candidates from both parties vying for each seat. And in 80 percent of the legislative districts, at least one of the three seats was uncontested by a major party.

MANY VOTERS ARE EFFECTIVELY DISENFRANCHISED.

Even if a district leans heavily toward one political party, that doesn’t mean everyone in the district feels that way – or would vote that way. Consider this: No Democrat ran for either the House or Senate in District 15 in the last election. However, more than 21,000 voters in this north Phoenix district voted for Fred DuVal, the Democratic candidate for governor. It’s a safe bet that a good share of these voters would have voted for a Democrat for the House or Senate if they had the opportunity.

Likewise, no Republicans ran for the Legislature from District 7 in northeastern Arizona, even though there were nearly 17,000 votes cast for Republican Doug Ducey. As a result, these voters had no real voice in the selection process at the Legislature, and have little chance of ever getting a voice under the current system.

In the 2014 election, 478,000 voters in 24 legislative districts were denied the chance to vote for their preferred party in at least one legislative contest. That number represents more than 30 percent of the people who cast votes and does not include those who simply didn’t vote because there was no one to their liking on the ballot.

Dan Hunting is senior policy analyst at the Morrison Institute for Public Policy.

Some blame for this void falls on the two major parties, which are unwilling to commit resources to races in districts that are not favorable to them. However, if district boundaries were drawn differently to protect less “safe districts” and create more “competitive districts,” more of them would be in play. Subsequently, we could expect to see more candidates step forward.

With the U.S. Supreme Court case settled, the Independent Redistricting Commission will still have its work cut out for it to carve out districts that increase both voter and candidate participation. But the next round of redistricting represents a real opportunity to create a legislature that more accurately reflects policy wishes and choices of all Arizona voters, instead of a limited few.

Dan Hunting is a senior policy analyst at Morrison Institute for Public Policy, an Arizona State University non-partisan think tank. Learn more at MorrisonInstitute.asu.edu.