[INAUDIBLE]
In communicating with me, through me,
to other members of the body and to outside advocacy groups,
it was really a team effort, as it was 10 years ago,
because I think in the end, one of the things
I've learned about this process is the more people
you have involved and the more people
you have sitting at the table, the better result
you will receive.
So to my co-chair, Senator, do you want to say something
before I start?
No, I would just want to reiterate my thanks to all
the members of this committee.
And I'll add more later in the way of many thanks
that I need to give.
But let me refer to you to get going.
All right, so I will start from the top.
I would like to start by thanking
all of the members of the steering committee
on redistricting.
And particularly, I'd like to thank the Senate Vice
Chair, the gentlelady from Spencer,
as well as my Vice Chair in the house, the gentleman
from Lawrence.
I believe you too have attended every single hearing that we've
had, and you've been great vice chairs.
To my co-chair, Senator Brownsberger from Belmont,
a special thank you to you.
When we began this journey committed
to conducting a fair and open, transparent process where
everyone who wanted a voice was given one
and where advocates will not only ask their opinion,
but their suggestions were implemented
into the final drafts that you will see today--
after the very difficult 2020 census
delays in getting us the official numbers,
timelines that needed to be adjusted and then readjusted,
and all of the problems that came along with COVID-19,
I am happy to announce that today,
we will be releasing the proposed house maps of our 160
house districts.
My formal involvement in this process
began in the spring of 2019 while working
with Pam Beaumont of Common Cause
and Beth Huang of the Mass Voter Table.
We were attempting, for the first time ever,
to secure state fundings in the 2020 budget
for the purposes of creating a census complete count program.
We eventually secured $2.5 million.
That money was to be distributed by the Secretary of State
to local nonprofits and community organizations
in hard to count areas and communities so that they
would not be undercounted as they
have been in previous years.
Well, based on the 2020 official census numbers,
I think it is accurate to say that that program worked.
The 2020 census count was 7,029,917 residents
of Massachusetts.
No one, not the census, not any outside group,
had us exceeding 7 million people.
I want to thank my colleagues in the House and Senate
for funding that program.
The 2020 census figures showed us a changing demographic
in Massachusetts.
The white population in this state, which is now 4,748,897,
had decreased by 7 percentage points.
The Black population in this state,
which is now 457,055 people, increased by almost 17%.
The Asian population is now almost a half a million
at 504,900 people.
That was an increase of 45%.
And the Hispanic population, which is now 887,685 people,
also had a large increase of 41%.
These populations figures reflect
the diversity of the Commonwealth
and the many faces of Massachusetts.
What you are going to see in these house
maps is a reflection of those numbers.
Next in the process came the public input
and the listening and learning part of the process.
We were committed to improving on the successes of 10 years
ago in making this process an even open and more transparent
one.
To do that, our website this time around provided
the ability for anyone who went to it to translate that site
into 110 different languages.
We held for the first time ESL hearings
with translators in Spanish, Cantonese, Mandarin, Cape
Verdean, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Khmer,
and Vietnamese speaking residents.
We live streamed our hearings so that anybody
who wanted to watch them could go on our website
and simply click a button and watch
these hearings in real time.
In addition, we kept a lot of worked 10 years ago.
Our website was robust.
35,000 people viewed our website, and on that website,
you could get case law.
You had the ability to draw your own maps.
You could submit testimony, and you
could watch hearings that had already been recorded
if you happened to miss them.
We held 19 hearings, six more than we did 10 years ago.
And in total, 548 people signed up
to give testimony during these hearings.
Way back when we first started this committee,
we created a charge, a special charge of the committee,
on redistricting.
And it said that we were going to be
mindful of federal and state redistricting case
law, equal voting opportunities established by the Voting
Rights Act, the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment,
the United States Constitution, the Massachusetts
Constitution, traditional redistricting principles,
and it told us that we had to hold hearings
across the Commonwealth to solicit
views of interested parties.
I believe the maps we will release today
for public comment reflect that charge,
and the input received through the hearings and comments
submitted through the website, we listened to.
So now it's onto the maps.
I am happy to report that because of your involvement--
elected officials, outside advocacy groups,
our municipal partners, all who was involved--
we have created 33 majority opportunity districts
in the house.
That's up from 20 before this process started.
I want to, if I can right now, explain to you,
and this is an important piece of this,
what we are calling a majority opportunity
district-- a majority-minority opportunity district.
A majority-minority opportunity district
is where the non-Hispanic white percentage is less than 50%.
Let me say that again--
where the non-Hispanic white population is less than 50%
of the total population in the district.
We are considering that to be a majority opportunity district,
and there are 33 of those that we drew.
Inside those 33 majority opportunity districts,
there are majority Hispanic and majority Black districts.
Those are to be defined as any district where
50% of the total population is Black or Hispanic.
We draw 10 of those.
10 of the 33 are either majority Hispanic.
There are eight majority Hispanic,
and there are two majority Black.
That is part of the 33.
It's important that you think about that in that context
so you have a better understanding of the difference
between a majority Hispanic, a majority Black, and a majority
minority opportunity districts.
So now I am going to disappear from the screen,
and I am going to put up a slide show that I will be explaining.
And we are going to go through the 33 districts in the house
so that everybody has a full explanation,
or I can give you a full explanation
of what those look like.
This is the current map.
There isn't much to say here other than this
map you see is the new map of the Commonwealth
with all of the districts in it.
Your next slide will be-- this is an important slide
because it gives you a lot of context
on what happened on the map.
If you look out here in western Mass,
you will see all of those districts
out there needed population.
All of the brown colored areas, light colored brown areas,
or areas that needed population.
All of the darker colored brown areas
are areas where there was excess population.
And its most fundamental piece of this process
is you need to reapportion all of those districts
so that they fall between 41,740 and not as high as 46,134.
So that's the portioning part of this process.
Now we have to adhere to all of the principles and the charges
that we outlined in the beginning of this process.
Next, you will see the majority minority opportunity
sections of the map.
These are areas where we saw where there's
50% or more people that are classified as majority
minority living in an area where they can create a new
or strengthen an existing district.
I want to be very clear when I say this.
There is not an area--
and this is something that I think
we can be very proud of with this map.
There is not an area on this map where
you could draw 50% of any population,
whether it be a combination of Black, Hispanic, and Asian,
or just Black or just Hispanic.
There's not an area on this map where you could draw it,
and we didn't draw it.
So 33 is the maximum amount of districts
that you could do when you understand
the fact that our guide for this is
that if you have over 50% of the population,
you have to draw it.
So those are the areas we're focusing on in the next slides.
Let's first put up Springfield.
This is the Springfield area, and these are
the districts in Springfield.
Let's start with the top district up top
here, which is Orlando Ramos, and he represents
the 9th Hampden district.
What we had to do here was reconfigure
a bunch of precincts on the Eastern part of Springfield,
and we had to remove some people who represented pieces
of Springfield to recreate this district from anew
and make it majority Hispanic.
So this is one of the 33 majority opportunity districts,
majority minority opportunity districts,
that is specifically Hispanic.
This means that the Hispanic population in this district
is over 50% of the total population.
Next, you can go to the next slide, which we'll actually
show the district.
These are the precincts that are in that ninth Hampden district.
Again, if you look at the ledger on the side,
you will see the population there of Hispanic.
And you will notice that the Hispanic population
in that district is 51.2%.
The non-Hispanic white population,
which is essentially everybody that isn't classified as
white by the Census, is 27.9%.
This is a new district in Springfield
that is majority Hispanic.
OK, next, we have the 10th Hampden district.
This district is currently represented by Carlos Gonzalez.
We didn't have to do much here because this was already
a majority Hispanic district.
What we had to do is we had to level it
off so that whatever we gave up the top here to the 9th Hampden
district, we needed to grab some population down
here to make sure that it was within the plus or minus 5.
This too is also a majority Hispanic district.
Next, we have the 11th Hamdan.
The 11th Hamdan is in the middle of Springfield,
which is currently represented by Bud Williams.
This district we had to reconfigure down here a little
and up here a little.
And this district is majority minority opportunity,
with the two biggest populations in this district being
Hispanic and Black.
Moving down, I want to go to the Holyoke,
in the Holyoke district.
This district was challenging to draw simply
because all of the towns outside of Holyoke
tend to have a large percentage of non-Hispanic whites.
The only Hispanic piece that we could go to--
because this is a section two district.
This is a majority Hispanic district.
We went into Chicopee and using census blocks and precincts,
we were able to get this population
into the plus or minus 5% and keep it Hispanic.
So that's how we were able to keep this a Hispanic district.
Moving down, we'll go to Worcester.
So this is all the area of Worcester.
We did this area here.
This was the only majority minority district
in all of Worcester.
But with the great-- they had a very strong census count.
We were able to reconfigure a bunch of precincts here,
and instead of having one majority minority opportunity
district, Worcester now has three majority minority
opportunity districts.
And we'll go through them very briefly.
This right here is the 15th Worcester district
which is currently represented by Mary Keef.
This district again, by maneuvering some populations
in this district, we were able to keep this
the strongest majority minority district where
the percentage of nonwhite Hispanic is 37%, 36.4%.
This is the strongest of the three districts in Worcester.
Next, we'll go to the 16th Worcester district,
which is represented currently by representative Dan Donohue.
Again, moving some precincts around
on the western side of the district
and a little bit at the top, we were
able to make this district majority
minority where 47.8% of the population
is non-Hispanic white.
And lastly, we have the 17th Worcester district.
This took some work.
So this is the town of Leicester.
This used to be entirely in this district.
But because of the strong population growth in Worcester,
we were able to keep-- well, not we're able to.
We kept these two precincts in this district,
and we reconfigured this part of the district,
making this a majority minority district where
43.9% of this district is non-Hispanic white.
So Worcester, after this process,
goes from one majority minority opportunity district to three.
Next, we'll move down to New Bedford.
The New Bedford area was very challenging
and the fact that we really had to break some precinct lines
here and go to census blocks.
And when you look along the water here,
you will see that there is a number of non-Hispanic white
population that when put together
got us to a majority minority district.
This is a new one that we constructed.
It's not incumbent-free, but it's new.
When you look, this is basically the water.
These areas were added down here,
some areas over here, which got us to a new district which
is 47.8% non-Hispanic white.
Moving out of New Bedford, we will move over
to the Randolph area.
There was a lot of talk at our hearings about Randolph.
Let me say from a larger perspective,
we looked at this over and over again.
There was thoughts that we create a Black district
down here using Brockton.
There was thoughts that we could reconfigure this in some way
that Randolph, their request could be honored.
But in the end of the day, the Randolph issue
is, in my opinion, is there's a large population of--
majority minority population in Boston and an even large--
not even larger-- and a very large one in Brockton.
So what we did is we split Randolph in two.
We brought them down to two reps from three.
So they used to have three.
Now they're down to two.
You have this district, the first district,
which is the first Norfolk district, which encompasses
Quincy and Randolph, where that is a majority minority
opportunity district.
And the second one in Randolph is the seventh Norfolk,
which has a clean line going down the middle.
Both of these districts are majority minority opportunity
districts, and we go from three reps down to two reps.
Next, we'll go to Framingham.
This is an oddly shaped district,
but this is an incumbent-free-- there is
no incumbent in this district.
And it is a majority minority opportunity district.
So come next election cycle, this district
here will have the ability to elect
a new person of their choice in a district that is majority
minority opportunity.
And that is roughly 41% non-Hispanic white,
which means it's obviously 59% minority majority opportunity.
That is a new district that we drew,
and that is going to be incumbent-free.
Let's next move up to Lowell.
Lowell has three representatives that represent Lowell.
Two of them are majority minority.
One of them-- let's go to the 17th Middlesex District.
This district is currently represented by Vanna Howard.
And one of the things we did here,
which is something that all of you on this committee
will not remember--
the Chelmsford area was not happy
that they had the amount of reps they had.
So we were able to take Vanna Howard out of Chelmsford
and move this district over and add her to Tewkesbury, keeping
this a majority minority district
where 47% of the population is non-Hispanic white.
The neighboring district, which we really
didn't touch at all because we didn't have to--
this is [INAUDIBLE],, this district, which is currently
representing [INAUDIBLE].
It's the 18th Middlesex district.
This is the largest Asian district in this area.
The Asian population accounts for--
let me see.
I think it accounts for--
sorry about this--
31% of this district.
So 31% of this district is Asian,
and it is 32% non-Hispanic white.
We didn't really have to do much to keep
that district in the position it was in.
Next, we'll go to Everett.
This is the Everett Malden area, and right now, this district
here is represented-- it's the 28th Middlesex District
represented by Joe McGonigle.
This region in particular of Chelsea, Everett, and Revere
had a really strong population count.
Again, hopefully it was because of the work
that we did by creating that fund.
But there was a lot of population.
All of these districts were heavy
when it came to population.
So we reconfigured some districts.
We took this precinct out of this district
and added it to the Chelsea District.
And we did some census blocks here,
and this district here is a majority minority
district where 33% of the population
is non-Hispanic white.
The next district, which is the 33rd Middlesex district,
we didn't really have to do much here.
This is currently represented by Steve Altoona.
This is now a majority minority district
where 39.7% of the population is non-Hispanic white.
So this district in particular has sort of
matured this way over time.
So we didn't really have to do much--
nothing at all with that district.
Next, we'll go to Brockton.
This is, if you heard me when I talked about Randolph,
we did a lot in Brockton.
We have three districts in the city of Brockton.
Two of them are majority minority opportunity.
You can flash in on the first one,
which is the 10th Plymouth.
This district is currently represented
by Michelle Du Bois.
This district had a number of the towns outside of Brockton.
The Bridgewaters were all in this district.
We took them out of this district,
and we put it entirely in Brockton
so that this district is majority
minority at 31% non-Hispanic white,
and it's entirely in Brockton.
And we felt like that was making the city of Brockton whole.
We thought it was the right thing to do for that reason.
Next, this is the second of four incumbent-free districts.
This is the middle of Brockton, basically sandwiched
between two other districts.
But this is the middle of Brockton.
This district is 17% non-Hispanic
white where the largest population in this district
is African-American or Black.
And it is 38% of this district.
So this district here is incumbent-free,
and come next year, a year from this January, somebody
from this district will be a new member of the Chamber,
of the House Chamber.
OK, moving into Suffolk County, in particular the area
of Revere, the 16th Suffolk district, if you look at this,
this is pretty much Revere Beach.
And this population along here was added to this district
down here, which is Winthrop, making
this district non-Hispanic white go up.
And then we reconfigured some precincts in the middle here,
making this district, which is currently representing
Jessica Giannino a majority minority opportunity
district where the non-Hispanic white percentage is 48.
So this is a majority minority opportunity district
that we've crafted out of this.
Next, we'll go to Boston.
This area here has a lot of changes.
Some of them were a lot, but some of them are none,
but let's do the easy one first, which is the first Suffolk
district, which is currently represented by Adrian McDowell.
It's all of east Boston, and it is a majority Hispanic district
where the Hispanic population is the majority minority.
And the white population is 36.5%.
And that would be the non-Hispanic white population.
So we didn't have to do anything there.
That's just matured that way over time.
Let's go to fifth Suffolk district.
This district is currently represented by Liz Miranda.
This is a majority minority district represented
by Liz Miranda right now.
This was challenging because next to this district right
here is the district that Dan Hunt represents,
which is the 13th Suffolk district.
And then next to that is water.
So you know you're dealing with some geography
here that's kind of challenging.
So we were able to, between these two districts,
trade off some districts that were-- some precincts that
were more favorable to add to this district
and give back to this district some precincts
that were more in line with what this population wants.
So you get this fifth Suffolk district,
which, this is probably a good time to talk about some
of the challenges with this census data.
There was a high other population in this area.
So this traditionally would have been a Black district.
I think most of us that look at the data or most of us that
live in Boston know that this is a Black district.
But because of the very high other,
we were not able to get the Black number over 50%.
Now I do want to point something out to you.
I want to point this number right here out to you.
The non-Hispanic white district, which
is essentially what we define as white people, is 6%.
So if this is 6%, this is a pretty strong district
that I think--
that is Black.
But unfortunately, because of the way
some people answered the census this time around,
it was challenging to get that to over 50%.
But I would point out this number here
that this is a very strong district and will likely now--
well, the person of their choice may very well
be a Black candidate.
Let's go beyond that and now go to the sixth district.
This district is currently represented by Russell Holmes.
These three districts were challenging
because some of them dropped in population.
So we had to find the population.
This district, the sixth district,
actually dropped its Black population
by 10%, which is kind of surprising to me, at least.
And the district above that I just mentioned
was Liz Miranda's district, which
was after we applied the census numbers to it,
brought it down to 41% Black.
We were able to bring that up a few points.
But this district here still remains a very strong district,
majority minority opportunity district,
that is majority Black.
And the Black population in this district is 57.9%, 58%--
again, a very strong district that I
think will more than likely re-elect Russell
or if Russell decides to leave will probably
have another black person in the membership that
will be representing it.
Let's go to the seventh Suffolk.
This district is currently represented
by Chynah Tyler who, because of some of these shifting
populations in Boston on this side,
Representative Tyler had to pick up some of this area
here in the seventh Suffolk, had to pick up
some of this area here, and pick up
a little bit of Mission Hill.
But the strongest-- this is a majority minority opportunity
district with the strongest population in this district
being Black.
So the Black population is still a very strong portion
of this district, which I think gets us
to a good number where the non-Hispanic white is at 29%.
Let's go to the ninth Suffolk district next.
This district is sandwiched between the Chynah Tyler
district, the Liz Miranda district,
and the Jay Livingstone and the Aaron Michaels district.
It's kind of the middle of Boston.
This district was formerly represented by--
some of you may remember Byron Rushing.
But this district has changed drastically
over the last 10 years.
But when we reconfigured it and added some and took away,
we still have it as a majority minority opportunity
district where the non-Hispanic white is 45%.
And I think it's a very strong district that
is in the middle of Boston.
Down to the South of Boston, you'll
see this is the 12th Suffolk, which is currently
represented by Brandy Oakley.
Here in Milton, we were able to carve out
some more of the Black population
and add it to this district, and we gave her some more precincts
up here.
We took away-- no, we didn't take away anyone.
We just added some precincts here,
added some here, and we got her population
to within the deviation where she is only 18%
of the population is non-Hispanic white
and the Black population represents about 58%
of this district.
So we had to reconfigure this district
to make sure it stayed majority Black.
All right, we'll move now to representative Hunt's district,
which is the 13th Suffolk.
Again, you got to remember.
Like I said before, this is now over here
where Liz Miranda's district is.
Russell Holmes comes in here, and Brandy Oakley comes here.
To make sure this remained a majority minority opportunity
district, we took this district out of Quincy.
We added some population here, and we
had to add this precinct up here,
which is the UMass campus, Boston campus.
And this-- you got to remember.
The geography is tough here.
You get all of these majority minority districts or majority
Black districts here.
You have water here.
So this is kind of where this ends up.
This district is 42% non-Hispanic white,
and it's a majority minority opportunity districts.
Moving on to the 14th Suffolk district, which
is representative Rob Consalvo, who represents us now,
not much change here.
We had to push him north a little
up here to grab some precincts up here.
I think that was all we did here.
Some of these districts are easy to draw
because there's not much change that you need to do.
But we just need to add some population to his northern
part, making his non-Hispanic white--
38% is that?
38%.
So moving on past that, this is a new district.
Well, it's mostly a new district.
It's the 50th Suffolk district currently represented in part
by Liz Malia and Nika Elugardo.
Takes her completely out of the Brookline,
moves her into Boston pretty substantially.
This district was a white district
before the process started.
And right now, it's a majority minority opportunity district
where 47.2% of the people are non-Hispanic white.
The Hispanic population is 24%, the Asian population is 11%,
and the Black population is 14%.
But when you combine them all, you
have a majority minority opportunity districts here.
Moving beyond Nika Alvaro, you go down to the city of Chelsea.
This district here, as you can imagine, it's brand new,
it's incumbent free, and it's majority Hispanic.
As I said earlier, the Everett Revere-Chelsea area
had a great census count, I hope again
no small part to the work that this legislature has
done to create that committee to help in that vein.
And this district here, which is all of Chelsea
and the strongest precinct I could get from Everett to make
this a strong district, this is majority Hispanic, incumbent
free, incumbent free.
And that is a district that I think is more than likely going
to get a Hispanic person of their choice
that is going to be in this body a year from this January.
Again, it's incumbent free.
OK, after that we'll move up to the Lynn
area, where you have the 10th Essex and the 11th Essex
district.
It wasn't much that need to be done here
because of the populations and how they are.
We just basically shifted some population with census blocks
in between here.
And that brought this district, which is the 10th Essex, down.
And then they were able to keep this precinct up here.
So this is just shifting a very small amount of population
to keep these districts' non-Hispanic white population
in the right space so that they both could
be considered a majority minority opportunity district.
The 10th Essex, which is currently
represented by Dan Cahill, is 31.47% non-Hispanic white,
making it a fairly strong non-Hispanic white district
where 47% of the people in this district identify as Hispanic.
Let's go to the 11th Essex district, which
is now represented currently by Pete Capuano--
again, just switching a few precincts here.
And this district is 33.96% non-Hispanic
white where 43.1 of this district is Hispanic.
My guess is-- and just having done this twice,
my guess is that 10 years from now, both of these districts
are going to trend in the same direction,
and you're likely to see one or other of these
become a majority Hispanic district.
Finally, we will move up to Essex County.
Essex County, we had a lot of work to do up here.
The Hispanic population over the years
up here has grown quite a bit.
And 10 years ago, we were able to draw
an incumbent free district up here, which eventually--
which was right here, which--
most of it was right there--
which produced Frank Moran, who is on this committee.
And with their help and really the gentlelady from Methuen,
we really worked hard at this to create this district.
This is another incumbent free district that is Hispanic.
This is an incumbent-- again, just to reiterate,
we drew four incumbent minority majority opportunity districts.
Two of them, the Chelsea District and the Lawrence
district, are majority Hispanic.
And as you go back to the original numbers
that I told you in the very, very beginning
of this presentation, the Hispanic population
in the Commonwealth grew by 41%, which
is why you saw the number of Hispanic districts
and the number of incumbent free Hispanic districts
also increase.
And like I said too in the beginning,
I think you're going to see that the numbers that we received
in the census are clearly borne out by these maps where
we go from 20 majority minority districts, opportunity
districts, to 33.
And we go eight of them Hispanic and two of them
are minority black.
So let's go into this district.
This is currently-- this is my vice chair of this committee.
And again, I want to thank him.
He worked very hard to make sure that this happened,
and the other gentleman from Lawrence, Frank Moran,
really worked hard at this with me to make sure this happened,
and I want to thank them for all the work
they did in making sure that we could draw these districts
and that they were accurate representation
of the population in Lawrence.
This district is all in Lawrence.
And on top up here, it goes into Haven.
It is a 26% non-Hispanic white where 64% of it
is Hispanic origin.
So 64% of this district identifies as Hispanic.
Again, it was there 10 years ago.
We reconfigured some precincts, and we kept it Hispanic.
And it will likely produce a Hispanic person of their choice
in this district.
That's the 16th Essex district.
Let's go to the 17th Essex district.
We did cut some census blocks down here
in the city of Andover.
I think we cut out about 2,400 people out of this precinct
here because it was too big of a precinct.
We took this district completely out of Methuen,
and it's all in Lawrence now.
So this district is no longer in Methuen.
It's just Lawrence and Andover.
And again, this district is 2024 non-Hispanic white,
and 67% of the people in this district identify as Hispanic.
So this is a very strong Hispanic district as well.
And the last district is the district
that we drew up here, the incumbent free district.
This is the fourth Essex district.
It has a sizable chunk of Methuen,
and it has the northern centralmost part of Lawrence.
And when you put all this together,
you get a district that is 25% non-Hispanic white in 67.4%
Hispanic.
So these three districts in and around the Methuen Lawrence
area are, I believe, an accurate reflection
of this population that we received in the 2020 census.
I want to thank all of the members of this delegation up
here and the surrounding towns because they were all on board
with making sure that this district was drawn.
And you know, I think it's the right thing to do,
and I think we should be proud of it.
So that is the presentation of the 33 majority minority
districts.
I just want to, at this point in time,
remind people that are watching this process is not over.
We now are entering into the comment period of this process.
It starts right now, and it ends at 5:00 PM Monday, October 18.
So digest these maps.
Look at these maps.
If you have any reasonable suggestions on how we can maybe
make them stronger or better, I would
be more than happy to take those into consideration.
Again, I would just point out that the numbers
on these maps, the 33 districts in total, I think
are an accurate reflection of our population.
I would at this time--
also, this Friday at 1 o'clock, we will be having a hearing.
For anybody who doesn't want to submit the suggestions
to the website, they'll be able to speak at a hearing
and tell us--
through a Zoom hearing.
That link will be going up at the appropriate time.
And then like I said, at 5 o'clock on Monday,
all of those comments will be looked at.
And we will digest all of them and see if any of them
make sense.
Can you put me back up?
OK, so finally, I just want to thank a few people.
I want to thank--
and particularly the New Democracy Coalition and Kevin
Peterson and all those people involved.
They put together a phenomenal hearing which took place
at the Malcolm X Park.
And it was quite hot out, and a lot of people
stayed, and it is on a Saturday.
But it was a very good and informative hearing
that that organization really decided to do.
And it was very helpful to the process.
There have been many people that submitted maps.
There's a gentleman from Fall River who, quite frankly,
he submitted more maps than anybody.
But we looked at all of them, and his suggestions
and his passion for redistricting
needs to be noticed.
And lastly, I just want to thank the Drawing Democracy
Coalition and all the advocacy groups for their assistance
and help in drawing these maps--
The Mass Voter Table, Common Cause, Mass Vote,
the ACLU of Massachusetts, Lawyers for Civil Rights,
The Chinese Progressive Political Action Association,
MIRA, Worcester Interfaith, and [INAUDIBLE]
I messed that up, so I'm just going
to say the Worcester collaborative headed up
by Gladys Vega, who was also very helpful.
With that, my portion of this is over.
I want to thank again all of my colleagues
on this committee for your help and assistance in doing this.
And I would like at this point in time
to turn it over to my colleague, my co-chair,
the gentleman from Belmont, Senator Brownsworther.
Thank you so much, Mike, and I want to say for the record
right here that it's been a real privilege
to work with you through this process.
You having been through it before in 2010
has been a real asset to me and to us as a team.
And so it's been a good process, and I'm
very grateful for all of our collaboration.
[INAUDIBLE]
Thank you.
I want to talk about some other folks
that I want to give thanks to.
First of all, I want to give thanks to my staff.
We picked up this assignment three years ago.
We started going to school, and particularly
the National Conference of State Legislatures was very helpful.
And so we built a level of expertise in my team
that I'm very grateful for.
And Andrew Bettinelli and [INAUDIBLE] on my team
have worked extremely hard.
We've been well advised by counsel throughout the process.
Jennifer Miller, senate counsel, now outside counsel,
Reed Weatherby, outside counsel, John Mariucci
inside in the Senate have been with us every step of the way
as we navigated this process trying
to meet all of our legal obligations as
fully as possible.
We've also had the assistance of Moon Duchin, who
is a wonderful mind, a mathematical statistician
at Tufts, who's been our guru on voting rights,
political statistics relating to voting rights.
I'm so grateful to all of the members of the Senate
who have spent an enormous amount of time with me.
I visited over half of the senate districts
and spent a lot of time learning about the Senate districts
from my colleagues.
And we've tried to draw districts that reflect
the facts on the ground.
And I want to thank the members of this committee, especially
my co-chair Senator Ann Gobi, who has really
led the process as it relates to the western part of the state
where there have been some very large changes.
But I also want to give a shout out
to Adam Haines, the Senator from the far west, and Adam Gomes,
the senator from Springfield, Sonia Chang-Diaz from Boston,
Ryan Fattman, the senator from south Worcester,
and [INAUDIBLE],, the Republican Minority Leader, and Julian Cyr
from McCabe, all of who have played
a very helpful role in the committee process
and our thought process.
Most of all, I want to give thanks to the many members
of the public.
As Mike detailed, we've had a lot
of participation in this process and a couple of very
special people.
I want to give a shout out to Kevin Peterson and the New
Democracy Coalition, who really focused
on the issue of the need to draw a Black senate
district in Boston, meaning a senate
district in which the black voters have the ability
to elect the candidate of their choice
and also very much so to the Drawing Democracy
Coalition, a coalition of statewide organizations with so
many members who have advised us over the past 18 months,
have been very actively involved at every step of the way
in helping us understand the districts,
helping bring people into the process, helping bring voices
in from across the state,
and giving us a lot of very helpful tips
both about the substance and about how
to get it done in a way that's most transparent and most
participatory.
Let's take a top down in terms of issues.
The big issue, the background, the fundamental goal here,
is to follow the Constitution and make sure
that every person has an equal vote
in the legislative process, which means that the senate
districts, the state legislative districts,
have to be roughly the same size.
And in this year, we had a challenging reality,
which is that there was a significant difference
in growth rates across the state.
So basically, every single county--
every single senate district, rather,
west of Worcester and every single county
was low relative to the rest of the state.
That meant that there was a significant movement
across the state which kind of crests as a wave near Worcester
because everybody has the furthest west
district takes from the next district to make up size.
That district has to take even more and so on.
And so the movement got especially large,
around the center of the state, Senator Gobi's district.
And her district has to change by more than 50%,
which is a very heavy load for her to shoulder.
And I think for her for the grace with which he's
worked through that process.
So that district has changed dramatically.
In Worcester, we've had great growth.
And so that starts to offset it, and the trend
starts to peter out.
But it does go as far up as resulting
in significant movement for the district that
includes Lowell, loses some on the west end of that,
and picks up [INAUDIBLE].
And so that's been that population dynamic
which has caused movement across all of the maps.
So in fact, there are only about six senators
whose districts are unchanged.
There are only exactly six senators whose
districts have are unchanged.
Everybody else has significant change.
So many voters in each of these senate districts
are going to have to work with a new senator.
About 20% change is about the average.
So in each of the new senate districts, about 80%
of the voters will be working in the same district as before,
but about 20% of the voters will be
encountering new elected officials and new politics.
The other major constitutional obligation
revolves around race, and we have a twofold obligation
there.
Number one is that equal protection,
that we respect the mandate in the Constitution
not to district based on race but to follow
an equal protection for people of all races
and colors and ethnicities.
And at the same time, we have an obligation
under the Voting Rights Act of 1965
to make sure that every minority that's
capable of actually functioning in a-- is large enough
within a given potential district
is able to elect the candidate of their choice
and that the district structure does not operate to deny people
the candidate of their choice.
So we've taken a top down view of the state
and identified those areas where there
was the potential for that kind of dynamic,
of a minority group being denied the candidate of their choice.
And we've given those areas a lot of attention.
And so I want to talk about each of those one by one.
If I could have my Andrew, on my team,
put up the map of Springfield, I'm going to go west to east.
So there's the overall map.
But now we're looking at the map of Springfield.
The prier district in Springfield
consisted of west Springfield and a smaller
portion of Springfield.
The yellow district is the new district.
And as you can see, it is primarily within Springfield
and continues to include some of Chicopee.
It is possible in the Springfield area
to construct a district which is more than 50%
Hispanic citizen majority.
However-- excuse me, more than 50%
Hispanic citizen voting age population.
However, in fact, we have a sitting Senator in Springfield
who is Puerto Rican.
So we could not find a voting Rights Act violation
in the sense that the district is
able to elect the candidate of their choice.
The minority, the Hispanic voters of that district,
are able to elect their Senator Adam Gomez.
So what we've done in this district
is essentially done something based
on traditional redistricting principles.
We have grouped it all on the same side of the river.
We have tried to make the district more whole,
and that is the result there.
From a minority mixture perspective,
it is a bit more heavily minority.
But this district was drawn based
on traditional redistricting principles,
as it is already a district that's
functionally capable of electing the candidate of minority
choice-- in this case, Senator Gomez of Springfield.
Turning next to Lawrence, Lawrence
is an area that's undergone a period of change,
of steady change, over a period of several decades.
And in this census, it crossed a critical threshold.
The Hispanic population in Lawrence has continued to grow
and in 2020 for the first time reached
the level where it is possible to construct
a district in the Lawrence area that is more than 50%
majority minority, was more than 50%
Hispanic by citizen voting age population.
So that district, that is an area where we gave it
further additional attention, very careful attention,
in close consultation with council
and in close consultation with our statistician
Moon Duchin So here are the findings.
Number one, in that district, you
can draw a district which looks more or less like what
you see that is more than 50% Hispanic citizen voting
age population and--
this is the critical finding-- that the voting in that region
is very, very polarized [INAUDIBLE]..
The region is-- the white voters in that region
tend to vote for the White candidates,
and the Hispanics tend to vote for the Hispanic candidates.
And the grouping is such that the Hispanic candidates
from Lawrence are consistently defeated.
And so this is a very clear voting rights violation
and one that we are intent on correcting.
We considered several options, one of which
would be to regroup Methuen, Lawrence, and Andover.
That only results in a district which is about 40% Hispanic
[INAUDIBLE].
We considered grouping Lawrence, Methuen, and Dracut,
which works out to be about 42% Hispanic [INAUDIBLE]..
We were advised that would not be adequate to remedy the voter
rights obligation.
And so we were driven to do something
which was the opposite of what we're trying to do in general,
which is to split a community, which
is to add the central downtown portion of Haverhill, which
has a substantial Hispanic population.
And when we do that, we can get to a district which
is just under majority Hispanic citizen voting age population.
And that's a district which we do
believe, based on our analysis, our simulations,
will be capable of electing-- in which Hispanic voters will
be capable of electing the candidate of their choice.
This is a very important fundamental redrawing
of districts that we're doing based on the Voting Rights Act.
Let's turn to the city of Boston.
The city of Boston is another area to which
we gave enormous thought.
The city of Boston has historically-- you
see before you there's a red district and a blue district.
And they are not too different in their placement
from the existing first and second Suffolk districts.
Those two districts prior to our redrawing
them were both majority minority in the population sense--
approximately 60% to 70% minority, meaning 30% or 40%
non-Hispanic white.
But neither one of those districts
was capable of electing the candidate of choice
of Black voters in that district.
The Black population was split between those two districts
with the result that it was, in general,
difficult for the black voters to elect
the candidate of their choice.
So what we have done is redrawn the boundaries
of the second Suffolk.
It shows as D29 in this drawing.
It's the blue district, the central blue district
in this figure.
That district we do believe now will
be able to elect the Black candidate of choice,
the candidate of choice--
excuse me-- the candidate of choice
of the Black voters who might or might not themselves be black.
It's approximately 39% non-Hispanic Black.
If you use the broader definition
of Black, so-called any part Black from the census,
it approaches 50% Black.
And that's whether you measure it
by citizen voting age population or just voting age population.
It is just about majority.
From a modeling standpoint, we tend
to focus on percentages because it's easy to talk about
and it's easier to measure.
But the more sophisticated analysis to do
is to see how the districts will perform
based on prior elections.
And so we've looked at several dozen prior elections
and modeled the likely performance of this district.
And we do believe that the Black voters of this district
will be capable of electing the candidate of their choice.
And it's our hope that the candidate of their choice,
whoever that may be, will take a Senate seat in 2022.
This is an incumbent free district,
as Senator Chang-Diaz is stepping down.
The red district is the first Suffolk,
and it is still a majority minority district.
And we were concerned to preserve its status as that.
We didn't want to retrogress in any sense.
But it is mostly shaped by the need
to move some population into the block effective district, D29.
But it remains a majority minority district.
The last majority minority district or opportunity
district, to use the vocabulary that the House and Senate
jointly have decided to use--
just any district that's majority minority
by population--
is the D26, which appears at the top of the figure
you're viewing.
It combines Chelsea, Everett, Charlestown,
and the Eastern half of Cambridge.
Now that is a district where we have drawn primarily
based on traditional redistricting principles.
And that district used to stretch across the Charles
at the east end of it-- excuse me, the west end of it
from Cambridge into Austin Brighton,
sort of an appendix that was hard to sort of connect
to the rest of the district.
And it also used to stretch into the west end,
across the river in the west end.
So this is a more compact district,
and it also turns out to be a majority minority district.
And we're pleased that it covers both of those bases.
So that is the story of majority minority districts.
There's one other important story
to tell in this district in this map, which is the story of not
splitting communities.
As has been previously covered, this is a very difficult year,
really, for redistricting as a result of the late arrival
of the census data.
We did not get census data until mid-August, which is 4 and 1/2
months later than normal.
So normally, we would have six months to do this process in.
Instead, we're basically doing it in six weeks.
And the result is that the House and the Senate
are doing their redistricting at the same time
as local election officials are redrawing
their local precincts.
This creates the potential for conflicting boundaries.
Certainly whatever happens, the localities
are going to have to figure out how to work
with the lines we have drawn.
But we want to make it as easy as possible.
And to that end, both Chairman Moran and I
are committed to working with the 10 communities which
both of us split.
Those are the 10 communities where the greatest potential
for conflict between House lines, Senate
lines, and local lines exist.
So from the Senate perspective, we
have worked very hard to reduce the number of communities
that we've split.
We've been able to do that.
It's much easier for us to do that than for the house.
But we have reduced the number of our split communities
from 21 to 10.
So there are only 10 communities that are split in this map,
and only one of them is a new split.
And so within those 10 communities,
we are already reaching out to them,
trying to schedule meetings for Chairman Moran
and myself to work with them, to minimize the consequences of us
all having to work through the line drawing
process at the same time.
I want to close by emphasizing the same things
that my friend and colleague Chairman Moran emphasized,
which are, number one, these are draft maps.
We are here to listen.
We're putting these maps out, and we are really
looking forward to all of the feedback
that we know is going to come in from the public
and from our colleagues.
We're creating mechanisms to do that.
We've got a hearing on Friday.
We've got the comment page where you can submit written comments
at malegislature.gov/redistricting.
And we're going to be doing a press availability afterwards,
and we're just all very eager to hear from folks
and very eager to work with local officials
to make sure this process goes as smoothly as possible.
One last footnote-- the governor's council map
and the congressional map will come out shortly.
Exactly what shortly means, whether that's a couple of days
or a couple of weeks, we're not sure yet.
We have a lot of work to do in that respect.
The timeline that we face is a little different on those.
But those will come out shortly behind these.
So I'm again grateful for all of the assistance we've received
from everybody we've mentioned.
I'm grateful for the collaborative relationship
I have with my House co-chair, and I
guess we're going to adjourn this meeting
and in 2:30 convene at the Aspen Plaza of the State House
for an in-person Q&A session with members of the press.
Is that right, Chairman Moran?
That would be correct, Senator.
So is that the end of this process on here?
It is, yes, and [INAUDIBLE] just to say
thank you again to our chair, the committee members,
and everybody who participated in this presentation.
And I do want to add I didn't thank my staff as well--
you know, Amanda and Brian, Nicky, who have been awesome.
and the members of the House, who
have had to work with them I think
know how hard they worked in the last two months
to put this in a space where it's in,
and I'm very grateful to them for all their expertise
that they've garnered over this process and the ability
to always be there for members if they needed them.
So thank you to them, and thank you to all you for your support
and your involvement in this process.
Other than that, unless you have anything else to say,
Senator, I think we can adjourn this.
Move to adjourn.
All in favor, say aye.
Opposed, no.
This hearing or informal session is now adjourned.
Thank you everybody.
Thank you.