John Torgerson testified Wednesday in a lawsuit over a proposed House district. George Riley and Ron Daerborn, who live in the proposed district, allege that the plan violates Alaska constitutional standards for socio-economically integrated districts, according to a Thursday story from the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner.
The district would include Ester and Goldstream Valley with parts of the Denali Borough and the western coast. The board has said pairing rural villages with a portion of Fairbanks was necessary to build a fifth district where Alaska Native voters can have a decisive voice.
Federal standards require five House and three Senate districts where Alaska Natives have a decisive role in electing their preferred candidates.
Torgerson's testimony largely shed light on the process behind the board's process in drawing its map.
With declining Native population in rural districts, Torgerson said, it was necessary to pull population from urban areas into rural election districts.
Torgerson said Voting Rights Act expert Lisa Handley told the board that none of the alternative plans offered by political groups would have been approved by the Department of Justice because no other plan met the federal requirements.
Torgerson denied that politics affected the redistricting process, as suggested in earlier testimony by plaintiff witnesses. The state's redistricting plan puts Sens. Joe Thomas and Joe Paskvan into the same Senate district, which the plaintiff's attorney, Michael Walleri, argued helps open a seat for a Republican candidate.
"We weren't trying to protect legislators," said Torgerson, a former Republican state senator. "Protecting legislators was immaterial to the board's actions."
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