An Anchorage Superior Court judge has become a one-man redistricting committee working on behalf of the Alaska Democratic Party.
Judge Thomas Matthews, who has consistently ruled in favor of Democrats during litigation over Alaska’s new political boundaries, ruled against the Alaska Redistricting Board’s most recent attempt to create a Senate seat in Anchorage that would accommodate all of the wants and desires of constituents, Democrats, Republicans, and the court itself.
Maps for House and Senate districts are redrawn every 10 years to adjust for population shifts. The current mapmaking process, which is a political exercise, started last August but has been in litigation since December. Most court challenges were tossed by the Alaska Supreme Court. Only in contention now is the Eagle River “Senate pairings,” which decides which voters are paired with Eagle River to create a Senate district that has the appropriate number of residents.
After a prior map was tossed by Matthews because it had north Muldoon in the Senate seat that equally represented Eagle River and Muldoon, the redistricting board went back to the drawing board, took public testimony, and drew a new map.
The new map created a district a Hillside district, which is socioeconomically similar, stretching from Eagle River to Girdwood. Democrats and Girdwood residents challenged the map in court.
In his decision released Tuesday, Matthews relied again heavily on the public testimony that was given, rather than the existing process of a redistricting board, which has met and debated maps since August.
Democrats in Anchorage organized over 600 pieces of testimony, some of them being the same people testifying every single day to oppose the map, just as they had opposed the previous map. Only one map will be acceptable to the Democrats, and that is the one that gives them a Senate seat advantage.
The Alaska Redistricting Board will need to make a decision: Will the board appeal to the Alaska Supreme Court or use Map 2 for the current election, as Judge Matthews has demanded? Map 2 is the Democrat-approved map and Matthews has ruled that the election under way must favor the Democrats in Anchorage.
Alaska is a socialist state run by progressives.
Accept it and act accordingly.
Judge Thomas Mathews. Bought and paid under the table by radical Democrats who practice election fraud and the infringement of free speech. This judge is an enemy of the Constitution and the principles of fair play.
We will remember him.
Why do we have a board at all? We should just hand the Alaska Supreme Court a map and a box of crayons and have them create the new districts for us.
AK is going to be a blue state. This is how they do it.
Why give them even that? They can’t color within the lines when there are lines…
……that’s why they change the lines so often.
Makes them look better with their crayons.
Another example of judicial activism and why Alaska must have a recall avenue to remove activist judges who are not showing impartiality based on the law and the facts at hand. Either a district boundary shows it is correct according to population and registration shifts or it doesn’t. The biased decisions from the bench must be called out by the voters with a legal recourse to end it.
MRAK supports the Constitution when it comes to property and gun rights, but goes completely off the rails when partisan Gerrymandering is ruled Unconstitutional
No duh, Frank. We are funny that way, huh? The way we care about things being fair in politics, so that one party doesn’t get drunk on power and control and ruin the community. Yep us right wing goof balls still out here believing in checks and balances for the sake of the republic….I guess you Wisconsin folk grew up different.
Go back to the beacon, hippie.
If you haven’t been paying attention.. maybe you believe the talk show hosts that say we have a weak Governor.
The reality is, you have a bought off legislature that quite literally HATES the voter, a stonewalling bureaucracy that will not do anything to help streamline government (and who also HATES the voter) and a corrupt and activist judiciary that is essentially partisan communists.. and.. at the risk of sounding redundant—quite literally-HATES the voter.
In case you have forgotten-YOU are the voter. Not talk show hosts who live in and broadcast from other states, or special interests from DC or Juneau.
People telling you to replace the executive- the one position where we have had an advocate, whether it was Parnell
Or Dunleavy, maybe 10 of the last 14 years- are purposely trying to distract you. How did it work out the last time you dumped a good one for, oh I don’t know, Bill Walker? The rot is systemic, and it’s in the House, Senate, Judiciary, and in the 4th branch, the permanent bureaucracy.
Actually, it was just the application of common sense that determined the created maps were awful.
Are the Los Anchorage districts still overrepresented while the Matsu districts are underrepresented?
Corruption, collusion, immorality at the
highest level of governance and faith institution- its all a reminder the end times is at hand
Kinda like a judge ruling over the CDC? Come on, hypocrisy?
Constitutional Convention…
So MRAK slams “activist” judges for trying to minimize gerrymandering but celebrates activist judges in DC that defy 49 years of constitutional precedence to insert their own morality and religious beliefs on the entire country? And then whines about 600 people testifying, “…some of them being the same people testifying every single day to oppose the map”–isn’t this the same tactic that was celebrated by MRAK, Save Anchorage, and Mayor Bronson when it came to public testimony at the Anchorage Assembly over mask mandates? Was irony or hypocrisy not a concept taught when you and your commenting readers went to school? Maybe, just maybe, the real lesson is anyone selling you orthodoxy or extremism should be quickly ignored.
Deep fake comment. Sophistry X 10. Roe v. Wade was decided purely on knee-jerk politics, not on constitutionally grounded legal doctrine that uses any semblance of originalist logic. Show me anywhere in the US Constitution that abortion is a “right.” Give me a definable Amendment that provides this right. You can’t rely on precedent that has an illegal foundation. 50 years of abortion is a lot of murdered babies. How do YOU justify that?
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