Washington Will Gain a 10th District!

Well, the data for state populations has been released by the US Census Bureau for 2010, and Washington will gain a 10th district. Originally it looked like Oregon was going to, but continued population growth in Washington changed that. Washington gained 830,419 people, or a growth of 14.1%, to reach a total population of 6,274,540. Along with Washington, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, South Carolina, and Georgia will gain one seat, while Florida gains two and Texas gains an impressive four. Iowa, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania all lost one seat, while New York and Ohio both lost two.

I will state off the bat, I HATE gerrymandering! It looks wrong on a map and really unfairly creates districts that either do not represent what the state thinks as a whole, or what individual communities think. Luckily, here in Washington (along with six other states), redistricting is done by a independent commission - two Democrats and two Republicans, presided over by a non-partisan, non-voting member. A 2/3 vote is required for any redistricting to pass. This has prevented ridiculous gerrymandering seen in Washington during 50's and 60's and in states like Illinois, Florida, Maryland, and New York (to name only a few).

Instead, this commission, which has redistricted the state after the 1990 census, tends to protect incumbents, which in general aligns with what the districts' inhabitants think. This does create some odd looking districts, but that is also due to the fact that Washington's geography is very complicated west of the Cascades. Since seven of the nine districts are currently based in Western Washington, it creates crowding. For example WA - 6 encompasses all of the Olympic Peninsula, half of the Kitsap Peninsula, and the city of Tacoma. Tacoma is technically connected to the district via the Puget Sound and it is the basis, along with Bremerton on the Kitsap Peninsula for Rep. Norm Dicks support.

Two things are sure for the redistricting - the new 10th district will be in Western Washington, as that is where the most growth has been. While the Tri-cities area of Eastern Washington had seen explosive growth, it will only make its district (the fourth) become smaller. The for sure thing is that with a new district in Washington, one of the Western based districts will have to spill over into Eastern Washington (this is also due to the fact that the sixth districts population has not grown at the same rate as others, so it will need to grow larger). I personally think it will be the third district that just elected freshman Republican, Jamie Herrera. This will likely make the third district quite Republican as it expands into Yakima and Klickitat counties. As I said earlier, the commission loves to support incumbents.

A Kirkland (?) based computer programmer/engineer named Dave Bradlee has developed his own program for redistricting, which is superb and can be found here: http://www.gardow.com/davebradlee/redistricting/launchapp.html

Here is one possible interpretation of where the new district will be - however one should note that this is not too likely because I have gerrymandered the 8th district to make it Democrat and I also made the third district at least competitive, since it includes most of the Democrat leaning Olympia area.

I think what will most likely happen is for the 5-4 Democrat majority to increase to a 6-4 Democrat majority. However, the third district, currently (according to the Cook Index) a equally split between Democrats and Republicans, will become very Republican and the eight district will be elongated south into more rural areas, giving up the liberal leaning Eastside suburbs of Seattle.

-Nicholas