Redistricting in Nebraska after the 2010 census

Note: Redistricting takes place every 10 years after completion of the United States Census. The information here pertains to the 2010 redistricting process. For information on more recent redistricting developments, see this article.

Redistricting in Nebraska

General information

Partisan control: Democratic

Process: Legislative

Deadline: None

Total seats

Congress: 3

State Senate: 49

State House: N/A

This article details the timeline of redistricting events in Nebraska following the 2010 census. It also provides contextual information about the redistricting process and census information.

Process

See also: State-by-state redistricting procedures

The Nebraska Legislature created a subcommittee that oversaw the entire redistricting process.

For each set of maps the legislature prepared, the proposed boundaries were presented as a regular bill in the session.

With the 2011 session set to convene January 4, 2011 and last 90 days, early predictions were that the regular session would not allow enough time to address everything, including redistricting, on the table, leaving open the distinct possibility of a special session. However, Senators still hoped to finish maps by sine die on June 8, 2011.

Ahead of beginning the actual map making, state Senators adopted six criteria, including specific bans on weighing political registration or current partisan representation in drawing boundaries. An initial deadline to have maps on the Senate floor for debate was set at May 14, 2011.

Once maps were publicized, public hearings, including videoconferencing, were held throughout the state.

The Nebraska Constitution provided authority for redistricting to the Legislature in Section 5 of Article III.

Committees

Members who served on the redistricting committee came from the Nebraska State Senate and were named by the Legislature’s Executive Board, which announced the 2011 Redistricting Committee at the end of January 2011. Term limits meant no committee member had any previous redistricting experience.

For the 1st Congressional District Bill Avery (D) Danielle Conrad (D) Chris Langemeier (R)

For the 2nd Congressional District Scott Lautenbaugh (R) Heath Mello (D) John Nelson (R)

For the 3rd Congressional District Annette Dubas (D) Deb Fischer (R) Ken Schilz (R)

Senators could apply for consideration for the nine seats; in 2011, the Executive Board received a total of 31 applications. The Board voted through successive ballots. A committee of five Republicans and four Democrats was picked on the first ballot.

Figure 1: This map shows the Nebraska Congressional Districts after the 2000 census.

The Committee met on Wednesday, March 16, 2011 to discuss guidelines and to consider adopting a resolution that would lay out specific criteria. Lawmakers voted to accept a set of rules that "Give no favor to political party or affiliations of registered voters.” The Senate voted 40-0 with nine abstentions to accept the guidelines, having made few changes.

At the end of March, members voted to continue using +/- 5% as the acceptable deviation, ending motions to tighten the tolerance alternately to +/- 1% or +/- 3% on a 2-7 vote. In the preceding redistricting cycles, the allowed deviation from equal district changed. In 1991, it was +/- 2%, growing to 2011's +/- 5%. Under the maps that emerged in the 2000 cycle, deviations ran from 1% to 3% out of alignment, still under the 5% cap but beyond what would have been passed in the 1990s.

Census results

Detailed Census findings focused on the shifts Nebraska's three Congressional seats needed to make. The 2nd, the metropolitan Omaha area, needed to lose 30,000 residents while the 3rd, which covered the entirety of western and central Nebraska, had to gain 47,000.

Ideal sizes for districts, assuming both legislative chambers remained at their current sizes, stood at:

• Congressional seats: 675,138

• State Senate seats: 128,598

• State House seats: 64,299

Hispanics made up 9% of the state, an increase of nearly 500% from 1990. In the few areas outside Lincoln and Omaha that saw population growth, much of that owed to the influx of Hispanics.

Legislative redistricting

Übersicht

Figure 3: This map shows the Omaha metropolitan area Senate Districts after the 2000 census.

In a nod to Western lawmakers, Cedar Rapids Senator Kate Sullivan (D) introduced a bill, LB 195, to add a Senate seat, taking advantage of a law that allowed the 49-member Nebraska State Senate to cap out at 50 members. Such a bill had the possibility to help the state's rural West avoid losing representation to the urban centers of the East. Sullivan estimated the ongoing cost for the new seat at $125,000 a year, a sum Sullivan proposed to raise by cutting staff allotments for Senators. She also acknowledged the Legislative Rules Committee would have to consider how to proceed in the event of a tie.

A competing bill, LB 233, would cut the number of seats from 49 down to 45 seats. Its sponsor, Bob Krist (D), pointed out that the bill would save $500,000 in each biennial legislative cycle, money that could potentially be used to provide travel stipends to Senators dealing with larger districts. Krist's bill would add approximately 3,000 residents to each seat, for an average size of 40,000.

Half the legislative districts, 24 out of 49 seats, had populations at the time that varied more than 5% from the ideal, set at 37,000 apiece. Thus, deciding on new district lines would change almost every seat in the state and could have left some lawmakers without a district in 2012.

The state's General Assembly also had the power to redraw boundaries for the University of Nebraska Board of Regents, Nebraska Supreme Court, Public Service Commission and the State Board of Education. The most serious redistricting work was set to begin on April 1, 2011, when final detailed data was received from the U.S. Census Bureau.

May 2011: First maps

Figure 2: This map shows the Nebraska Senate Districts after the 2000 census.

With a tentative deadline of Friday, May 6, 2011 to advance maps in order to begin public hearings by the 13th and commence debate by the 18th, the redistricting committee pulled back on the legislative plan, ostensibly in order to take more time to consider borders and thus avoid redoing the work later.

The battle over Hispanic percentages in southern Omaha played a part, as did concern that an aide to Senator Ben Nelson (D) may have improperly helped a political ally. The aide, John Murante, previously provided pro bono advice to 2008 Republican candidate Rebecca Barrientos-Patlan, who unsuccessfully challenged state Senator Heath Mello (D). Murante also drew a proposed legislative map that left Barrientos-Patlan's residence outside the Hispanic majority district.

Shifting seats to the more populous regions in the east was criticized by ranchers and farmers. Specifics of the legislative map added to the dissatisfaction of westerners; in particular, separating from Custer County from the rest of the Sand Hill counties and placing Chadron and Alliance into a distinct district from the rest of the panhandle.

The legislative map passed its first vote 39-0 on May 20, 2011 on LB 703.

Congressional redistricting

May 2011: First maps

Three maps, two Democratic and one Republican were unveiled in the first week of May, both hinging on how to break up Sarpy County. Majority Republicans intended to put Sarpy's western area into the 2nd District, an Omaha-based seat held by Republican Lee Terry. The Democrats grouped the more liberal southern portions of Sarpy into the 2nd. In particular, Democrats focused on their bases in Bellevue and the neighborhoods just across the Douglas County line from Omaha.

Bellevue, along with Offut AFB, traditionally were in the 2nd, though the 5-4 GOP advantage in the redistricting committee raised the possibility that one or both could be moved into the more solidly Republican 1st District. One way or another, Sarpy was going to be partitioned after the other possible county to be split -- Douglas -- won out. Republican Scott Lautenbaugh described it as a necessary if contentious choice: "Part of Sarpy has to go, part of Sarpy has to stay ... you just pick your poison."

The two Democratic maps, put forward by Senators Heath Mello and Bill Avery, differed from one another in their treatment of rural Nebraska. Under Mello's proposal, the enormous 3rd District would pick up much of the state's northeast and several counties on the Kansas border. More drastic was Avery's map, which drew an almost entirely new 1st, centered around Lincoln, with most of the district south of the Platte River.

Round one went to the Republicans on a 5-4 party-line vote. By moving Bellevue and Offut into the 1st and keeping areas with higher Republican registration in the 2nd, the latter's Democratic edge was diluted. The 1st became a more urban seat that it had previously been, with Nebraska's 2nd and 3rd largest cities now within its bounds, along with the headquarters of the U.S. Strategic Command. Platte and Polk Counties were moved from the 3rd into the 1st, potentially cutting the city of Columbus from a power-player in a rural seat to just one more satellite of an urban seat.

May 2011: Amended map

Under Senator Lautenbaugh, a slightly amended map was introduced on May 17, 2011, having passed the Redistricting Committee on a partisan vote. Bellevue and Offut AFB were still transplanted from the 2nd to the eastern Nebraska 1st, with Sarpy County making the opposite switch.

On Thursday, the 19th, the bill, LB 704, passed the first of three votes 32-8.

Democrats attempted a filibuster to block the next round of voting. Russ Karpisek led the effort on Monday, May 23, 2011; it lasted into the afternoon when Republicans managed to get enough members on the floor to end the veto. By 33-15, the minimum, the GOP broke the veto and then took the second of three votes on LB 704; slightly amended to place all of Bellevue in the First District that passed 34-14. Two Democrats, Annette Dubas and Kate Sullivan, crossed the aisle to cast aye votes.

A handful of other votes were taken on Monday, including defeating Karpisek's proposal to fine-tune district boundaries to minimize population deviations on a 28-16 vote and rejecting a map drawn by the Legislative Research Office, officially nonpartisan, 30-14.

On May 24, 2011, Democrats made final attempts to amend the map by tweaking Omaha's suburbs. The Democrats' amendment failed, though, 31-17.

On Thursday, May 26, 2011, after brief technical glitches and requests that the Governor's office return the legislative bill to allow a full reading, the third and final vote was taken. The new districts passed, part of a parcel of bills addressing various political delineations, and Governor Heineman signed them the same day.

May 2011: Other maps

Three other bills, for the University of Nebraska's Board of Regents (LB 700), Nebraska's State Board of Education (LB 701), and the Public Service Commission (LB 702) came up for their first round of debate on Wednesday, May 18, 2011. The bills had to go through the same series of three votes before reaching Governor Heineman's desk.

They joined a fourth bill already in progess, LB 699, the plan for the state's judicial districts, which had already progressed through its first round of debate.

History

1990

Following the 1990 Census, the legislature passed a plan with little time for public comment, which was ultimately ruled invalid by the Nebraska Supreme Court on the grounds that lawmakers had ignored a guideline to follow county lines whenever practical. The Senate changed some details of the process leading up to 2000 in light of public input.

Deviation from Ideal Districts

2000 population deviation
Office		Prozentualer Anteil
Congressional districts		0.00%
State house districts		K.A.
State senate districts		9.21%
Under federal law, districts could vary from an Ideal District by up to 10%, though the lowest number achievable was preferred. Ideal Districts were computed through simple division of the number of seats for any office into the population at the time of the Census.

See also

• State Legislative and Congressional Redistricting after the 2010 Census
• State-by-state redistricting procedures

External links

• Detailed summary 2010 Census files for Nebraska