photo by: Austin Hornbostel/Journal-World

Douglas County Clerk Jamie Shew, pictured in the center of the standing group, listens to a Douglas County resident during a town hall meeting Thursday, Dec. 1, 2022.

The process of expanding the Douglas County Commission from three seats to five in the space of just a few weeks is something of a puzzle with some complicated pieces.

Some of those pieces were laid bare during a town hall meeting about the redistricting process Thursday, with a Jan. 1 deadline fast approaching to get a new commission district map adopted. At the town hall, Douglas County Clerk Jamie Shew detailed some next steps and explained the thought process behind the first versions of map options that the public recently got a look at, and the public got a chance to weigh in.

One idea floated by some groups at the town hall was instituting some sort of requirement that a certain portion of the commission consist of folks residing outside Lawrence. But the day after the meeting, Shew told the Journal-World that would be unconstitutional, unless the new districts look something like the “County” map that’s among the early options residents got a look at recently. On that map, one district takes in nearly the entirety of the county outside of Lawrence city limits, guaranteeing that one commissioner would come from one of the county’s smaller cities or from the unincorporated area.

photo by: Douglas County screenshot

The “County” map is one of four early options county leaders and the public have considered in redistricting. The commission will need to approve a new map reflecting an expansion from three to five members before the start of 2023.

“The only way that you could ensure that a district has rural representation is that the district only has precincts that are not in the City of Lawrence,” Shew told the Journal-World Friday. “That’s why that map was presented, some people said they wanted to make sure that there was a rural commissioner. Well, that’s the only way you can get it, because both the U.S. and Kansas Constitutions state that if you reside in a district, you have a right to file for and serve in any office that is within that district.”

Because the districts are required by state statute to be contiguous and as equal in population as possible, doing much more than that is impossible based on the percentage of the population that lives in Lawrence, Shew said.

According to the 2020 U.S. Census data that the county is operating off of to craft the new districts, Lawrence has nearly 80% of Douglas County’s 118,785 residents. The average district size, by those numbers, would be 23,757; the entire populations of Eudora, Baldwin City, Lecompton and unincorporated Douglas County combined are just higher than that.

“We’ve talked about it since this started, that the map is what the map is,” Shew said. “So 80% of the population lives in the City of Lawrence. If you divide the commission into five equal parts, there is no way that you can create like two or three districts that are all outside the City of Lawrence and have them equal in size.”

Shew told attendees about a few other map guideline quirks Thursday night, including how much district populations might be able to deviate from the ideal average district size. For a 5% deviation, they can have 1,187 more or fewer members of the population, but Shew said his preference is for a 1% deviation, which is 238.

The maps should also keep townships — like Wakarusa south of Lawrence — and precincts whole if possible, Shew said. They can also be revisited every three years, allowing the county to consider any population growth that arises from the $4 billion Panasonic battery plant coming to nearby De Soto.

Shew said it’s also important to note that current commission members can’t be moved into new districts. That means Districts 1, 2 and 3 — currently held by Patrick Kelly, Shannon Reid and Karen Willey, respectively — all have to take into account commissioners’ residences. District 1 has to include Lawrence’s precinct 23, District 2 has to include North Lawrence’s precinct 41, and District 3 has to include Willow Springs’ precinct just west of Baldwin City.

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As for the next steps after adopting new districts, they’ll start with the Douglas County Commission sending a recommendation to Gov. Laura Kelly for how to elect the new commissioners. Kelly can either declare that the election for the new districts will happen during the next general election, which is in 2024, or call a special election to be held anywhere between 75 to 90 days from the date of the resolution adopting the new Douglas County map. Shew said it’s likely that Kelly will opt for whatever the commission recommends.

In the case of a special election, the county’s political parties will call a convention to choose each of their candidates within a set time frame after Kelly makes her declaration. Independent candidates, meanwhile, can submit a petition of no less than 5% of qualified electors in the new district to get on the ballot. In any case, all candidates have to reside in the new district, and only voters in the new district will vote in the special election. Then, the winners will serve until the next general election — in this case, in 2024 — when their successors will be chosen.

From there, elections for commission seats would be staggered every two years. In 2024, though, every seat but the District 1 commissioner would be on the ballot; that seat, held by Patrick Kelly, was just on the ballot in this year’s November election. The existing Districts 2 and 3 would be elected to four-year terms, and the new Districts 4 and 5 would be elected to two-year terms.

That would bring the new districts in line with Kelly’s as far as their term cycle, and all three districts would be on the ballot in the 2026 general election. Districts 2 and 3, meanwhile, would see their next terms decided in 2028.

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On Friday, Shew said there are already some pieces of data and other information the county is thinking of pulling together based on feedback from Thursday’s town hall. For one, Shew told the Journal-World Friday that he’s already spoken with the county’s GIS mapping department about running some statistics detailing the percentage of people living in cities compared with unincorporated areas for each district option, likely as some potential maps are eliminated from contention. That data, he said, would be good to have.

Any new maps, meanwhile, probably will wait until after Wednesday’s Douglas County Commission meeting, when redistricting is on the agenda again. But Shew said he’s already heard from some folks with suggestions about tweaks they’d make to the maps they were shown Thursday night. He said members of the public could even come to the next commission meeting with their own map option drawn, although there are only so many ways to do that considering Lawrence’s population.

A final type of data that Shew said he could see commissioners potentially asking for is a partisan breakdown for each district that shows the percentage of Democrats, Republicans and unaffiliated voters. Shew said he purposefully avoided partisan demographics when developing the first set of map options in an effort to focus the conversation on geography, cities and other questions of logistics.

“For me, I didn’t want it to be a political discussion, where a map is being chosen because one party gets something or not,” Shew said. “I’m not naive; I know that this is also political. Both parties, I’m sure, have looked at what map could be advantageous. We just purposefully did not present anything about parties because of that reason.”

Shew added that in terms of what needs to happen if a special election is called, there’s also a cost for the county to consider that isn’t budgeted in advance like a normal election is. He said he knows commissioners want to know what exactly that cost could be to help inform their decision-making process.

In a sense, that mirrors some questions from members of the public that came up Thursday about the “true cost” of expanding the commission, referring to their salaries and other new budgetary considerations. Shew said county administration is working on estimating those numbers, too.

Shew said the county is working on bolstering the information about the redistricting process that’s available on its website. As of Friday, that page has been updated to include some general information about the process, plus links to a feedback form, the first set of map options and videos from Thursday’s town hall meeting. Shew said to his understanding, the plan is to have a facts page based on questions submitted during the town hall available to view by Monday.