Opinion ID: 1239200
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: military personnel

Text: The Alaska Constitution specifies that [r]eapportionment shall be based upon civilian population within each election district as reported by the census. [27] The validity of this provision was not questioned by the parties in Wade v. Nolan, [28] although the 1965 plan eliminated military personnel from the population base. The 1971 reapportionment plan similarly limited the population base to civilians. [29] The plaintiffs below have challenged the validity of this constitutional provision, contending that the elimination of military personnel as a class violated the equal protection clauses of the United States and Alaska Constitutions. In Davis v. Mann, 377 U.S. 678, 84 S.Ct. 1441, 12 L.Ed.2d 609 (1964), underrepresentation of certain districts was attempted to be justified by the state noting that a substantial number of military personnel resided in the deficient districts. In rejecting this argument, the Court stated: Discrimination against a class of individuals, merely because of the nature of their employment, without more being shown, is constitutionally impermissible. [30] In Carrington v. Rash, 380 U.S. 89, 85 S.Ct. 775, 13 L.Ed.2d 675 (1965), a Texas attempt to deprive military personnel of the right to vote in a state election simply because of their military status was held unconstitutional. These cases make clear that military personnel as a class cannot be deprived of the right to vote, and that they cannot be arbitrarily eliminated in a population base used to design an apportionment scheme. But while the clause of the Alaska Constitution seeking to exclude military as a class is unconstitutional, that is not to say that some military cannot be excluded as a permissible device for limiting the impact of transients and nonresidents on legislative districting. It is also necessary to distinguish the degree of precision required in dealing with representational rights as against the strict right to vote. Carrington v. Rash indicates that if even one person is disenfranchised on any irrational ground, the scheme rendering that result must be declared invalid. On the other hand, fixing equal population counts for each legislative district is a more ephemeral and elusive goal when the mathematical precision achieved one day is destroyed the next by Alaskan society's chronic mobility. Given the fact that dilution of a voter's influence is not completely avoidable, the challenge is to arrive at the best approximation of the population to be counted without losing sight of the fact that the right of equal representation is also an individual and personal right. [31] In light of these considerations, it becomes important to evaluate the accuracy and recency of the information relied on by the Governor's Advisory Reapportionment Board. Their report to the Governor merely stated that [u]niformed military personnel who are residents of Alaska and therefore, arguably not excludable under the United States Constitution were so few in number as to be negligible. The only support for this statement offered in evidence at the trial below was a letter received from an officer of the Alaska Command at the time of the 1965 reapportionment, indicating that among the military stationed in Alaska there were only 111 residents. There is no indication in the letter of the accuracy of the source for this information. The officer warned in his letter that this cannot be considered an absolutely accurate figure, as military personnel records do not contain an entry showing what can be called a `legal residence' for voting purposes. The record shows only the place the person prefers to consider as his permanent home. [32] Without inquiring to up-date the 1965 figure, or obtaining other information on the military from any source, the Board excluded all military personnel from the population base. Hence we were forced to conclude in our Order Denying Objections to the Interim Reapportionment Plan, filed June 20, 1972, that [i]n the absence of reliable data, the elimination of the military from the population base as a class of persons would be a denial of equal protection of the law, prohibited by the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. In the short time available for devising an interim reapportionment plan, a majority of this court decided that it was not possible to compile sufficiently accurate data to provide a reasonable basis for excluding any number of military from the population base. [33] Thus we included all military personnel with an eye to the fact that our plan would only apply to this year's election, and that a more accurate assessment of the military vote can be achieved in the process of devising a permanent decennial apportionment scheme. [34] We recognize that the substantial military population present in the state because of military orders and without intention to make Alaska their home can easily give an unbalanced representation to areas abutting their bases. But we are also mindful of the need for a permanent plan which achieves a level of accuracy of their voting participation which is closer than either including or excluding all military as a class. Thus it is incumbent upon us to discuss alternative plans which may be available to handle the problem. [35] The United States Supreme Court in Burns v. Richardson, 384 U.S. 73, 86 S.Ct. 1286, 16 L.Ed.2d 376 (1966), permitted the use of a registered voter base for Hawaii, knowing that this system eliminated a much higher proportion of military than civilian persons. Further, the Court indicated its approval of state citizen enumeration as a permissible population base. [36] Alaska has a master voter registration list [37] and the court takes judicial notice that active efforts have been made to register all eligible voters. Upon adequate notice and opportunity to register before use of such a registration list for reapportionment purposes, it would appear that an apportionment plan based on current voter registration would be permissible under the federal constitution. Likewise plans based on accurate data of state citizenship or state residency could meet the standards of the federal equal protection clause. [38] Another problem, however, would be involved in the use of any but a census population base. As noted above the Alaska Constitution specifies that: Reapportionment shall be based upon civilian population within each election district as reported by the census. (Emphasis added.) Since we have held that the provision is invalid insofar as it is based on civilian population, a question is presented as to whether the balance of the provision is separable so as to continue to be effective, or in the alternative whether the entire provision should be stricken leaving some flexibility of choosing a population base for a new, permanent apportionment plan. Similar problems have frequently arisen with reference to legislation. In Dorchy v. Kansas, 264 U.S. 286, 289-290, 44 S.Ct. 323, 324, 68 L.Ed. 686, 689-690 (1924), Justice Brandeis set forth the following criteria for determining the effect on the remainder of a statute when part is found unconstitutional: A statute bad in part is not necessarily void in its entirety. Provisions within the legislative power may stand if separable from the bad... . But a provision, inherently unobjectionable, cannot be deemed separable unless it appears both that, standing alone, legal effect can be given to it and that the legislature intended the provision to stand, in case others included in the act and held bad should fall. In Champlin Refining Co. v. Corporation Comm'n, 286 U.S. 210, 234, 52 S.Ct. 559, 565, 76 L.Ed. 1062, 1078 (1932) the standard was phrased as follows: The unconstitutionality of a part of an act does not necessarily defeat or affect the validity of its remaining provisions. Unless it is evident that the Legislature would not have enacted those provisions which are within its power, independently of that which is not, the invalid part may be dropped if what is left is fully operative as a law. These criteria would appear to apply equally to a state constitutional provision as to an act of the legislature. To enforce the balance of the section in question requiring exclusive use of the census, the court should be able to find that the constitutional provision would have been enacted independently of the void reference to civilian population. [39] The members of the Constitutional Convention must have considered the fact that many military personnel present in Alaska do not regard this state as their home and do not actively participate in its affairs. Yet the large number of such personnel concentrated in small areas of the state is capable of distorting the representational base. Although the minutes of the Constitutional Convention are silent on the subject, it appears highly likely that this was the reason that the convention limited the reapportionment base to civilian population. If the requirement to use census figures were to be retained after striking the provision which limited the base to civilian population, this apparent intent might be frustrated. Only skeletal information of location and mobility characteristics of the military can be extrapolated from census data. Because the equal protection clause of the United States Constitution requires more specific factual justification for eliminating portions of the military from the population base, we conclude that the Board and the Governor should be permitted to use alternates to the census base. [40] We thus hold that the provisions of that portion of article VI, section 3, requiring that reapportionment shall be based upon civilian population within each election district as reported by the census is not severable. While we so hold, we remain hopeful that before a permanent plan is created, the legislature will initiate procedures to up-date the reapportionment provisions of the Alaska Constitution by an appropriate constitutional amendment. [41]