The Washington State Redistricting Commission is a decennial body charged with redrawing congressional and legislative districts in the state of Washington after each census. On November 8, 1983, Washington state passed the 74th amendment to its constitution via Senate Joint Resolution 103 to permanently establish the Redistricting Commission. Earlier that year the first commission redrew the state's congressional map after the previous one drawn by the legislature was ruled unconstitutional. Since the 1990 census, a committee of four appointees of the majority and minority leaders of the House and Senate appoint a fifth member as non-voting chair, and meet to redistributes representative seats in for both Washington's congressional and state legislative districts according to census results.
History of Redistricting in Washington State
Early Redistricting
Statehood-1920s
When Washington became a state, the legislature created 34 single member senatorial districts and 49 representative districts which elected between one and three representatives for a total of 78 representatives. In 1901, the legislature redistricted the state to have 42 senate districts and 56 representative districts over the veto of Governor John Rankin Rogers. From 1901 until 1931, Washington only made minor adjustments the boundaries of the state legislative districts, while adding senators and representatives for new counties.
From statehood until 1909, Washington elected all of its congressional representatives from one at-large district. After the 1890 census, Washington's first as a state, it was granted a second congressional seat and it received a third congressional seat after the 1900 census. All three seats remained at-large until the legislature passed a bill that created the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd congressional districts as single-member districts which was signed into law on March 15, 1907 by Governor Albert Mead. The 1st District represented all of King County, Kitsap County, and Northwest Washington, the 2nd District represented all of Pierce County, Thurston County, the Kitsap and Olympic Peninsulas, and Southwest Washington while the 3rd District represented Eastern Washington.
Following the 1910 census, Washington gained an additional two congressional districts, the only time the state has added more than one congressional seat during reapportionment. However, the legislature did not redraw the state's congressional districts in time for the 1912 election. As a result, congressional seats 4 and 5 were elected at-large with both seats on the same ticket and the top two vote getters being elected.
In 1913, the legislature passed legislation that created the 4th and 5th congressional districts and redistricted the state's other congressional districts. The districts were both created primarily in Eastern Washington with the 4th District comprising the southern counties in Eastern Washington and the 5th District comprising the northern counties. The creation of the new districts lead to the 3rd district, which had represented the entirety of Eastern Washington, being redrawn to cover Southwest Washington plus Mason, Pierce, and Thurston Counties. The 2nd District was redrawn to represent Northwest Washington, Clallam County, Jefferson County, and King County outside of Seattle while the 1st District represented Seattle and Kitsap County.
1930s redistricting
After no major changes were made to state legislative districts since 1901, in 1930, ballot initiative 57 was put on the ballot. The initiative sought to redistrict the state's legislative districts, and increased the number of senators from 42 to 46 and the number of representatives from 97 to 99. It faced opposition from Secretary of State Jay Hinkle who did not think it was constitutional to redistrict via voter initiative, but the Washington Supreme Court overturned his opinion.
Initiative 57 was passed with 50.17% voting in favor and 49.83% against with a margin of 795 votes. Prior to initiative 57, the state senate and state house districts were distinct, but with its passage, the senate and house districts were merged. While each district still elected one senator, they remained unequal in the number of representatives elected ranging from one to three.
After Washington did not gain a congressional seat from the 1920 census, the 1930 census apportioned a 6th seat in congress to the state. In the 1931 legislative session, the legislature created Washington's 6th congressional district by redrawing only the 1st and 3rd districts. The new 6th District represented Kitsap, Pierce, and South King Counties.
1950s redistricting
From 1930 to 1956, the state legislature only made minor adjustments to the state legislative boundaries. In the 1950 census, Washington had been apportioned a 7th seat in congress, but the legislature failed to pass a redistricting law, so the seat was elected at-large through the 1956 elections. In 1954 the legislature passed a resolution creating a bipartisan redistricting committee intended to reapportion the state's districts. The committee failed to pass a plan prompting the League of Women Voters to place initiative 199 on the ballot in November 1956. Initiative 199 created 49 legislative districts with each electing one senator and two representatives except for the 31st district which elected three representatives. Despite another attempt in 1962 with initiative 211, this was the last time that Washington's legislative districts were redrawn directly by a ballot initiative.
The passage of initiative 199 at the ballot box threatened a large number of legislative incumbents, so Senate Majority Leader Bob Greive pushed to amend the redistricting plan. Since the plan was passed by an initiative, a 2/3rds majority in both houses of the legislature was needed to amend the plan. Despite Democrats having a 31-15 majority in the Senate and only a 56-43 majority in the House, Greive's effort successfully made it through the legislature. Governor Albert Rosellini was skeptical of the plan, but allowed it pass into law without his signature. In December 1957, the Washington Supreme Court upheld the legislature's new maps which redrew a majority of the seats in the legislature and created Washington's 7th congressional district. The new 7th District was drawn to include the Downtown Seattle, Capitol Hill, South and West Seattle, Mercer Island, Renton, Vashon Island, and all of Kitsap County except for Bainbridge Island primarily displacing the 1st and 6th districts.
At the end of the 1957 legislative session, Senate Joint Resolution 12 was passed by the legislature and placed on the ballot in November 1958. If approved by voters, it would have created a seven-member redistricting commission made up of the Secretary of State, three gubernatorial appointees, two legislators, and a representative of the Washington Supreme Court. The measure was backed by the League of Women Voters, but only earned 47% of the vote and did not pass.
Equal Apportionment Era
1960s redistricting
Following the 1960 census, in the 1962 landmark case Baker v. Carr, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause provided a basis for citizens to bring legal action for the malapportionment of electoral districts. In response to this ruling, the League of Women Voters put initiative 211 on the ballot in November 1962 which would have required all legislative districts be of equal population. Separately, in August 1962 James Thigpen filed a lawsuit against Washington Secretary of State Victor Aloysius Meyers to force the state to make their legislative districts equally sized. The initiative was opposed by those in less populous portions of the state on the basis that King County already contained 30% of the seats in both chambers of the legislature and it ultimately failed at the ballot box earning 47% of the vote.
After initiative 211 was defeated, in December 1962, District Court Judge William Beeks ruled Washington's legislative districts were unconstitutional in the court case Thigpen v. Meyers. His judgement in this case was stayed while the 9th Circuit and Supreme Court heard appeals. In the 1963 session of the legislature following this ruling, six Democrats in the House joined Republicans in ousting Speaker John L. O'Brien over his strategy for handling redistricting. After the ouster of Speaker O'Brien, the legislature failed to pass a redistricting plan during both their regular session and a 23 day special session called by Governor Rosellini.
While the appeals were being heard, in 1964, the US Supreme Court issued rulings in two other landmark redistricting cases under the Warren Court's "one person, one vote" principle. In Wesberry v. Sanders, the court ruled that congressional districts must be approximately equal in population. The court also ruled in the case Reynolds v. Sims that both chambers of state legislatures were required to have districts which were approximately equal in population. In line with their other 1964 rulings, on June 22, 1964, the Supreme Court rejected the state's appeals in Thigpen v. Meyers and upheld the lower court's ruling that Washington's legislative maps were unconstitutional.
Following the Supreme Court's ruling, the district court granted a temporary stay on the ruling in order to allow candidates for the state legislature to file in the existing districts for the 1964 election. Had a stay not been granted, all seats in the state legislature may have been elected in one statewide at-large district. The court ordered the Washington Legislature to enact a reapportionment plan that was constitutional under the "one person, one vote" principle before they could consider any other business in the 1965 legislative session. 47 days into the legislative session, the legislature passed a redistricting bill which created 49 single member senate districts and 56 representative districts which elected between one and three members. The district court accepted the plan while instructing the legislature that a new plan would need to be enacted following the 1970 census.
1970s redistricting
After the 1970 census and elections, Democrats controlled the Senate while Republicans controlled the House and the Governor's mansion. This led to a deadlock with the legislature failing to pass a redistricting plan during the 1971 legislative session. In response, the case Prince v. Kramer was filed by George Prince in the District Court for the Western District of Washington seeking to force the state to redistrict. The district court ruled the state's current legislative and congressional districts unconstitutional in 1971, and ordered the legislature to draw new maps by the end of their legislative session or the court would draw the maps. After the 1972 session passed without new maps, the court ordered new congressional and state legislative district maps drawn for the upcoming 1972 elections. The court-ordered map set the number of senators at 49 and representatives at 98 with two representatives being elected from each district which, other than a break following the 1980 redistricting, is how maps are drawn in Washington to this day.
1980s redistricting and Establishment of the Redistricting Commission The 1980 census apportioned an 8th congressional seat to Washington, the first new seat for the state since the 1950 census. After the 1980 elections, Republicans controlled both houses of the legislature and the governorship. The state legislature passed redistricting bills for both the state legislature and Washington's congressional districts. Governor John Spellman signed a revised state legislative redistricting plan into law which had the 19th and 39th senate districts broken up into an A and B district for their house map.