The Hawaii constitution requires apportionment of senators and representatives among the 4 island groups. Canoe districts are not legal.
I see... I suppose I could fix it, but I would have some big deviations. Doesn't really change anything politically. Pretty much what I would do is:
1. 1st district entirely on Kauai
2. 20th district take over the two little islands in Maui County
3. 23rd and 25th districts (both to minimize deviation) take over leftover 22nd district area in Hawaii County.
This was recently approved by the 9th Circuit, and the Supreme Court declined to hear the case. The deviation caused by the whole island group apportionment was somewhat of a secondary issue. The main issue was Hawaii basing its legislative apportionment on permanent residents, excluding military personnel and their dependents who are not from Hawaii (for tax purposes), as well as out-of-state students.
Before 2000, Hawaii had what were referred to as canoe districts, as those drawing the lines had decided like you, that the Supreme Court would never accept an alternative basis to census population, as well as such large deviation.
In 2000, adjustments for the military were made, but it appears that this was done in order to reduce the amount of deviation. Almost all the military are on Oahu, and the change would make enough difference to make the apportionment for the neighbor islands more acceptable.
In 2010, initially only a small adjustment was made, excluding military personnel living in barracks. This was challenged, and the Hawaii Supreme Court overturned it as a violation of the state constitution. The reapportionment commission then did a more extensive adjustment, which was based on military pay records, which record where state taxes are paid, as well as state of enlistment, and also have number of dependents. Hawaii then adjusted the census block populations. Just over 100,000 were whacked from the apportionment data (quite large compared to the 1.3 million total).
The primary effect was to give a 4rd whole senate seat to the island of Hawaii, at the expense of Oahu, as well as changes to the Oahu districts since the military population is concentrated in the western part of the island around Pearl Harbor.
While Kauai has an oversized senate district, it has 3 undersized house districts.
The takeaway may be that community of interest may override simplistic notions of population equality, at least in Hawaii where the islands are separated by 100s of miles of international water, and are not contiguous even in a legal sense.
