The Headlines
2024 has certainly been a year.
At times, it felt much longer than a year. In spite of many challenges, I’m very proud of everything the Voters Not Politicians family of organizations has accomplished throughout the year, especially the hundreds of thousands of Michigan voters we contacted through door knocks, phone calls, digital ads, direct mail, texting, and radio ads.
We engaged volunteers who served as legislative liaisons, nonpartisan poll challengers, canvassers, presenters, and event planners. They called their legislators through our Dial for Democracy program, tabled at fairs and festivals, lobbied their elected officials, spent months identifying pro-democracy candidates, and did in-depth policy research. Volunteers continued to drive our work with their tireless efforts, and we appreciate every single one.
In my final update of 2024, I’d like to share some new insights and developments in two of our focus areas: redistricting and pro-democracy legislation.
The Details
Redistricting
- As you may recall, the year began with a completely unanticipated project monitoring and supporting the MICRC redraw.
- As a reminder, at the end of 2023, a federal court voided several state house and senate district maps in the Metro Detroit area, prompting six months of intense work as the Michigan Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission redrew the 13 districts under an expedited timeline.
- Throughout the process, Voters Not Politicians, in collaboration with state and national partners, implemented a layered strategy aimed at preserving public faith in the process, encouraging commissioners to stay dedicated to the work, and making sure remedial maps followed the constitutional amendment approved by voters.
- The commission successfully redrew the seven House districts under the requirements stipulated by the courts and the Michigan constitution, and, in our view, did well in responding to public input and respecting communities of interest while also improving the overall partisan fairness of the map as a whole.
- During the Senate redraw, the commission chose to adopt the Crane A1 map, which was not among the maps with the best partisan fairness measures or the maps which received the most positive public feedback. The adopted mapping plan also missed an opportunity to improve upon the partisan fairness of the 2022 Linden map. However, Crane A1 was still considerably less biased than the worst-performing maps the commission had under consideration.
- This week, in what is most likely the final chapter of the 2020 redistricting cycle in Michigan, the commission approved their final report for both the house and senate redraw. While the report shares a range of data on the adopted maps, it is disappointing to note that it does not provide a clear explanation as to why individual commissioners or the commission as a whole decided to adopt the Crane A1 plan instead of a map that received broad public support.
- University of Michigan’s Center for Local, State, and Urban Policy (CLOSUP) also released a report with their lessons learned from the redraw, based partly on exit interviews conducted with commissioners and staff and including CLOSUP’s own recommendations with regards to public comment.
- Earlier this year, Voters Not Politicians released our own lessons learned report in collaboration with MGGG Redistricting Lab, and hosted a webinar that addressed both the lessons learned and the redraw. Many of the takeaways were similar to the CLOSUP report and will guide our work in supporting future redistricting cycles.
- I also want to put our redistricting work into the larger context of actual election results. We’re disappointed to see the party that voted against every pro-voter measure this year take back the majority in the Michigan House of Representatives, but at least this time, thanks to independent redistricting, they needed a majority of votes to do it.
- In the 2020 election, Republicans got 58 out of 110 seats with just 49% of the total votes cast across the state. In 2024, Republicans got 51% of the votes to achieve the same majority.
- Expressed another way, this year Republicans had to get 116,600 more votes than they did in 2020 to get the same number of seats.
- There is still some partisan bias in the new state legislative maps, and we look forward to analysis of how other maps under consideration would have performed. However, with these new, more competitive maps, we shouldn’t be surprised that our Michigan House and Senate majorities will shift with the political winds.
Pro-Democracy Legislation
- Coming into the second half of 2024, we had a long list of pro-democracy priorities we wanted to see the legislature address, including ethics and transparency reforms, ending prison gerrymandering, and passing the Michigan Voting Rights Act.
- Voters Not Politicians staff and volunteers engaged in direct lobbying, grassroots lobbying, and a large scale Lobby Day in Lansing earlier this month.
- Throughout Michigan’s 102nd legislative session, Voters Not Politicians pushed the pro-democracy majority to deliver for voters. Our work, and the efforts of our volunteers across the state, helped ensure passage of bills to implement new voting rights that voters approved in 2022, protect election workers, allow pre-registration for 16 and 17 year olds, establish Secure Automatic Voter Registration, regulate artificial intelligence used in political ads, and more.
- Unfortunately, in the last months of this year, we got plenty of movement but no definitive action on our priority legislation. Much of this inaction was due to internal conflicts within the House Democratic caucus, as well as decisions made by House leadership, and the Republican caucus vacating the floor instead of voting on legislation in the final days of session. In short, politics got in the way of good policy that would have strengthened Michigan’s democracy and improved state government for all Michiganders.
- The Michigan Voting Rights Act was passed by the Senate and the House Elections committee, but did not receive a full floor vote this week, due to the lack of quorum.
- Ending prison gerrymandering passed the Senate last week and moved directly to the House floor, but did not receive a full floor vote this week, due to the lack of quorum.
- Lobbyist reforms passed out of committee but did not receive second readings in the House.
- National Popular Vote passed out of committee but did not receive a second reading in the House.
- Taking Back Our Power campaign finance reforms were introduced but never received a committee hearing.
- The decline in meaningful pro-democracy legislation advancing in the legislature over time was due in part to an inherent conflict of interest: many of our priorities required state lawmakers to police themselves and limit their own power. Similar to redistricting reform, it’s possible that we will need to take matters into our own hands to see these changes become a reality in Michigan.
What’s Next
Even as we watch 2024 limp to a close, we are determined and optimistic about our work next cycle.
Voters Not Politicians is ready to do what we do best: harness the power of the people to fight for our democracy. We will use every resource we have to build power for regular people across Michigan. It’s never been clearer that voters, not politicians, must work for a government that works for all of us.
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