This week, members of the Michigan Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission (MICRC) finished drawing up 12 options for their second attempt at redrawing six state Senate districts.
It’s a new process for Michigan where a citizen’s panel, randomly selected and partisanly balanced, redraws congressional and state legislative voting districts rather than the Legislature. Voters in Michigan approved a constitutional amendment in the 2018 midterm election.
The commission began the work on revisions to the six Senate districts on April 18, drawing first drafts of new maps and then holding three public hearings in metro Detroit to get feedback from the impacted districts in early May.
The commission concluded drawing its revised maps on Tuesday and published 12 possible maps online, on deadline.
Public hearings to hear comments from those who reside in districts being altered are scheduled for May 29 and June 6 virtually, followed by three public hearings in the Detroit area.
Although every meeting the MICRC has provides time for public comment, individuals impacted by redistricting really ought to attend the in-person hearings and ensure they are being represented by the decisions being made by the commission, said Jamie Lyons-Eddy, executive director of Voters Not Politicians, a group that was a driving force behind the constitutional amendment that created the MICRC.
Just because a map may be approved by the commission or the court, doesn’t mean the map is the fairest it can be, Lyons-Eddy points out. Those entities have the threshold of constitutionality when it comes to the fairness of the maps. The goal for Voters Not Politicians is to see partisan fairness scores as close to zero so neither political party has an unfair advantage in a district.
“I think it could be successful. I do. I think one concern we have is that there is a very wide range of partisan fairness or partisan bias in the maps that have gone through so far,” Lyons-Eddy said. “We’re always looking for partisan fairness scores that are as close to zero as possible. At one point, it was suggested that being better than the maps we had last decade, is what we’re looking for here. Obviously we want to be better than a blatant gerrymander. … You always want to get to the most fair maps and that means scores as close as possible to zero.”
Lyons-Eddy said the new commission’s long process will be worth it to see this new system to redraw voting lines work.
“The really important thing to remember here is that this process used to be done behind closed doors, by politicians, for politicians,” Lyons-Eddy said. “And as challenging as this process sometimes is, it’s still a million times better than it was before.”
This story was originally published by Michigan Advance. Read more here: https://michiganadvance.com/2024/05/23/redistricting-panel-asks-for-public-comment-on-new-michigan-senate-voting-maps-in-metro-detroit/
