The Headlines
The Michigan Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission has begun drafting potential remedial mapping plans for state senate districts in the Detroit Metro area. So far, VNP has some concerns. In their meeting on April 18, the commission’s experts downplayed the importance of partisan fairness, and the first set of collaborative maps moves several partisan fairness metrics significantly in the wrong direction. The commission also seems to be paying some attention to geographic boundaries (criterion #6) and compactness (criterion #7) but they have so far declined to turn on partisan fairness measures (#4) while mapping.
In legislative news, House Joint Resolution P was introduced in mid-March. This proposed constitutional amendment would move the deadline for both statutory and constitutional amendment initiative petitions forward by 40 days. While we are sympathetic to the burden on the Bureau of Elections’ burden to process large amounts of signatures before ballots must be printed, Voters Not Politicians strongly opposes moving up these deadlines. This problem should be solved administratively, not by diminishing Michiganders’ constitutional right to direct democracy.
The Details
MI Senate District Redraw
- The MICRC began drawing remedial Senate draft plans this Tuesday. They’re starting by drawing districts without looking at racial data, as they did during the State House redraw and as recommended by their VRA counsel.
- Their first completed map draft, COL V2, changes very few of the non-affected surrounding Senate districts. Unfortunately, it moves several of the commission’s partisan fairness metrics significantly in the wrong direction. Recall that scores of zero are optimal:
- VNP will continue to urge the MICRC to optimize all of the constitutional criteria in the required priority order. Partisan fairness cannot be an afterthought. We agree with Micheal Davis, Jr., executive director of Promote the Vote, who said in a statement yesterday: “After all, democracy is about fairness, and in order for a democracy to work, the people need to trust that a majority of the votes wins a majority of the seats in any election.”
- Commissioner Rebecca Szetela drafted another map, COL V4, which changed some additional districts to preserve communities of interest including the Native American community in Westland. The commission also started several incomplete collaborative drafts. Those can be found at michigan.gov/micrc/mapping-process-2024/draft-maps.
- On Wednesday, the Commission reviewed a draft plan submitted by frequent public commenter Anthony Scannell. While it was tweaked to be put forward for potential submission, their local counsel David Fink highlighted concern about putting the map forward as the commission could not guarantee that the map was drawn without race data. This same argument also discouraged commissioners from using outside maps during the House redraw.
- On Thursday, all 11 of the present MICRC commissioners voted unanimously to drop the appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the Agee v. Benson case.
HJR P
- Voters Not Politicians will oppose any policy change that limits the ability of citizens to advance policy through the initiative process, as we successfully did in 2018 and 2022 to the great benefit of Michigan voters.
- The bipartisan Board of State Canvassers appeared before the House Elections Committee on March 19th. In addition to asking for earlier deadlines, they advocated for codifying their practice of statistical sampling to validate signatures, and for “substantial” rather than “strict” compliance with petition form requirements. VNP supports both of these policy recommendations.
- The timing change proposed by HJR P would move the statutory petition deadline up to mid-April and the constitutional amendment petition deadline to the beginning of June. Because of Michigan’s weather and the lack of public events in the colder half of the year, both changes would effectively push volunteer signature collection to the previous year, significantly hindering the ability of grassroots groups to get anything on the ballot.
- If you’re interested in more details, you can read the memo we sent to the legislative elections committees and the relevant Michigan Department of State officials here.
What’s Next
The MICRC will continue mapping through the first three weeks of May, including three in-person public sessions in metro Detroit on May 7, 8, and 9. They will send draft proposed maps to the court by May 22, and will then conduct several public hearings to collect feedback on those maps.
VNP launched a series of digital ads featuring a short animated video to help the public understand the district redraw and encourage people who live in the affected area to get involved. You can see the video here.
On HJR P, VNP will continue to communicate our concerns to the Bureau of Elections, the Board of State Canvassers, and the legislature, and will keep you posted on developments relative to the proposed changes.
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