By Joanne Bailey-Boorsma
joanne@wktv.org
Thirteen Michigan residents will be coming together to draw the lines — the lines for the state’s U.S. Congressional district and Michigan’s House or Representative and Senate seats.
The 13 members are part of the Michigan Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission, a group that was formed when Michigan voters passed Proposal 2 in 2018. The proposal stated voters and not legislators would be responsible for nonpartisan redistricting. The result was the 13-member commission, most of whom hail from the east side of the state with the closest West Michigan person from Battle Creek.
“Wow. We lost that lottery,” said Wyoming City Council Member Kent Vanderwood during the city’s April 19 Wyoming City Council meeting. “Kent County is a big place. This is the second largest part of the whole state and to have nobody west of Battle Creek is unfortunate.”
The council received the presentation about the Commission or MICRC from the MICRC Communications and Outreach Director Edward Woods III. Woods noted that the selecting of the 13-member commission was done by lottery performed by a third party. There was 9,367 applications received for the commission with 627 applicants from Kent County. The largest applicant pool came from Oakland County with 1,777. Wayne County had 1,450 applicants.
Woods said the selection process was completely random and that there was no consideration made for geographical and ethnicity representation. He said there has been comments made about the fact that there are no Hispanics or African-American males on the commission as well as geographical representation.
The commission is made up for four Democrats, four Republicans and five Independents, all of who went through that random selection process.
Redistricting is done every 10 years after the U.S. Census has been completed. The commission started its work in September, scheduling its required meetings to receive public input before any redistricting plans can be drawn, according to Woods. The commission is required to have 10 public meetings and is planning to host 16 in total which includes a July 1 meeting at DeVos Hall with a second meeting planned for Grand Rapids in the fall. The group also will host meetings May 13 in Kalamazoo and June 29 in Muskegon.
The MICRC is responsible for redistricting the U.S. Congressional districts, In 2010, the U.S. Congressional districts had about 711,000 people in each district. Currently, Michigan has 14 U.S. Congressional districts.
“It is being reported that Michigan may lose a seat for the fifth time in a row,” Woods said.
The commission also is responsible for redistricting of the Michigan Senate and House of Representatives. There are currently 38 state senate districts which have about 212,400 to 263,000 people in each district. There are 110 state House of Representative districts, with each having between 77,000 to 99,000 people.
“The concern is how do you want your lines drawn,” Woods said. “Obviously with the congressional district, those are a little bit bigger, but when it comes to the state house and the state senate, that is a little bit different. Are we keeping municipalities together? Are we keeping counties together? Do we split along a business district or an art district or on waterfront communities?”
This is the type of information that the commission will be seeking from residents, Woods said, adding the commission also will be sharing information about the redistricting process which includes the criteria for redistricting such as equal population, the Voting Rights Act, geographically contiguous, no disproportionate advantage to any political party, no favor or disfavor to an incumbent, elected officials or candidates, reflect consideration of county, city and township boundaries, and reasonable compact.
Woods said the commission encourages residents to present ideas, send questions and engage in the process by email redistricting@michigan.gov or mail to MICRC, P.O. Box 30318, Lansing, MI 48909.
Learn more about Michigan’s new redistricting process or to obtain more information about the upcoming public hearings, visit www.michigan.gov/MICRC.
The Commission must adopted the new election district maps by Nov. 1, 2021 with the maps becoming law Dec. 31, 2021. The new districts would be for the 2022 election.
