The Next Big Thing: Redistricting In Michigan And The Role Of Communities Of Interest
Mar 19, 2021 00:00 · 13198 words · 62 minute read
in 2018 michigan citizens passed a ballot initiative that would take the redistricting power out of partisan politicians hands instead a non-partisan citizens commission would redistrict the state of michigan in a way that truly represents the diversity of michiganders this commission will listen to testimony from historically underrepresented communities to ensure that everyone has a voice now we will hear from representatives from communities in other states who can speak about the importance of being part of the redistricting process redistricting is an exciting opportunity for communities to think about what representation means for them what do we want from our elected officials what’s important to me what’s important to my family what’s important to my neighbors and other folks in my bigger community one thing that’s really exciting about redistricting is it’s a really important opportunity for people to collaborate and coordinate across different communities and groups one thing we see in california and i know exists in many parts of this country is a tremendous diversity from the navajo nation um redistricting in the navajo language is called it’s important that we participate in the entire process of redistricting and we learn about the various principles that take place it’s also important to understand how the voting rights act of the 1965 protects indigenous peoples blacks hispanics asians and other minorities and that helps people such as indigenous peoples to formulate maps that we believe gives us a chance to elect candidates of our choice why is it important to participate why is it important to define yourself and your community because if you don’t define yourself then someone else will try to define you only you can keep your community together the people trying to create new maps need your help to understand your community boundaries use this opportunity to engage with the commissioners and educate them about your community sell your story we need to hear from you with your help those creating the new maps can understand and implement new districts that keep communities together it’s time we draw the line welcome and thank you for joining tonight’s policy talk at the ford school on redistricting in michigan and the role of communities of interest i’m john chamberlain a professor of emeritus at the gerald r ford school of public policy and i will be the modder for the moderator for the event the introductory video we just watched was produced by two ford school students molly kalp and mario syed and i think provides a great introduction to what we’re going to be talking about tonight i want to thank connie cook of voters not politicians for recruiting and coordinating this evening’s presenters and a special thank you goes to the sponsors of tonight’s event will be shown on this slide before we turn to the presentations i’d like to note that we’ll have about half an hour of q a following the presentations we have already heard from quite a few questions with quite a few questions from nearly 1 000 individuals who registered for tonight’s event if you would like to submit a question you may do so in one of the ways shown on the slide so what will be covering in our time together tonight as you must know if you’ve tuned in in 2018 michigan voters approved proposal 2 which amended the michigan constitution to bring about important changes in the process for during the districts for our congressional delegation and our state house and state senate the new process open and transparent and places citizens to the center of redistricting it replaces a process in which political parties legislators and their allies selected new districts behind closed doors the role of the citizens in the 2021 region streaking is twofold first final decisions on the three districting plans will be made by the michigan independent citizens redistricting commission or the micrc for short which are randomly selected from more than 9 000 citizens who applied to be on the commission they have been meeting regularly since september second the constitution assigns a high priority in the criteria that govern redistricting to public input submitted by communities of interest or cois for short we are interested in hearing from these communities about how they would like their districts to look this allows citizens to communicate directly with the micrc about how they would like to be represented in congress and the state legislature tonight’s event focuses on these communities what they are the role they play in the new process why they should want to participate in the redistricting process and how they can do that effectively the presenters tonight will focus on four topics the role and structure of the new micrc the criteria the commission will use in drawing districts and the description of communities of interest why communities of interest want to participate in the redistricting process and the information for communities of interest about how they can communicate effectively with the micrc our first two presenters are from no voters not politicians the organization that organized the campaign for proposal 2 and is now working to support the participation of communities of interest in the new redistricting process we will hear first from nancy wang the executive director of legislative politicians who will discuss the background of the miss or m-i-c-r-c and bring us up to date on his progress sandy sereni elser a vnp volunteer who is leading the np’s educational training program will follow nancy with a discussion of the criteria the commission will use in drawing districts and the description of communities of interest i’ll now turn the screen over to nancy thank you so much john i’m nancy and voters not politicians is the grassroots non-partisan group that formed in 2016 over facebook to end partisan gerrymandering in michigan and our dream was really to replace what we had which was our partisan politicians were taking redistricting which is a process where every 10 years we take the census data from the federal government and we need to redraft or redraw our election district lines to make sure that our congressional districts state house and state senate districts have the same number of people them and the politicians were taking that power and giving themselves an unfair advantage by kind of splitting up you know taking voters and really splitting up our communities or whatever they had to do to make sure that they could create safe districts for themselves and their political parties and what we wanted to see our dream really was to replace that and put in place citizens whose whose goal was really to take us back to um representative democracy and kind of what redistricting is supposed to do which was to keep our communities together and to um to help us you know stay with people that are in our geographic area that share interest with us and allow us to elect a representative that would take our interest and advocate for us in lansing and dc and to be sitting here now and for all of us to be sitting and talking about the new citizens commission that we have in michigan and to talk about how the job of that commission is to in fact go out this year and take input from our communities to find out where we are in order to draw maps that keep us intact well that really is um that’s really exciting and um and surreal but in fact we do have a citizen commission now thanks to the vote of 61 of michiganders uh in 2018 to adopt this constitutional amendment uh we had a super majority of michigan voters that were in independence democrats and republicans all throughout the state that wanted this reform and um and it’s and it’s you know first started meeting in september it’s got 13 members um and it’s got four republican members four democrats and five that are neither republicans or democrats so they can be independents or they can be third party um supporters and in their diverse group um you know geographically they represent kind of the diversity of michigan um and they’ve been you know they have regular meetings every thursday anyone can tune in you can watch in real time on youtube or facebook um they they um welcome public comment you can submit public comment either by requesting to speak or submitting a written comment and their job is to to carry out the requirements that we put in the michigan constitution and that really is you know to draw maps again around public input they have to learn for themselves um you know from the public where our communities are where our boundaries are what interests are at stake why we want to be kept together and then they need to draw the maps that reflect and respect our communities instead of splitting them apart um they need to take you know public input all along the way they need to act in a way that reinforces the public trust so there’s no more backroom deals there’s no you know there’s no um decision making where they can be taking political parties or candidates and trying to give them an unfair advantage that’s explicitly prohibited now by the constitutional amendment um and you know they have to be 100 transparent which is is definitely you know absolutely the opposite of what we used to have um every every conversation they have about redistricting matters you know every conversation they have amongst themselves or any member of the public um has to be in an open meetings and the commission um there’s other requirements in the constitutional amendment as well that governs their conduct so they can’t you know the commissioners themselves can’t kind of draw maps however they want um they can’t kind of replace their own values you know and and inject them into the process um they can’t like i said give one party or their preferred candidate an advantage over another all of that you know they need to follow to the letter exactly what’s in the amendment and yeah and and it’s going very very very well i’m happy to say heard time and time again at their meetings um all of the commissioners really stressing how seriously they take their um their duty that they know that you know they really are carrying out the will of the voters and i think it’s going to be a really exciting process and i hope that programs like these really encourage all of us to participate and to give our input so that the maps really respect us and allow us to elect the representatives of our choice so with that i will turn it over to sandy sereni elser of vnp good evening and thank you nancy and thank you john um my name is john mentioned my name is sandy cerini elser and i’m a volunteer with voters not politicians and this evening i’m going to just run through the seven criteria that the commission has to follow when it draws voting district lines and uh the criteria are in rank order of importance so not only do they have certain criteria they have to follow but also they have to give a higher weight to certain criteria that more more weight to federal laws than um to uh compact districts so as you can see from this slide the seven criteria are listed here the first one is they have to follow federal laws and the two most important components of this are equal population in voting districts which we all know is why we have the census every 10 years so that we can re balance the district so that my vote in district 1 is the same as your vote in district 2.
the other component of federal laws is that the compliance with the voting rights act of 1967 which you probably know prohibits discrimination based on race gender religion national origin and disability the second criteria is that the districts have to be contiguous that just means that they all parts of the district have to touch each other so you can’t have a little island of a district up in the u. p and have the balance of the district down in southeast michigan the third component is communities of interest which we’re going to touch on in a minute um the fourth component is re prohibits giving disreported proportionate advantage to any political party so no particular party has any advantage over the other the fifth component is no candidate advantage which prohibits protecting incumbents the sixth component is that the commission needs to consider existing city township and county boundaries and finally the seventh component is that the districts have to be reasonably compact that means no more snaking districts no more districts like the 14th u.
s congressional district that starts on the southern river boundary of detroit and winds through detroit up through southfield and ends up in pontiac no more snaking districts like the 76 house state state house district that runs from north of grand rapids through a tiny corridor through grand rapids and ends up in the southern suburbs and the reason for this is that um sometimes politicians when they drew the maps were doing it in a way where they would divide up community members so they would have a safe district as nancy mentioned and unfortunately this divided our communities which is now not going to be a permitted um criteria the commission needs to consider communities of interest and make those districts compact on slide seven you see that we highlight the communities of interest as high priority third priority and this is why it’s so important for us to let communities know that the commission would like to hear from them they’d like to know where the community lives where their geographic boundaries are and what their purposes are what’s their common purpose and now on slide eight we’re going to see what is a community of interest and i’m going to spend a few seconds reading the definition of communities of interest it’s very short but very important it says that districts shall reflect the state’s diverse population and communities of interest communities of interest may include but shall not be limited to populations that share cultural or historical characteristics or economic interests and this part is really important communities of interest do not include relationships with political parties public officials or candidates for public office so what exactly is a community of interest it really is just your community it’s my community it’s our neighbor’s community it could be your school district it could be your church community it could be the farmers that bring the approaches to the market and we like to tell communities that for purposes of redistricting all the community needs is to have a specific geographic area and a common purpose and we also like to remind communities that you don’t have to draw the district lines these district lines are going to be drawn by the commission and your only job is to tell the commission where your community is and what your purpose is and the commission is going to take all the other seven uh other all the other six characteristics that we just talked about and they’re going to take all the information from all the communities and they’re going to come up with the district maps that we think are going to be non-partisan fair and help us elect officials that our communities want to have and now on slide i think we’re on slide nine we’re going to have a little bit more about what is the community of interest and these show the some of the examples of shared economic interests where do you work where do you shop what kind of transportation do you use are your roads okay do you have a amtrak line do you have good bus service do you have environmental concerns and like for example an environmental concern could be a community with a goal of trying to remove pay fast from the huron river watershed the huron river and its tributaries and the land that drains into it um are the community and then the purpose is to lobby legislators to adopt laws that prohibit use of chemicals that create people that allow pfas to seep into our waters and contaminate our fish and our drinking water and finally we’re looking at slide 10 now where we have some examples of shared cultural or historic interests as you can see there’s a tiny little picture of the eastern market which is a historic market that brings people together there’s also town centers there’s school districts there’s church communities and all of these are types of communities and we hope that these communities are going to talk to the commission tell the commission where they’re located and who they are um there’s one example that i think is very important it’s the farmington and farmington hills school district that was it’s a it’s a joint school district for both communities and uh the district was split right down the middle in the last um redistricting and so these community members my guess is they are going to want to get together and tell the commission that they would really love to have their just their school communities all together in one district so they can lobby the legislators for the things that they would like such as perhaps better funding for schools so now i am going to just wrap this up by saying that we are working wanting to work with communities and encourage them to think about what fosters a sense of connection in your community what does your community have in common policy goals and what does your community need from state and federal legislators and we’re going to hope the community members remember these simple things that all the commission needs to know is who you are and where you’re located so now i’m going to turn the program back over to john so he can he can introduce some real live community leaders who are going to tell you why their communities are working on the redistricting process john thank you nancy and sandy uh i hope that that clarifies for some of you what communities of interest are or or are not all communities of interest are welcome indeed urged to participate in this process school districts at sandy mentioned are communities of interest so are the service areas for regional hospitals a tourist attraction near one of our great lakes a neighborhood association or a group of owners with homes around the lake who are concerned about water quality communities of interest that are already organized the staff resources familiarity with the public policy process will find it relatively easy to participate in this process but communities of interest without these advantages are urged to join them there is no published directory of communities of interest so it is only by providing input to the commission that a community of interest can make its views heard so don’t run the risk that your community of interest will be among those that remain invisible and silent don’t count yourself out just because you’re new to a process like this instead count yourself in we will now hear from three individuals who represent communities of interest in michigan to talk about why they are participating in the redistricting process and why that’s important to them our presenters are carmen williams the executive director of oakland forward non-profit that works to provide opportunities for individuals with a focus on people of color in oakland county rebecca islam the executive director of asian and pacific islander american vote michigan which works through forums and voter registration to increase civic participation by asian and pacific islander americans and andy helmbolt a longtime battle creek resident and a former city commissioner who works on regional development we will begin with kermit hello hello hello uh thank you so much john for this opportunity i’d like to thank uh first of all there’s not politicians not only getting this pass but that they’re doing to make sure that these lines are fair and inclusive for everybody i also like to thank all those sponsors for today’s event it’s really briefly i wanted to talk about i’m the city council president and the city of pontiac which was mentioned which happens to be in the 14th congressional district and when you start talking about communities there’s uh one of the things uh that we have to talk about is your pineapple doesn’t have anything in common with gross point but if you look at our congressional district we’re part of it and so these communities have been gerrymandered uh from the beginning i want to talk about looking forward and focuses on making sure that black and brown communities are taken care of and one of the things that we need to do is to make sure that our people people um are taken care of since three fifths uh law in this country african-americans have been underrepresented it’s an opportunity to make sure not only that they get represented but they get a seat at the table some of these districts let’s talk about our state house have not been changed in 30 or 40 years so that’s one of the things that we need to talk about in our community so thank you so much uh john for this opportunity i know my internet is a little shaky right now but i want to encourage everybody to get involved to get focused and make sure that they participate in this commission it doesn’t matter who you are uh what income level you have but make sure that you let your voice be heard so communities can represent you uh the way that you need to be represented thank you so much thank you kermit i think we heard you for the most part hi everyone my name is rebecca islam i am the executive director of api vote michigan and we are a nonprofit graduate organization that is committed to justice and as john mentioned equity for the asian american community in michigan and we do that through graduate mobilization and our impact in the api community involves increasing voter registration advocating for public policy providing censors education that we just had last year assisting folks with citizenship applications developing youth and leadership and building coalitions and we work to ensure that all asian americans and pacific islander americans can exercise their right to vote and make sure that they have a part of this democracy and my organization is excited to be part of the redistricting effort here in michigan as our democracy is deeply dependent on it and ensures that representation and each of us are represented so moving on to the next slide okay so we are extremely proud of the work that we did in mobilizing the api committee for the 2020 election apias have proved to be crucial in influencing what we all know was a historic election and our accomplishments included registering over 10 000 api voters engaging over four hundred thousand apia voters which led to a historic api voters turnout amongst our population which has led us to continue our efforts into redistricting next slide please so now that we are here with redistricting um what’s at stake there is just so much at stake as you guys already heard um there’s so much at stake when we talk about redistricting it ensures that we have political representation that more accurately reflects our communities in the long term this can also affect things from funding assigned you mentioned funding to programs to services for vulnerable communities like the api community in our community particularly there’s a canadian hemptronics that does not want marijuana dispensaries in this city and fair and accurate mapping will give that community the opportunity to decide if they want these dispersaries in their community or not and it is naive to think that a marijuana dispensary in one district affects only those residents who live in close proximity of that especially this country will affect a much larger radius and therefore individuals within um expended radios should definitely also have a say in if they want that business in their community or not and that’s just one example that demonstrate how redistricting can impact someone’s ability to express their need in a community with others also services and programs should address the needs of a community the needs of a community should be looked at collectively and across district lines if there are significant numbers of individuals who have the same needs we should be addressing those needs regardless of what side of the district they resign on redistricting is just a way that helps us to correct those issues and for apias we are part of the fabric of this state and we’ve seen that that in the last election we need people to know that we are not statistically insignificant which individuals might argue if they’re looking at the current map district by district we are a significant mass of voting block of michigan and we need to make sure that we are seen as such and that we each play a part in redistricting efforts to ensure that we also benefit from the programs from the services the system that our tax dollars are contributed to um can i get the next slide please okay so api vote michigan is working to recruit community members to get involved in this employing work we are hosting a series of communities presentations that explain the importance of mapping to our community members in targeted api languages we have plans to present proposed redistricting methods as you all know community voices and input is so critical to redistricting if community voices and actual residents of these communities are not at the table as these maps are drawn those resident concerns will remain invisible and when i say actual residents of these communities um i’m not talking about advocates who live in other zip codes um do not you know we if community members don’t if our actual community members do not set up the table and express their needs those needs will simply not be addressed and we know government solutions are only effective if communities show up and come to the table and make sure that their concerns are voiced and their issues are heard and i think following the 2020 election that each of us understand the weight of each of our elections and each of our votes and how we can make an impact and the difference we watched he read states that have been dominated by one party for decades turned blue and then there were states like our state michigan and georgia where disfranchised communities and black and indigenous and people of communi people of communities made a difference and as we take part we can have real change we can see real change and my hope is that all of our communities will show up and participate in redistricting efforts however and wherever possible so that we can make sure our government continues to work on behalf of the people that it’s supposed to represent and with that i will hand it to andy thank you yeah amen thank you rebecca um so i’m here to give an example of of how uh my community in battle creek has has been affected uh and our community of interest here as we see it has been affected by by the way that lines have been drawn and here we have we have what’s kind of the the opposite problem that folks like kermit have in southeast michigan where you have a very very large population center that has to get cut up into different districts out state michigan such as places like battle creek we have the opposite problem where we have to draw district lines that encompass many different communities together into a district um and we feel in battle creek that that has been done pretty poorly over the last uh three decades or so and that uh that’s it’s been done poorly for you know political advantages um so let me tell you a little bit about our our community of interest here and how we see ourselves in battle creek and calhoun county uh aligned more closely with the kalamazoo community in kalamazoo county who we have been separated from when it comes to a u.
s congressional district uh and when i say we you know i’m i’m speaking generally here about people from battle creek i don’t intend to speak on behalf of all people from battle creek in canton county you know i’m i’m just i’m here on on good faith that i have you know as a resident here i have some sense for for what people feel about how how they’re being represented so who we are we are in battle creek calvin county we are an i-94 interstate 94 community uh our when we when we go other places and we think about the other communities we have affinity with we think of other communities along the east-west i-94 corridor uh kalamazoo being the the largest and closest only 20 miles to the west on on 994.
uh to the point earlier about even environmental geography the kalamazoo river flows through our our city and into kalamazoo so when it comes to environmental concerns and water quality uh when we had the enbridge oil spill here in calton county you know that oil that oil flowed flowed downhill to kalamazoo um but not just that uh the whole the region here from an economic standpoint thinking of economic community of interest you know our our our our regional economic development efforts are partnered with kalamazoo we share major employers the labor pool commutes back and forth between kalamazoo far more than that it commutes outside of those two communities our health care system our two major health care systems uh here in in southwest michigan serve battle creek and kalamazoo education education system you know if you’re if you’re going to stay at home for a four-year university here in battle creek you’re probably going to attend western michigan university that’s based in kalamazoo and has some of its programming like its aviation school in battle creek transportation i mentioned the interstate uh our the regional airport here the international airport is on the edge of kalamazoo it is called the kalamazoo battle creek international airport um but then when it comes to sort of more informal things like just recreation in le and leisure uh if if there are things that i want want to do with my family the that battle creek doesn’t offer more likely than not i’m going to kalamazoo to do that just this weekend my wife and i took our daughter to an arcade in kalamazoo and went to a burger joint over there that we hadn’t been to that people were talking about or you know if i want to go over by on canned diced tomatoes at costco i go to kalamazoo to do that so that you know that is the community of interest that we’re building uh you know building an effort here in in battle creek and calhoun county to testify to the the mic rc but the history here is that you know many years ago and for many years we were with kalamazoo in a congressional district but starting in the 90s that changed we calhoun county got put in uh with a more south central district they went from calhoun county over to washington county and so that’s that was oriented around 94 yes but we didn’t really consider people here didn’t really feel like that that district felt like home to us we were battle creek was the largest metropolitan area by far in that district and yet out of the 10 terms 10 congressional terms during that time only two of those congress people were from the battle creek area and so when it came time to redistrict again 10 years ago we got moved out of that so the little bit of competitiveness that existed in that district was taken care of by calhoun county in battle creek being taken out of that district and put into the grand rapids congressional district which of course for the last five terms has been represented by someone from grand rapids um and you know grand rapids isn’t super far away from us but we certainly do not have the the north south affinity or feel a community of interest connection with the community of grand rapids to anywhere near the extent that we do with kalamazoo and you know as i talk to people and you know this is sort of the common feeling around battle creek but before you know before preparing for this i talked to some folks around town just to check in and you know hey what’s it been like having someone represent us from from grand rapids well it’s not been good we don’t people just don’t get the feeling that that we’re represented by someone from our community and and really you know all partisanship aside if if i’m represented by someone from the other party okay that’s that might be a personal issue for me but from a larger sense from a sense of wanting to have trust in our in our government and the people that represent us people should feel like their representatives come from their community and we just haven’t had that here for 30 years in battle creek and so that’s our goal in making you know making testimony and public inputs to the commission with that i would thank you for your time and turn it back over to john and if folks have questions about what’s you know how things are going here or what we’re planning to do we’d be happy to take them later thank you john thank you kermit rebecca and andy uh for telling us about three communities of interest and and how they will take part in the process there are thousands of potential communities of interest in michigan that can take advantage of the same opportunity that these organizations are going to take advantage of so i think it’s important that everybody think seriously about whether they participate we urge you to think about what communities of interest are important in your lives and being thinking about how these communities can convey their views to the micrc you can begin by identifying the boundaries of your community of interest on a map and articulating the shared interests that define your community of interest and you might sketch in your current congressional state senate and state health districts like andy did and learn something about how well they serve your interest in the districts and you could look at how the history of those districts changed over time as andy’s did in most cases it will be important that a community of interest to a community that remain intact in new districts because that will provide the best opportunities for your representatives to get to know your community of interest and allow you to communicate with them about policies that you care about think also about other communities of interest in your area that share your bonds and policy goals as well as those that don’t and consider what your preferred districts might look like you can include information like that in the material you submit to the commission we now turn to the final topic on our agenda how communities of interest can prepare to be effective participants in the public participation phase of the redistricting process to talk about this i’ll turn the screen over to connie cook who is a long time volunteer for voters and all politicians who currently leads their community mapping program she will discuss how communities of interest can develop and present effective testimony to the micrc about their desires for their new districts take it away connie thank you john i i thought it was a real treat to hear from the three representatives of communities of interest they speak with passion about their need to be represented better and it is interesting to see how important that is for various communities in michigan what i’d like to discuss is how communities should go about preparing to engage in the redistricting process so this slide slide 17 shows you that the timeline is going to be very tight on the right it says the new maps will be used in the 2022 elections in the middle it says they have to be approved by november 1st and on the left of the screen it says at least 10 public hearings must be held before the maps are drafted then five more after they’re drafted and before they’re approved that would be a tight timeline at best but the census has made it more difficult covid slowed down the census process and rather than getting census data in february or march as we’d anticipated we won’t have it now until september 30th that means that the mic rc will be unable to meet this set of deadlines and we trust that a court will step in and provide a solution in any case it’s important for communities of interest to be totally prepared when the public hearings begin we expect that those hearings will begin in may and will probably go through part of june there will be as john says thousands of communities of interest eager to testify eager to submit maps to the commission so smart communities are going to get started right now on strategizing about how to effectively describe themselves and map themselves the commission will soon announce a portal and a process for submitting maps and testimony and the commission of course is obliged to consider all the testimony that’s submitted to it let’s go on to slide number 18 it talks about mapping tools and we in michigan have multiple tools that we can use for the mapping process there’s no one tool that we have to use but the one that voters not politicians has especially liked is called representable.
org you can google it you can try it out it helps communities of interest tell the commission about themselves who they are and where they are it is a product of the princeton gerrymandering group which is part of princeton university and it is free a very good thing it has been vetted all across the country and we’ve had over a hundred beta testers working on it here in michigan it lets the communities describe their shared interests and it is relatively easy to use it provides a digital map with some landmarks and users can click to include regions in the map census block by census block representable calculates the population and the area of your map for you as you as you create it and then it produces a hard copy that you can email you can print out you can send to the commission when you’re ready to do so it has youtube videos that explain how to use this mapping tool and try to make it easy and if you have tech questions about representable right now some of the staff are on the chats on youtube and facebook and they can reply to you with technical answers that i can’t possibly give you i want to talk about a misconception and sandy alluded to it earlier we find as we speak to groups about this mapping process that many people think they have to actually draw a voting district a congressional district or a state senate district or a state house district but that’s not necessary communities just have to draw themselves decide where their boundaries are and draw themselves giving their shared concerns their shared interests to justify why they constituted community and want to be kept together most communities of interest are not big enough to comprise an entire district but the community of interest can suggest to the commission other cities like battle creek and kalamazoo that would like to be together other groups that have shared interests they can ask for landmarks such as industrial plants or universities that they’d like to have in their districts or they can say we don’t want to be with this other community that has very different interests from ours you need to tell the commission what your preferences are slide 19 shows the difference between a representable map and on the right a paper and pencil map vnp has paper and pencil maps with some landmarks available for groups to use if you’d prefer to do that rather than an online mapping tool but it’s just fine to use a aaa map or a school district map or realtors map or a back of the envelope map any map is okay because the mic rc will soon have mapping experts who can take your back of the envelope map and turn it into something that looks as good as the fancier online versions if you represent a community of interest you’re likely to want to know how you can get help with your strategy for presenting to the commission besides vnp there are several other non-partisan groups providing support for communities they include the michigan non-profit association and promote the vote and the league of women voters additionally we see popping up various party groups political party groups that are eager to help communities with their strategy for addressing the commission i am most familiar with what voters not politicians is doing so i’ll tell you about that we are facilitating conversations for communities of interest to help them decide where their boundaries should be and what their shared interests really are and we’re providing training for mapping either online or with paper and pencil we are offering town halls for the general public to learn about the redistricting process and you can go to the voters not politicians website and sign up for a presentation from us on redistricting if you would like one we also offer much deeper engagement for some communities of interest like the three from which or from whom you’ve heard tonight apia vote oakland forward and the calhoun county battle creek group vnp does have some small grants available and we will provide them to communities that need some financial support in order to engage in the redistricting process when we do presentations we are careful with the cois to involve someone from the coi in our presentations we don’t know all your issues we don’t know exactly what your representation ought to be but your members do so we try to include people who are knowledgeable about your particular concerns and will customize the presentation for you using slide number 20 i want to conclude by discussing why communities of interest should participate in redistricting the opening video said if you don’t define yourselves others will try to define you you might think that everything is fine for your community right now you’re perfectly happy with your district why change it well it may change on its own if you don’t speak up and ask for what you currently have for example the michigan tribal reservations are all intact right now not split in various pieces but there’s no guarantee that that will continue they need to go to the mic rc and ask that that should continue if that’s what they want and there are plenty of examples of communities that have been split through the redistricting process sandy mentioned farmington and farmington hills that’s certainly a good example oakland university is split down the middle two different districts if you can imagine and there’s a mobile home park in ann arbor that is split down the middle because the partisans who drew the maps wanted a few more republicans over here and a few more democrats over there so they just went into the mobile home park and and picked out the people who had to be moved we are hoping that redistricting will make things work better for you that it will give you better representation that it will give you better elected officials people who care about you will meet with you understand your concerns and that the result will be better government programs and services we want your tax dollars to work better for you so i want to end now with slide number 21.
this slide highlights article 1 section 1 of the michigan constitution which has become voters not politicians motto political power is inherent in the people and we expect that the redistricting process is going to give the people of michigan the political power that they need and deserve thank you all for taking time to hear about the redistricting process and i’m going to hand the mic back to john who will lead our q a session thank you thank you connie um if you are new to the process of redistricting this may seem very complicated but i urge you to take advantage of groups and organizations like vnp that will offer help and advice that it’s not as hard as it looks and it’s important to your community we’re now going to turn to q a for the remainder of our time the slide tells you how you can get a question in i should note that answers by tonight’s participants reflect their perspectives only but in any way those of the commissioners joining us to direct your questions to tonight’s presenters is miriam saeed a master of public policy student who will graduate this spring and who was one of the students who produced the video that opened this event welcome marion let’s get started with the first question hello everyone i’m very excited to be here and honored to have been able to partner with vnp to create a video highlighting the importance of cois during michigan’s redistricting process i’ll be monitoring moderating the q a portion of tonight’s event and read the questions that you all have for our amazing panel of community leaders our first question is for nancy what challenges do the pandemic and census data delay posed for ensuring adequate engagement of communities of interest in the redistricting process what is being done to address them well certainly the pandemic has led to the census delay um like connie mentioned and just recently we heard that the census data for michigan may not be coming to us until september 30th but honestly uh where we’re kind of emphasizing is that this really does give us uh an opportunity and perhaps more of an opportunity more time for us to engage our communities so you know i know that this is a matter that you know how we go about it whether it’s zoom whether it’s in person perhaps soon these are issues that we in kind of the good government space are always talking about with our outreach engagement and i know that the commission also has it from a bind and it’s also discussing it um in their meetings i think right now everyone’s kind of hoping that we’ll get to in person soon um you know in california and other states when they’ve done this in the past they’ve had you know very very well attended um public meetings where you have hundreds of people kind of lining up to give their testimony and that’s really powerful um experience but you know if not like or in the in the kind of meantime as we’re as we’re waiting for uh the pandemic to see then um they are gonna and we are as well um as outreach groups going to explore as many different ways with through you know ethic media and through zoom and through telephone and any other ways that we can reach out to groups as possible thank you for that would anyone else in the panel care to answer this question okay so our next question is for our community leaders kermit rebecca and andy how might the commission best prioritize overlapping communities of interest of multiple cultural ethnic or shared economic interests are some communities to be considered more important than others go ahead kermit hello yeah um just to tackle that i think that uh the commission should really consider those who have been disenfranchised the most through this process i think when you start taking into consideration especially like communities of color or people who have cultural interests that are the same i think you make better lines and you make better voting for everybody that’s much more fair great thank you this next question is for connie i have heard that communities of interest will have only a few minutes at public hearings to offer testimony they will also be able to submit additional materials in written form if this is the case what should coi focus on in their oral testimonies connie you’re muted i think it is true that they will have a limit on the number of minutes for each community of interest so it’s particularly important that each community strategize in advance and decide what its key issue is what its shared interest is what really binds it and come before the commission with a an articulate impassioned explanation of why it’s a real community and in terms of mapping uh it would be very good for the community to cite the data gathering process it used was there a panel of community leaders who decided where the borders should be was there a demographer whose expertise was used was there a survey of the population how did the community decide where his boundaries should lie use their time well that’s why it’s important to start early great our next question is for nancy can communities of interest be used nefariously to isolate or exclude people so the concept of communities of interest and actually that that specific term as well is used in the majority of redistricting processes in the united states across the country and the idea is and the way it’s written in our constitution is is as expansive as possible so the idea is really to be inclusive and to allow members of a community to kind of define themselves as long as they’re geographically connected and they have a shared interest and of course they need to articulate to the commission what that interest is and it can’t be discriminatory and it can’t be for political gain you know to give one partisan uh or party an advantage over another but otherwise it can it’s it’s however a community wants to define itself with via historical you know shared cultural interests um economic or or frankly any other interest that um you know that the drafters haven’t you know hadn’t anticipated at the time of drafting it really is up to the community members to kind of define themselves go ahead andy yeah so i think one one thing that’s important to understand you know if you do some ghouling on googling how gerrymandering works is that one method of gerrymandering or to give to give advantage is to pack strix or just google district packing which is you know taking a group of people who all might be may well define themselves as a community interest and pack them all into one district have the other group majority group be able to control all the rest of the districts thus minimizing the pop minimizing the power of the folks that you just packed all in the one district so that’s there’s a balancing act that that has to happen with the overall principle being what nancy just said about making sure people people are engaged in that that people have power and that the whole system is fair to to make sure that we’re there our government represents everyone but yes the concept can certainly be used nefariously this next question is for our community leaders what advice do you have for people who may be a part of a community of interest that is not well organized how do we get started go ahead rebecca so what thank you mary um um so what’s great about living in michigan beside our lovely snow is that as you’ve heard here today there are organizations that are that already exist and have done the difficult work of laying the foundation you know i would reach out to any of us here you should also view us as a resource that you can point um in the right direction the excuse and that we can point you in the right direction and if there is a group that is more appropriate for you we direct you there and one of the goals we all share is that to get more community members involved in redistricting and one of the benefits of doing this work during the pandemic that we’ve all leveraged technology um you know we’ve all became zoom experts to better connect with people across weekends um it was a little more challenging before but we did it anyways right um and with technology it helps us to bridge those geographic distances and better connect and mobilize um and again lastly um you know when doing this work i would definitely say reach out to what is not politicians they are the experts and they can definitely plug you in where it’s needed and there’s a ton of resources out there and we can help you get connected with those resources um so all you have to do is contact one of us and we’ll get you started that cover it okay well i would just like to add one thing to that you’ve already started today by being part of this town hall meeting because uh it really takes you thinking about what’s important to you your grocery store your church or whatever and so uh the great thing about voters not politicians and everybody that’s doing this work is this regular people doing it so you don’t have to be elected or been in political office a poli-sci major you can be a regular folk at the grocery store and get it done exactly i love that and this next question is for nancy given that voters favoring the two major parties tend to be concentrated in particular areas of the state for example republicans in rural areas including the thumb and western and northern parts of the state while democrats in urban areas including southeast michigan will it be possible to draw compact and geographically coherent districts that have competitive elections nancy you’re muted sorry as i mentioned during my part you know the the goal behind the amendment is to kind of go back to the idea of representative government and and it’s to keep our communities together so that we can vote for the representative of our choice um and that’s why communities of interest rank so high in the criteria that the commission has to think about when it’s trying to draw district lines which is to keep our communities intact um and then farther down the list our compactness and um and uh and competitiveness actually is not on the list of criteria and that was by design um competitiveness for competitiveness sake is not um you know the goal behind fair and impartial redistricting it’s a matter of of again you know keeping people who live within an area who historically with you know gerrymandering for a lot of our underrepresented communities got taken you know their voting power was taken away and it’s and put back that voting power um in those communities we have seen in other states however that have independent commissions that you do see more competition you see you know new candidates you know enter the races because incumbents are not protected you do see when you know districts um are aligned in a way where you’re not just specifically and intentionally carving people out by party and kind of you know determining what the election outcomes will be that there are more districts that are mixed um you know in ways that that they weren’t under gerrymandering so i think you’ll see more competitive districts as sort of like a result of fair redistricting but it’s not you know your your your um goal to start with thank you for that connie do you think the commission is likely to be responsive to a coastal community of interest that requests that it be placed in a district with other coastal communities because of their common interest in tourism rather than being included in a district with inland communities that is such an interesting question i remember when the california commissioners were here talking about california districts they talked about that long district along the pacific coast route 1 a snake going down the edge of the state with coastal residents primarily in the district that is certainly a shared interest being on the coast worrying about beach erosion worrying about water quality worrying about tourism but there are plenty of inland communities that may be worrying about many of those same things as well uh certainly in northern michigan the inland communities in the leelanau peninsula for example are also tourist meccas and they share many of the concerns of the coastal communities on that peninsula i i think that it will be important for the commission to decide what the shared interests are and to try not to exclude people who have a shared interest with other communities so if the coastal people worry about tourism and the inland people have the same concerns about tourism and need the same kinds of policies to maximize the benefits the commission may choose to put them together we will see sandy this next question is for you or andy i’m sorry apologize are there guidelines for the physical shape of districts is the goal to create districts with populations with similar demographics educational and professional levels and or community interests or to develop districts with balanced political points of view and this is for sandy oh thank you miriam um so there are of course as i mentioned in the presentation there are guidelines for the physical shape of the districts they have to be um reasonably compact and they um can’t really be snaking the way that they are now um so that’s the compactness and they also have to be contiguous so you they all have to be together touching each other um so i guess there’s kind of two parts to this question um the goal in the creating the distance is usually generally communities will want to stay together so there they will have similar demographics and educational and population issues um however um the commission is going to need to balance that against the political um issues they can’t have partisan gerrymandering they can’t allow any polit uh one political party to have a a special advantage over another political party so it is going to take a lot of balancing for the commission to come up with um what they think is right but generally i expect that the communities will submit their maps and the commission is then going to layer them out and as we mentioned a community generally will not comprise a whole district um so there will be um uh they’ll they’ll be diversity not only be the community they’ll be with several communities there’ll be there’s there’ll be diversity so um it’s going to be interesting to see what happens um i and i wish i could tell you what the answer is going to be but i don’t know thank you for that so i just want to let for everyone who is viewing right now that we’re watching the stream of comments and we’ll do our best to get to as many questions as possible a lot are coming in but um we’re trying to get to as many as we can and our next question is for nancy people in jail can’t vote when drawing district lines are people in prison included in that area’s population demographics um prison gerrymandering for example um for example if a latino person is arrested in ferndale and serving time in alpena where will they count in terms of population data for district lines right so in michigan there is this issue of prison gerrymandering because um the people in the jails are counted in that district where they are where the prison is located um not where they reside and so you have an issue where for example um for returning citizens um they are not you know once they’re returning to their community um they were not sort of counted in in the sense of um having their interests you know take into account when those um districts around their residency were were created um i believe that there is a um a house bill that was just introduced to um that kind of speaks to this issue and i know that there are a lot of reform groups um in other states that have successfully you know launched campaigns to um to undo what they call you know prison gerrymandering but in michigan we still have the issue of of having people counted where the jail is sandy this next question is for you with increasing polarization it seems communities are becoming more organized around political views will the commission try to make districts politically diverse well i think that’s similar to the question i answered before and but it’s a very interesting question um so we’re probably talking again about uh the rural districts being perhaps more republican and the uh cities being more democratic i’m not sure that’s what’s intended but um that there cannot be overt political favoritism um partisan favoritism so um that commission is definitely not going to allow that however a community could say that we are interested in some uh for example some views that the republican party status uh stands for um the you know for example uh lower taxes um and you know that’s not the same thing as saying we’re republican district so um i don’t think any community is going to get anywhere if they try to say well we’re all republicans we’re a community and we’re in this area so we should be have a district so same for democrats you know i mean we can’t say that we are um pro-welfare or whatever or whatever democrats are um and make that fly with the commission so um i actually think that communities are going to think about what their actual needs are what they’re looking for from their state and federal government and go from there and i hope that that’s what the commission will work with kermit go ahead yeah i just wanted to piggyback on uh what sandy was saying i think one of the things is more people need to be heard at the table in order to make those districts fairer if uh if there’s only three or four people that testify at a given meeting uh then those people are going to have the strongest voice and they’ll end up with the strongest map because they’ve pushed their issues in their agenda so it’s very important that people of all ideologies make their voices heard at these tables so regardless if it’s republican democrat independent everybody needs to speak up in order for those maps to be right when we have them because they’re there for 10 years that’s right yes go ahead nancy well and and you know we do get a lot of questions about well will we end up with this or will we end up with that and i think you know the focus really here is and then the intention behind the amendment was was to level the playing field you know it was to reform the process so it’s not to do something to give one party an advantage but it’s to make redistricting fair impartial you know impartial meaning not you know helping one party or candidate or or another and then completely transparent so if someone wants to advocate for their community to be kept intact for this or that reason they have to justify it like connie said um and then the commission once it’s adopting these lines or those lines it has to explain its rationale for doing that and it has to be you know for one of the reasons that’s that’s allowed within the constitution connie andy go ahead yeah i think it’s important to keep our eye on like we can talk about what’s you know is this more important in drawing a district or is that more than drawing a district and the fact is that some of these priorities compete with each other yeah like the communities of interest and the compactness you might have to draw a funky line to keep a community of interest together or and and there are at the end of the day here there are going to be people who are going to be mad about the way the lines get drawn like there’s only so many ways to carve to carve these districts up and it’s not ever going to be perfect there are going to be people at the end who feel like they still got the shafts here they’re going to be like what the heck this didn’t i didn’t get any any better deal here but what’s important is the process is vastly different that it’s not the the political parties themselves that are making the decisions it’s a public commission out in the open as was described here up front and that’s that’s the major difference that i think we’re all putting our faith in that that alone is head and shoulders above better than than just letting politicians draw the lines voter’s not politic most genius name for an organization ever happened in my political lifetime by the way that was great go ahead connie andy’s right of course that not everybody will be happy with the lines as they’re ultimately drawn but i hope those people who are not happy will at least have participated so they don’t blame themselves for the lines being put in the wrong place it’s all of our jobs to participate and make sure the commission is as well informed as possible about where we want the lines to be and why connie this question this next question is actually for you how is the commission ensuring that not just the politically aware are showing up and participating in meetings how is the community reaching beyond just community leaders to achieve more citizen input well actually the commission isn’t ensuring that yet but i think they will i know that they’re concerned about having community of interest testimony and involvement in large quantities the group that is doing a particularly great job of trying to involve many communities of interest across the state is the one presenting this webinar tonight the close-up center at the ford school of u of m they have had students out identifying thousands of communities of interest across the state trying to get contact information for them and then writing them about the redistricting process and the resources available to them so that they will have a chance to participate and i think that the commission will use close-ups information in sending out its own notices to inform as many people as possible across the state and then as i mentioned earlier there are many non-partisan groups like voters not politicians the michigan nonprofit association the league of women voters promote the vote and so on and we’re all out there trying to scare up as many participants as possible finding communities of interest wherever we can go ahead rebecca yes just echoing um everything that has been said um and by connie too and i think the commission’s plan to host these town halls with various zip codes within accounting within a county is an important piece and should be prioritized and i would also like to add that um you know prioritizing those conversations with each of the ethnic groups that compress the community um it is it is critical to have these open dialogues that encourage residents to voice their needs and feel that their voices are heard if we truly listen to our communities it would help build that relationship and the trust between the communities and i feel once these conversations are held and i can’t stress enough how important this is um and once we’ve taken that time to reflect on this conversation and look at everything that has been said as a whole um and that is a critical part everything as a whole you can then identify areas where there may be overlapping issues um shared gaps and needs and this is the work that our organization and many of the organization and the community are doing day in and day out and i’m encouraged that the commission is present and open to follow this as well and this next question actually is very related to that last point that you made um and it’s um towards the our community leaders have your groups tried to work with other communities of interest in nearby areas or are you mostly working on your own and this is for rebecca kermit and andy yes um api vote michigan is part of a redistricting coalition um we’ve already mentioned a few times michigan nonprofit association has a coalition of 20 plus different organizations at the table from different ethnic groups that are working on redistricting so all of our community organizations were working together for the same common goal go make sure that our voices are heard and we’re part of the table when the maps are dry i would i would say this idea of working on our own versus working with others there’s a there’s a balancing act to play there well so if our argument in battle creek is we should be with kalamazoo yes we’ve had conversations with people in kalamazoo like hey if hey kalamazoo if we go say this like we’re telling the truth right like people we’ve talked to say well yeah yeah of course you are but there will be lots of communities around the kalamazoo area that will conceivably want to say well we want to we want to be with kalamazoo too and depending on how the numbers and the census come back like there might not be room in the kalamazoo congressional district to fit all the people who feel they’re in a community of interest with kalamazoo and so you know it’s not up to the people of battle creek to to go convince someone they should in with kalamazoo like those folks need to make that case on their own and leave it to the to the commission to to take you know those factors into account and they’re obviously will have to delay you know overlay other other factors making a decision of well okay here’s where we’re gonna yes there’s this community of interest but we’re gonna have to split that and you know it gets real complicated quickly so yes and no you know it’s it’s about self-determination right like we want to determine our our future it’s not our business to tell other people what their future ought to be so uh at oakland forward uh we’re doing of course all of oakland county but we have six target cities that we’re focused on and we’re going to make sure that the commission hears from them more than anybody else so we are very unapologetically selfish in our viewpoints getting to the commission and so we’re going to make sure that we have the town halls the meetings and everything else to make sure that everybody has a voice that we represent mostly and then hopefully the maps will be fair but if those maps come out the way we want them then that’s going to be on everybody else so i’m just letting people know ahead of time that we are making sure that our voices are heard and to go back to our earlier question we’re going to stack those commission meetings so if it’s two minutes per person we’re going to have 10 people so we get 20 minutes that’s what we’re going to do that’s the plan and so everybody who’s watching this call they need to know that they’re going to hear from not only open forward but those key cities in oakland county so they can get the best map possible so that’s what we’re doing great it’s good love to hear it and we’re just about wrapping up on our time for questions and i apologize that we weren’t able to get to all the questions that were posed on our stream but this last question is for connie the coi process seems dependent on communities mobilizing themselves how will the micrc conduct outreach to potential leaders and communities of interest that are not attending this webinar um actually i think that’s a question i’ve already answered a little bit with close up out there beating the bushes trying to find communities of interest and the commission itself the mic rc hasn’t yet gotten to the point where it is out beating the bushes but i know they intend to they want to have as much testimony as possible from communities of interest and they have put out the locations where they will hold public hearings assuming that the public hearings can be in person not on zoom and they’ve tried to space them nicely across the state and they’re getting feedback right now from the public about whether they’ve selected the right places and how to make the commission hearings as accessible as possible and invite as many people as possible i these commissioners are people who are very good citizens they are taking lots of their personal time to do the work for the whole state and they’re following the constitutional amendments guidelines they’re trying to be very careful we’re grateful to them and i know that they will go out of their way to make sure that this process works effectively the way it’s supposed to work and we’re all happy that it’s happening this year yes it’s very exciting i want to as a wrap up thank all um of the audience for your questions and thank the panelists for all of your insights and your perspectives i’ll now pass it on to john to wrap up the event for the evening thank you miriam wow i want to thank you for starting us off tonight with your video and finishing it up with handling the questions so we thank you for that we received many more questions than we had an opportunity to get to and we thank you for submitting them and we hope that you’re going to continue to follow the redistricting in michigan um that it’s got a long way to go there’s a lot of action going to happen along the way and i think that that there are resources that you can use in addition to the media that you make in contact with but with regular updates on what’s happening what happens when the the public meetings uh public hearings occur you’ll be able to watch them on the website there are lots of opportunities to stay involved check the you know the commission’s website they have when they’re meeting they have agendas they have public comments that people have submitted after a week or so they have minutes of what happened at the meeting you might have not been able to get to so they’re very active they’re very public and i think if you’re working with a group of people who could divide up a bid who’s going to watch how much of a four-hour commission meeting but the minutes are there they’re doing a very good job in contrast to the past there’s more information out there than you can probably absorb as an individual or in the past you read about it in the paper after it happened so i think that um following the commission uh close-up has information that we will be collecting and putting up voters not politicians uh the michigan nonprofit association others will so there’s plenty out there and it’s important to keep up with what’s about to happen next so that you’re prepared when we get there coming uh i should probably mention that the micr is working on an outreach plan now and it is possible to sign up for the email list on their website so that when they’re ready to go you’ll be informed it’s also possible to send them you know an email but since here are some of the things i hope you’re taking into consideration as you move forward there are you know public comments they’re they’re not extensive but almost every meeting a couple of people write in and uh it’s a chance to you know get in on the discussions before decisions are made about what they’re going to do where they’re going to do it and in particular how they’re going to handle virtual meetings because it won’t probably come to that so we hope that that tonight has you know wedded your appetite for spending even more time uh worrying about these things than you might have been we hope you’ll stay in touch and go out there and spread the word so thank you and good night.