DETROIT — The draft congressional and legislative districts drawn by Michigan's citizen-led redistricting commission illegally disenfranchise minority voters, the head of the state's department of civil rights told a group of randomly selected voters responsible for drawing new voting districts Wednesday night.
"Simply put, the department believes that maps presented by this commission violate federal civil rights law," Michigan Department of Civil Rights Executive Director John E. Johnson Jr. told the Michigan Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission.
The commission's draft maps "dilute majority-minority districts and strip the ability for a minority voter to elect legislators who reflect their community and effect any meaningful opportunity to impact public policy and lawmaking." He warned the commission that if it approved any of its draft maps, it would be violating the Voting Rights Act. The federal law requires voting districts that ensure minority groups have an opportunity to elect their preferred candidates.
Johnson's statement came on a day when angry voters from Detroit and other areas of the state got their first chance to provide testimony to the commission which recently approved a set of draft congressional and legislative districts.
Detroiters came out in droves to the TCF Center Wednesday to demand wholesale changes to the preliminary congressional and legislative districts drawn by the group.
Commenters largely focused their ire on the commission's decision to do away with majority Black districts in the nation's largest majority Black city.
With her fist in the air, shouting over loud applause by those in attendance, former state representative Sherry Gay-Dagnago and a member of Detroit's Board of Education yelled, "Get it right or watch out for the lawsuits because they're coming."
Gay-Dagnago accused the Democratic members of the commission of being "asleep at the wheel" and said the draft maps would disenfranchise Black voters.
"It's time to go back and redraw these maps," she said. "Don't abandon the rights of our voters."
Many commenters echoed her, warning the commission that Black candidates would struggle to win elections if the commission adopted its draft maps. Several commenters told the commission its maps harken back to Jim Crow era policies that disenfranchised Black voters.
Others called on the commission to draw lines that wouldn't split up their communities into separate districts and said that the commission has a long way to go to ensure the districts it draws don't provide a disproportionate advantage to any political party.
The commissioners have vowed to adjust their draft maps based on the input they receive at public hearings but expressed confidence in their approach to drawing districts in Detroit.
The volume of feedback that came their way Wednesday suggests that commission is poised for another grueling round of mapping and deliberations ahead of its Nov. 5 deadline to propose maps before adopting the final maps on Dec. 30.
The hearing is expected to go past the 8 p.m. scheduled end time as the commission planned to stay to hear from all those who signed up to speak.
The hearing in Detroit kicked off the group's statewide tour to solicit input on the draft maps. The commission will travel to Lansing, Grand Rapids, Gaylord and Flint next.
Michigan is currently home to 15 current congressional, state Senate and state House districts where the voting age population is majority Black. The commission's draft maps would eliminate those majority Black districts. Only a single state House district in one of the commission's draft maps would have Black voting age population just above 50% when including Black individuals who reported more than one race on the census.
The commission's voting rights attorney Bruce Adelson has told the commission that the current districts dilute the voting strength of Black voters by packing them into a small number of districts. An analysis by political scientist Lisa Handley, who was hired by the commission to look at racial voting patterns, estimated that the commission didn't need to draw majority-Black districts to ensure Black-preferred candidates can win. A 40% Black district could suffice, she said.
Using that estimate as a guidepost, the commission has drawn Detroit districts where the Black voting age population generally falls within a 40%-45% range, achieved by pairing Black voters in the city in districts with suburban communities.
On Wednesday, Ray Herrick, 58, of Northville and a 32-year UAW Local 163 member, said the commission's proposed districts "would rob the African-American community of Michigan's biggest city the numerical edge inherent in their population of Detroit" and allow "carpetbaggers from the suburbs" to determine policies and the distribution of funds that impact the city.
Local leaders told the commission those draft maps dilute the voices of Black voters by placing Detroiters in districts that Black candidates will struggle to win.
Rebecca Szetela, the independent chair of the commission, has said that the draft districts could actually increase Black voters' representation by spreading them out across more districts.
Some commissioners have said that while they feel confident the maps comply with the Voting Rights Act, they plan to look at turnout data and weigh public input before their next round of mapping.
"We hear the concern, it is not falling on deaf ears," said M.C. Rothhorn, the Democratic vice chair of the commission during a press conference Monday.
The commission is challenged, in part, by a lack of available data. Michigan has had only one contested statewide primary election over the past decade: the 2018 gubernatorial primary. While many of the commission's draft districts in Detroit would be safe Democratic seats, it is not clear that Black and white voters in the same districts would vote the same way in a primary election, opening the possibility that Black voters in Detroit would not be represented by their preferred candidate.
Jon Eguia, an economics and political science professor at Michigan State University, said Wednesday it was unusual and risky to place so much weight on an analysis that includes just one primary election.
"Suppose an engineer gives you the estimate that the bare minimum amount of concrete that is enough for a bridge of this kind to hold and not fall apart is 1½ tons," he said. "You will not then infer, 'OK, I'm going to build 20 bridges with exactly 1½ tons.' It will probably hold, but who wants to drive over that bridge?"
Eguia and Voters Not Politicians, the group behind the constitutional amendment that established the new redistricting process, have called on the commission to reevaluate its approach to complying with the Voting Rights Act. Many commenters Wednesday called on the commission to heed the recommendation
In addition to comply with the Voting Rights Act, the commission is also required to draw maps that reflect communities of interest, populations with common cultural, economic and historic ties that wish to stay intact in the new districts.
Local leaders who mobilized members of their communities to testify and submit maps to the commission said that the draft maps would split up neighborhoods and ethnic groups in ways that are detrimental.
Representatives from LGBT Detroit called on the commission Wednesday to keep the Palmer Park and surrounding neighborhoods intact in the new districts. The area was the heart of the city's LGBT community in the 1970s and continues to serve as an LGBT hub today, and the commission's draft maps would split the area up into separate U.S. House, Michigan Senate and Michigan House districts.
Members of APIAVote-Michigan, an organization focused on equity for the Asian American community, asked the commission to keep the Bangladeshi community in Hamtramck and Detroit together. It is currently split into separate draft state House districts.
Bilal Hammoud, 25 of Dearborn Heights, called on the commission to preserve Dearborn and Dearborn Heights in the state House maps to ensure fair representation for Arab Americans.
The commission's draft maps would cut off a part of south end of Dearborn in the draft state House district and another would place the north end of Dearborn Heights in a district that would stretch to include west side Detroit neighborhoods.
"Having it stretch across Detroit is realistically just hurting both marginalized communities that exist," he said. "Because we show up as white on the census, I think that's what some of these maps can do is put two communities against each other." Changing the maps would help address issues facing Arab Americans in Dearborn and Dearborn Heights such as flooding an language access.
One election administrator warned the commission that its draft lines could suppress voter turnout. "When I look at the Livonia lines, I see neighborhoods being cut up. I see confusion, I see voter confusion and that is not something I want to see in my district," said Livonia City Clerk Susan Nash. "My goal is get citizens out to vote."
The draft maps would generally still favor Republicans, though nowhere near to the same extent as the current lines, according to measures of partisan fairness.
Commenters repeatedly called on the commission to do more to erase the GOP advantage in its draft maps. When voters passed a constitutional amendment in 2018 to establish the new redistricting process, they wanted to do away with gerrymandering, commenters told the commission.
Michigan leans Democratic and the draft maps should reflect that, they said.
Democratic voters in the state are more geographically concentrated, especially in urban areas, which makes it hard draw districts that would ensure that each political party will see the number of votes won in a given election reflected in the number of seats they ultimately win without creating trade-offs with other criteria, Eguia said. If the commission wants to overcome Republicans' inherent geographic advantage "non-compact districts that break communities of interest and jurisdictions must be drawn," reads Eguia's recent report on the commission's draft maps.
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