Featured photo: The serious concerns of Genesee County residents, such as Lori Ross, have been expressing to the MICRC could affect Flint residents for the next decade.
Written by Tanya Terry, with information provided by the state of Michigan
A few Flint residents, along with many Detroit-area residents and other Michigan residents from across the state, spoke to the Michigan Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission (MICRC) about how the commission’s proposed maps could affect Flint. This happened at a December MICRC meeting, held in Detroit.
Also, Dr. Jerome Reide, legislative liaison for the Michigan Department of Civil Rights, released a department analysis showing the five proposed electoral maps offered by the Michigan Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission (MICRC) violated the federal Voting Rights Act.
Dr. Reide’s analysis was filed with MICRC on December 9, 2021, in advance of the end of the public comment period and the Commission’s final vote on the maps, which is expected on December 30, 2021.
According to Dr. Reide’s analysis, none of the five Congressional District maps proposed on Nov. 5, 2021, includes a majority Black district. Currently Michigan has two majority-minority Congressional districts – the 13th and 14th.
The Voting Rights Act requires that the commission draw majority-minority districts to prevent vote dilution in Saginaw, Southfield, Flint, Pontiac, Taylor, Inkster, Redford, Hamtramck and Detroit. Each of these communities of interest could be denied the opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice if the present percentages of majority-minority districts are diluted.
The U.S. Supreme Court determined three threshold measures in Thornburg v. Gingles (1986) to evaluate whether an electoral map violates the rights of minority groups set forth in the Voting Rights Act:
- A minority group must demonstrate it is large enough and compact enough to constitute a majority in an electoral district.
- A minority group must demonstrate it is politically united.
- A minority group must demonstrate the majority group historically votes sufficiently as a group to defeat the minority group’s preferred candidate.
The Voting Rights Act is designed to allow for coalitions of Black, Asian, Hispanic, Native American and other minority residents, as well as those who identify with two or more racial groups, to coalesce and elect candidates of their choice.
Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brennan said in Gingles, 478 U.S. at 36-37, that there are several additional “objective factors” in determining the “totality of circumstances” surrounding an alleged violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Some objective factors include the extent to which the members of the minority group bear the effects of discrimination in areas like education, employment and health, which hinder effective participation.
Genesee County Resident Lori Ross participated in the last MICRC meeting held in Detroit remotely.
“I wanted to raise the point that while it is important that Flint retain a majority-minority district in the State House, we should not be packed into one single district,” Ross said. “To do so would assure a partisan gerrymander and subject our city to another decade of gerrymandering. “
Ross told the commission that, in particular, a map submitted by NextVote reflects the wishes of many Flint community members
“Map P9240 is a statewide proposed map, which incorporated work that Flint residents did to ensure that our city had both a majority-minority district, along with a second opportunity for a seat that has been the case for the last decade.”
Ross asked the commission to use Map P9240 as a model to move forward with redistricting Flint in the State House of Representatives, thanking the commissioners for their service to the state.
Ross had reiterated what other Flint residents had said at previous meetings.
The commission final vote procedure, which could immensely affect these matters, was discussed towards the end of the December Detroit meeting and was approved.
Executive Director Dr. Sue Hammersmith and Sarah Reinhardt from MDOS presented a draft document of process for the final vote, created to be in accordance with the Constitution
Sarah Reinhardt and Yvonne Young started the draft and the full MICRC staff and MDOS met to review & edit it and create the document for the commission prior to the meeting.
At the meeting, it was agreed upon that between Dec. 28-30, a motion will also be made for each commissioner to present his or her top two favored plans, by district type, as part of a discussion about the plans.
The commission chair/vice chair will present an overview of each plan in alphabetical order at an open meeting, according to the document. This overview will include the sequence by which the maps were developed (including maps by individual committee members), how they are similar and how they are different. They will go through the proposed Congressional, proposed Senate then the proposed House maps.
Commissioners were asked to take notes on each plan, as needed.
After the discussion, each commissioner will cast a vote by stating the name of the plan they wish to vote for out of all the published plans for that district type. The secretary will record the vote, check for a Constitutional majority and announce the results, sharing an Excel spreadsheet via Zoom to publicly display the results of the vote.
If no plan meets the criteria, the commission will have more discussion and consider voting again-with the motion to reconsider only being possible two times move on to rank choice voting.
In ranked voting, each commissioner may submit one published plan to the full commission for consideration. Each commissioner attending the meeting in person will receive a ballot to record their vote. Each commissioner shall rank the submitted plans on the ballot in order of preference. Commissioners attending the meeting remotely will be able to relay their vote rankings to the secretary by email, or audibly by phone. Each plan will be assigned a point value inverse to its ranking among the number of choices, giving the lowest ranked plan one point and the highest ranked plan a point value equal to the number of plans submitted. The secretary will read aloud each commissioner’s ranked votes for each commissioner to confirm, one at a time. The secretary will announce the ranked vote and will share an Excel spreadsheet via Zoom to publicly display the total point value achieved by each plan.
The commission will adopt the plan receiving the highest total points by at least two commissioners not affiliated with the party of the commissioner submitting the plan, or, in the case of a plan submitted by non-affiliated commissioners, is ranked among the top half of plans by at least two commissioners affiliated with a major party.
If no plan meets the requirement for a constitutional majority, or if there is a tie between two plans for the highest point value and the plan, a random selection process will be used. The secretary will announce the plans entering the random selection and will introduce the independent accounting firm performing the random selection, using accounting software.
There were originally five House maps. The Michigan State House, Michigan State Senate and Michigan Congressional maps currently being proposed are available for viewing at: https://www.michigan.gov/micrc/0,10083,7-418-107190_109075—,00.html
