Michigan’s Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission continues to hold meetings across the state as they redraw political maps.
Voters approved the commission back in 2018 to come up with new house, senate and congressional districts.
They’re now traveling to different areas of the state getting feedback as they draw the new district maps, with one of those stops at Ferris State University.
“We’re trying to run a process that everybody can be informed of,” said Commissioner Steven Lett.
Members of the redistricting commission focused on finishing up Michigan’s new Senate districts at Thursday’s meeting in Big Rapids.
“Once we finish the Senate, we’ll go back to the House and finish those, and then the next step would be the Congressional,” said Lett.
With state Senate districts nearly done, they’ll then move on to state House and Congressional districts.
“We will start probably with counties and sometimes break down to townships,” said Commissioner Janice Vallette. “We’re looking at population, diverse communities.”
But the drafts of the new political districts must be done by Nov 1—the deadline in the Michigan Constitution.
There’s already a lawsuit based on anticipation that deadline won’t be met.
“They’ll still be reevaluated and changed probably many times before we’re complete,” said Vallette.
Commissioners say they’re working as fast as they can, and taking a flood of public comments into consideration.
“We would like to go quicker, but it’s hard to go quicker when you’re drawing these maps,” said Lett. “You just have to pay attention to what you’re doing, you have to get the populations down to where they absolutely have to be, that’s required by law.”
“We’re taking notes, it’s being recorded, we also have a portal that they can put their public comments in,” said Vallette.
They feel what they’ve come up so far will mean better representation for people across Michigan.
“We got a spread on age, you got a spread between men and women, you got a spread between races, so it was done purposefully to get people from all over,” said Lett.
“I think we’re trying to be absolutely as fair as we can be,” said Vallette. “We do look at the public comments, we do look at the maps that people have drawn, so it’s very important to us that [we know what] the public’s wishes are.”
The commission is scheduled to meet again on Sept. 13 in East Lansing.
The next two meetings in northern Michigan will be at Treetops Resort in Gaylord on Oct. 12 and Northern Michigan University on Oct. 14.
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