As you may know, the States have an opportunity to establish new boundaries for US House Districts, State Senate Districts and State House Districts. The districts are redefined every 10 years after the new Census data is obtained. Since the Census was taken in 2020, we now have new data to establish the boundaries.

Gerrymandering by both parties has been a historical issue in many States, including ours. Several years ago, our voters had a referendum to eliminate the politics in establishing the boundaries by having bipartisan citizens participate in establishing the boundaries, so neither party is advantaged by the new boundaries. One objective of the process is to try to make as many districts “competitive” so as not to drive our politicians too far to the ‘left’ or ‘right’.

The new boundaries for our state are to be defined by the end of December. You have an opportunity to provide input to the plans tomorrow either by written notice, virtual participation in meeting, or actual participation at meeting being held in Ann Arbor. (Sorry for the late notice, I just found out about this)

Here is a link to the information on the meeting. (I will share my analysis of the US Representative district proposals at the end of this message.)

https://www.michigan.gov/documents/micrc/MICRC_Redistricting_Meeting_Notice_November_18_741321_7.pdf

The bipartisan committee has several proposals for each of the Represented positions. For the US Representative, there are 5 proposals. For the State Senate, there are 6 proposals. For the State House Representatives, there are 4 proposals. You have an opportunity to provide input on any and all of these.

As I stated above, one of the objectives of the bipartisan citizen committee is to have the boundaries try to create as many competitive districts as possible. There are a total of 13 Michigan districts.

I will now show two graphs for two of the proposed US Representative district plans. One of them creates 3 competitive districts (based on past voting precinct preferences). One proposal creates only 1 competitive district. Competitive is defined by having a near 50/50 Democrat to Republican split for a district. Oakland Township residents are in the 9th district in all of the proposals except one. In one of the proposals, Oakland Township is split between the 9th and 10th districts.

Here is the higher competitive district proposal titled “Chestnut”. In this proposal, 3 of the 13 districts are competitive (districts 3, 7 and 9).

Here is the much less competitive district proposal titled ” Lange”. This proposal only has one competitive district (district 7).

None of the other three proposals create as many competitive districts as “Chestnut”. It is for that reason, that “Chestnut” is my preferred proposal for the US Representative districts.

You are encouraged to go to the State’s website link, analyze their various proposals, and provide your input for each of the type or districts being analyzed.

• US Representative
• State Senate
• State Representative

Eliminating Gerrymandering, as a political tool used by those in power, is something that our State’s citizens have voted to eliminate, or at least reduce. Your informed input can help eliminate some of the extremes on both side or the political aisle.

Thanks, and once again sorry for the late notice!

Richard Michalski