![]() states redraw their legislative districts. In a year when civic infrastructure has taken more than its share of hits, from post offices to schools to polling stations, it has perhaps never been more important.Įvery ten years, informed by the latest census, U.S. But this is the brass tacks of a democracy movement. At the commission’s second meeting, after one motion passed unanimously, chair Steven Lett, an Interlochen attorney, declared, “Okay! So we have a meeting schedule!” Some three months into the job, participants are dividing themselves into committees hiring an executive director, communications director, and general counsel developing a code of conduct training on the Open Meetings Act and the Freedom of Information Act and dealing with all the other details that make a project like this one run. “Michigan is our current great hope,” said Jason Rhode, national coordinator of the Princeton Gerrymandering Project.įor all that, the commission is still getting sorted. ![]() Organizers nationwide are keeping a close watch on the new commission. The participants are part of a rising civic infrastructure for voting rights nationwide-a radical shift from the old way of doing things, in which elected leaders mapped out assembly/state house, senatorial, and congressional districts themselves. This was the first meeting of Michigan’s Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission, a nonpartisan group of residents tasked with drawing Michigan’s new political maps, tracing the shape of power for the next ten years. A resident of an intentional community in Lansing with experience in facilitation and cooperative living. A twenty-eight-year-old aspiring orthopedic surgeon in Orchard Lake. A mother of three college-age children in Battle Creek who has returned to college herself. A pastor and former postal worker from Detroit. One September morning, thirteen people from towns all across Michigan introduced themselves in a Zoom call. In Michigan, the Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission is getting ready to fix the state’s gerrymandered political map.
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