Associated Press: After census, citizens panels seek sway in redistricting
Associated Press: After census, citizens panels seek sway in redistricting
The Indiana Citizens Redistricting Commission held numerous public hearings. It produced a report prioritizing redistricting criteria. Soon, the bipartisan panel will cap its work by drafting new voting maps for Indiana’s nine U.S. House seats and 150 state legislative districts based on the latest census data.
Despite all that work and its official-sounding name, the commission created by a coalition of advocacy groups has no official role in Indiana’s redistricting process. The actual line-drawing is being done by the Republican-led Legislature, which could ignore the commission entirely and use its overwhelming majorities to create districts that help the GOP continue to win elections for years to come.
Rather than amounting to a mere exercise in futility, advocates for redistricting reform hope the Indiana commission and similar efforts elsewhere can draw public attention to partisan gerrymandering and pressure the real mapmakers to temper their political inclinations. If that doesn’t work, they hope their alternative maps ultimately could be implemented by judges resolving redistricting lawsuits.
Dan Vicuna, national redistricting manager for Common Cause, said there are efforts underway across the country “trying to shame the legislature into doing the right thing.”
But if lawmakers don’t adopt citizens’ redistricting suggestions, “we think it could be more powerful to judges, who have less of a partisan stake in how these districts are drawn,” Vicuna said.