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After Census, U.S. Citizens Panel Seek Key Role In Redistricting
- By The Financial District
- Aug 30, 2021
- 2 min read
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 US House seats and 150 state legislative districts based on the latest census data.
Photo Insert: The skyline over Monument Circle, Indiana
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, David Lieb reported for the Associated Press (AP).
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.
“We think our process will produce better maps -- maps that better serve the interests of voters and communities,” said Julia Vaughn, executive director of Common Cause Indiana, which helped form the citizens' commission.
The once-a-decade redistricting process has ramped up with the recent release of 2020 census data showing how populations have changed in neighborhoods, cities, and counties since 2010.
US House and state legislative districts must be redrawn to rebalance their populations.
But mapmakers can create an advantage for their political party in future elections by packing opponents’ voters into a few districts or spreading them thin among multiple districts — a process known as gerrymandering.
