Commission takes another stab at redrawing metro Detroit districts after court order

DETROIT (FOX 2) - The commissioners tasked with overseeing the drawing of Michigan's legislative boundaries hoped to get a little closer to coming up with a final map that could both service the state's voters while remaining legal in the eyes of the court.

After a panel of three federal judges unequivocally sided with the plaintiffs who sued the Michigan Independent Redistricting Commission over their chosen map, commissioners were told to go back to the drawing board for several metro Detroit districts.

The goal is to avoid cracking and packing - two concepts that have been used to dilute the influence of a particular group of voters. 

Cracking means dividing a constituency in order to shrink their political power. Packing means consolidating them into a small number of districts, which also minimizes influence. 

The balancing act is tricky. Legally drawing the boundaries means taking into account all the different races and voting constituencies within an area and divying them up to give everyone the best representation without taking away someone else's.

Mona Mawari, a voter who was at Thursday's commission meeting was eying District 3, which she said should include Melvindale. Adding the city to the district wouldn't affect nearby Black communities.

She said she's experienced a similar problem that other minority voting blocs have gone through.

"My Yemeni community has been disenfranchised for decades," Mawari said. "We are a group under the Arab community, but there are disparities between Yemenis and other Arabs."

The president of Bagley Community Council was also at the meeting. He didn't like the map that the commission approved when it finalized the first voting boundaries. 

"There are a couple of good options this time, but we have to remember the representation of the different diverse communities need to be represented. Detroit lost out," 

Richard Weiss, one of the redistricting commissioners, disagreed. 

"I think the map that we drew were pretty fair. I thought the districts were good," he said.

According to the judges, the districts needed to be drawing because they violated the equal protection clause of the constitution. The ruling castigated the commissioner's reliance on experts as well as how it used race when it drew the district boundaries.

But Weiss said that was necessary to do it properly. 

"My understanding in order to not violate the Voting Rights Act, you need to not pack districts," Weiss said. "Our Hickory map does not do that. But the court said we used race too much. I found it a little hard not to to not violate the Voting Rights Act if you don't look at that." 

Earlier this month, the commission approved nine different maps, as well as an independent map for the public to look at.