Michigan’s oddly shaped 13th Congressional district looks a little like a jigsaw puzzle piece with a notch taken out of the bottom. It is the only district in the state that is entirely within one county — Wayne County – and it is shaped the way it is for two reasons:
First, the Republicans who drew it wanted to comply with what they believed the Voting Rights Acts requires, which is to have two districts where African-Americans are a majority of the population, the other one being Brenda Lawrence’s 14th District.
And second, the Republicans, who have controlled every branch of Michigan government for the last seven years, wanted to pack as many Democrats into as few districts as possible, so they could win the rest. They’ve accomplished that, big time.
Over the years, in election after election, the citizens have cast slightly more votes for Democrats for Congress, but they end up with nine Republicans and only five Democrats.
This district, however, is so Democratic the Republicans won’t even have a name on the ballot. Whoever wins the primary August 7 will become the next member of Congress.
But will that winner be truly representative of the district? Here’s why I ask: First of all, primary turnout everywhere in Michigan is notoriously bad. We’ll be lucky if even one-quarter of registered voters show up at the polls in this district next month.
African-Americans, sadly, are even less likely to turn out than whites. Currently, according to census estimates, this district is about 56 percent black and 38 percent white, the balance being mainly Hispanic. Four of the six candidates on the ballot are black – Ian Conyers, Shanelle Jackson, Brenda Jones, and Coleman Young II.
One, Rashida Tlaib, is a Muslim of Palestinian descent, and William Wild is a white man from the mostly white suburb of Westland. You don’t have to be a mathematician to know that if black voters split their ballots more or less evenly, and whites rally around Bill Wild, he could win this race. Believe it or not, Tlaib also has a good shot at winning.
She has a track record of appealing to both white and black voters and to young people, and is raising more money than any of the other candidates. Wild raised the second largest amount, over a quarter of a million dollars, in the last quarter.
Either of them could win a seat in Congress by getting as little as a third of the one-quarter of the electorate that bothers to take part. Under how system, that’s the way it works, and you can’t blame them for playing the game according to the rules.
Except — how many of the voters will be happy with the result? What we need to do in such cases, I think, is to amend our state constitution to require a runoff, as many people do, if no candidate has a majority in a primary election. Losing candidates should be allowed to waive a runoff if they choose, but they should have a right to one.
We also need to get rid of gerrymandering, which has given us weirdly drawn districts largely filled with people who don’t have much in common with each other.
Both things would help give us our democracy back – and make it a lot easier to vote.
