DETROIT – Want to know why Michigan and Ohio don’t have the political clout they once did? Just consider this: Back in the 1960s these two mighty Midwestern powerhouses had 43 members of Congress and 47 electoral votes between them.
When the next presidential election is held, three years from now, they will be down to only 32 electoral votes and 15 fewer members of Congress than they once had.
Each state will lose one more member of Congress in 2022, repeating a familiar pattern that, for Michigan, began in 1980.
But Michigan residents have no idea what the new districts will look like that their congressmen and 148 state legislators will be elected from in those next year — and we don’t know exactly when we will know, because detailed census results are being delayed.
And while that will be a problem for every state in the union, it may be more so in Michigan than anywhere else. That’s because the state is using a new system of reapportionment that has never been tried before — and nobody knows just how it will work.
Here’s how all this happened: Every decade, every state has to draw new district lines based on the results of the census. Courts have ruled that every congressional district has to have exactly the same population, based on the April 1, 2020 count.
The rules for Michigan legislative districts aren’t quite so strict, but they cannot vary in population by more than five percent.
Traditionally, Michigan, like Ohio, then had those boundaries drawn by the state legislatures and approved by the governor. But in both states, boundaries were gerrymandered to favor the GOP.
Outraged, a true grass-roots citizens’ movement called Voters not Politicians was successful at getting a state constitutional amendment passed in 2018. That turned redistricting over to a commission made up of ordinary citizens — four Republicans, four Democrats and five independents.
They, with the help of technical experts and statisticians, are to draw the new boundaries. A majority of each of the three groups has to approve every redistricting decision they make.
That work should be under way by now, but it can’t even start, and won’t for months. Thanks mostly to delays caused by the pandemic, the U.S. Census Bureau said last month it may not even deliver the detailed population data needed till Sept. 30.
Trouble is, Michigan’s Constitution requires new redistricting maps be submitted by Sept. 17! That obviously can’t happen now.
As a result, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and the redistricting commission itself have asked the Michigan Supreme Court to extend that deadline to Dec. 11, 2021.
They also asked the high court to extend the final deadline further to allow public comment and criticism, and move a new date by which final deadlines must be approved to Jan. 25, 2022.
What the state’s highest court may do is anyone’s guess, but it is hard to imagine what could happen if it doesn’t. Some have talked about using the old boundaries for one more election, though that would seem to violate the U.S. Constitution.
There’s also a nightmare scenario in which all state officials, including the legislature, are elected at large, which could mean the ballots would be as big as a bedsheet.
Nobody really thinks that will happen, though it did once, in 1962, for a congressional seat in Michigan.
Yet even if the deadline is extended, the late census results will still cause problems. Running for Congress these days is difficult and has become astronomically expensive. It can even take a million dollars to win a state legislative seat.
Now imagine you don’t even know what your district’s boundaries will be until a few months before the primary election, which, for Michigan, has traditionally been in August, but may be moved next year to June. How do you raise money early when you aren’t even sure where your district will be?
For at least two current members of Congress, things will be even worse; if they want to hold on to their jobs, they will have to run against each other in their party’s primary. That’s because the state’s going down to 13 seats in the House of Representatives means the 14 current members will have to play musical chairs.
But nobody really knows what the congressional districts will look like until the Michigan Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission draws them. All that is certain is that each has to have exactly 775,726 residents, based on last year’s census.
Most experts also think that federal law and court ruling will require the creation of two districts in which a majority of the population is African-American.
Beyond that, however, it is up to the commission.
They are also supposed to keep like-minded and neighboring communities together, instead of drawing bizarrely shaped districts to preserve partisan control.
That will probably mean more competitive seats. That is likely to be good for Democrats, who have often gotten more votes statewide but fewer seats, but also better for everybody.
“Kalamazoo and Battle Creek have common interests and belong in the same congressional district,” said former U.S. Rep. Joe Schwarz, a Battle Creek Republican, noting that legislators a decade ago divided the cities for political purposes.
Whatever does happen is apt to be stressful — and promises to be fascinating. By the way, if you need proof of how important a complete count is: Had Michigan census-takers found another 5,700 people, the state would not have lost a seat in Congress!
Given that the U.S. Census Bureau has said there is always an undercount, and that the pandemic made this year’s census harder than the last, it is virtually certain that those people were there.
(Editor’s Note: A version of this column also appeared in the Toledo Blade.)
