By Mike Kruzman / news@whmi.com


One of the 13 Michiganders tasked with redrawing congressional district lines recently shared an update with Brighton City Council.

In 2018, Michigan voters elected to appoint residents, and not legislators, to the task of drawing up new boundaries for U.S. Congressional, Michigan House, and Michigan Senate districts. From that, the Michigan Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission was born and formed of 4 Republicans, 4 Democrats, and 5 Independent voters. At last week’s meeting of Brighton City Council, MICRC member MC Rothhorn gave an update to Council and took questions.

Rothhorn said no one came in with any redistricting experience, but they are getting help along the way, including from Michigan State University and the university of Michigan. The state of California is also in their 2nd round of citizen redistricting, and while noting they are different from Michigan, Rothhorn said there are things to learn from them, as well.

Rothhorn hit 7 points of the commission is being directed to consider when drawing new lines. That criteria is to ensure districts are of equal population and are geographically contiguous, which are federal mandates. The others are to identify communities of interest, not give any disproportionate advantage to any political party, not to favor or disfavor an incumbent or candidate; reflect consideration of county, city and township boundaries; and keep the districts reasonably compact.

A series of public hearings and town halls are being set up across the state for April and May to collect resident input and answer questions. The Commission has a November 1st deadline, but due to Census numbers coming in slowly with the pandemic, they have asked the state Supreme Court for relief, with hopes of finishing by December 31st.

Send questions or comments to the MICRC at Redistricting@michigan.gov.

Learn more about the process and upcoming public hearings at www.michigan.gov/MICRC

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