The Michigan Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission is taking the lead on drawing Congressional and State Legislative Maps over the next year as we head into the 2022 vote.

Well this past week, the Ford School for Public Policy held a town hall for people to understand the process and communities of interest to get involved and understand how they wanna be represented.

One thing that could impact the process is the delay in census numbers.

- The census has made it more difficult.

COVID slowed down the census process and rather than getting census data in February or March as we anticipated, we won't have it now until September 30th.

That means that the MICRC will be unable to meet this set of deadlines.

And we trust that a court will step in and provide a solution.

In any case, is important for communities of interest to be totally prepared when the public hearings begin.

We expect that those hearings will begin in May and will probably go through part of June.

- And Michigan will probably lose a congressional seat this election cycle, depending on those census numbers, One Detroit Senior Producer, Bill Kubota has more on how the redistricting process is set up and how the public can be involved.

- Now, getting the political parties and their office holders to give up control of this process is hard.

- [Bill] The process electoral redistricting there's a big change of foot.

- Well, what was the old way of doing it which is the political way, right?

- Yeah, all the last two times around the Republicans controlled the legislature and the governorship.

So the idea is Democrats might as well go home and watch football or something because they're gonna play no part.

This was gonna be done through them not by them.

- [Bill] John Chamberlain has been a redistricting participant and observer since the 1960s, but it's just recently Michigan voters changed the game.

- [Announcer] Over 3000 volunteers collected more than 425,000 petition signatures- - [Bill] Proposal 2 called for an independent citizens Redistricting Commission in 2018, is passed.

Now the work has began.

- [Announcer] Got 83 County sign including Republicans, independents, Democrats, and those somewhere between.

- I've had one commission meeting under my belt.

So I'm rolling.

- [Bill] The commission's Executive Director Sue Hammersmith started last month.

- Since it's for the citizens by the citizens of Michigan.

So it's pretty exciting to be part of this historic work - [Bill] The Commission has a few other States to look to, California started their redistricting commission a decade ago.

- We are the 14 members of the California's Citizens Redistricting Commission.

And we draw the line - The citizens of California were very happy with the outcome of that process despite the fact that they were doing it for the first time.

People recognize Democrats and Republicans alike that this was a better way of doing it.

Well, keep it up.

- There are four Democrats, four Republicans and five independents that serve on the commission.

- But this is all going on in the middle of a pandemic.

How's that affecting things.

- Well, it's gonna be much harder on a pandemic to speak directly with people point in case we're on zoom today.

In some respects maybe that'll open up options for people to speak up.

- [Bill] Rebecca Szetela attorney with four children and now a redistricting commissioner.

- I was very surprised that I made it on the commission but I'm very happy to have this opportunity.

- [Bill] She joined as a political independent.

- I think the workload is gonna pick up in the summer as we get closer and once we get census information so that we can actually start possibly redrawing maps but for right now, it's about every other week or every week of about four to five hours of meeting.

And then outside prep.

- [Bill] There'll be at least 10 public hearings, will they be virtual, in person don't know yet.

A lot to talk about, State House, Senate Districts and those congressional seats.

- There's no doubt that we're gonna lose another congressional seat.

I think we're pretty much no matter what happen- - [Bill] Kurt Metzger Pleasant Ridge Mayor and Demographer.

- We're now at about 61 of our 83 counties have more deaths than births on an annual basis.

- [Bill] Back in 1980, Michigan had 19 seats in Congress.

Soon they'll be just 13.

Every 10 years after every census we keep losing.

- And none of this was really a surprise.

I know there was a big effort to get the census numbers as close as you can, get the numbers up.

- Right.

- But there was still probably not much hope of saving that seat, was there?

- No, I mean, all the forecasts that had is losing a seat and Michigan did as well as one could expect in the census.

- [Bill] Michigan's overall census response rate in the top 10 but in cities like Detroit and Flint not so good.

Lower numbers there and the shift in population that's expected to affect how Congressional Districts will be redrawn.

- I think this time around, you've got a large movement of African-Americans into both Southern Macomb and Southern Oakland - [Bill] With the Voting Rights Act two Michigan districts need at least 50% African Americans of voting age leading Kurt Metzger to speculate what's ahead.

- Andy Levin might get upset, but I think the 9th district is the one that's gonna have to go.

We can't have as many districts in Southeast Michigan.

And the 9th district takes in Southern Oakland and Southern Macomb.

And I think that that's gonna have to the 13th or 14th or whatever they're renumbered we'll have to take in a larger section of Southern Macomb to get that African-American community.

- [Bill] High on the priority list the commission must consider something called Communities of Interest.

- Communities of Interest, is that a term that you use in your trade?

Well, I'm learning more and more about Communities of Interest every day.

It is always been one of the factors in redistricting but it's usually, if you look at other States it's been way down at the bottom.

- You think about who's a community of interest is it in a religious group and ethnic group is that an economic group.

Then you're starting to make pretty core decisions about who people are and how they should be represented and so all of those become pretty controversial decisions.

- Communities of Interest don't come predefined.

There's no directory of communities of Interest with the commission goatee.

They're gonna have to depend upon people coming forward either in to testify and public hearings or virtual hearings.

And I think making the argument don't drop us into pieces what your interest is, is pretty much open.

I mean, you can name your interest other than our interest is getting our guy reelected - [Bill] Another priority, partisan fairness, how to do that with tightly packed urban areas with a lot more Democrats breaking them up is hard to do which may be needed to create more competitive districts.

- There are a lot of maps that you could draw where Democrats will continue to have large problems in translating a statewide victory into a victory in say the Michigan Senate.

- [Bill] Thus the conundrum as more Michigan voters, lean Democrat while more house and Senate seats are Republican.

- I'm just telling you, that's actually very hard to achieve in concert with the other objectives, which are, we pay attention to Communities of Interest.

We make sure racial groups have that potential to elect demographic representatives.

All of those things can be in conflict with achieving a map that means that a 50/50 vote would go 50/50 in representatives.

- [Bill] Now eyes turn toward that new commission where you can follow every development online courtesy the Michigan Secretary of State.

- We have to have our final maps drawn by November one.

So that is our hard deadline that we're working with and everything else is just going to fall into place based on when we get the data that we need to do our job.

- The success will be whether people show up at these public meetings and people across the state get energized and engaged in the process.

- It is easy to make a map that is less partisan driven and less gerrymandered than the current maps.

So that's a bar that there'll be able to meet but it is a much harder to satisfy people all with reasonable criteria for drawing the lines.