the Indiana General Assembly is constitutionally charged with redrawing state legislative and congressional boundaries every 10 years following the census.

Well, with the release of the 2020 census, Indiana lawmakers return to Indianapolis this month to discuss potential changes to the state's existing districts and ultimately adopt new statewide maps for both legislative and congressional districts.

We'll discuss the redistricting process on this week's prime time.

And good evening.

I'm Bazaine is with us today is Peg McGinn and she is a long time member of the League of Women Voters of Fort Wayne.

Peck has worked on redistricting efforts for several years.

She currently serves on the Allen County Bar Foundation board.

And also with us is Dr. Tom Hayhurst with the Indiana Citizen Redistricting Commission and we invite you to join tonight's conversation as well.

If you have a question or comment, please feel free to join us by just calling the number that you see on the screen.

>> And that's Peggy McGinn.

I want to be sure that everyone's moments get properly logged in here.

>> It's good to have you both here.

Thank you so much for doing that.

You did well with Hayhurst by the way.

I do argue yeah.

I got past time pretty good.

Yeah.

And both the both of you here for for an exciting time it has probably been a whirlwind experience before we talk about now let's talk about how we can got to now.

>> Give me a little sense of the history of this thing called redistricting.

Well, redistricting has taken place since the Constitution was developed and we began voting.

But what we're talking about now is the redistricting and whether it's fair or not and unfair redistricting is called gerrymandering and unfortunately gerrymandering or unfair redistrict has been occurring for a long, long time.

It was given the name gerrymandering back in 1812 but basically it hasn't changed.

It's always been about the majority party trying to remain in power, people who are already in power trying to maintain power and but the difference now is that we have computers and we have computer software and the data for citizens and voters is readily available online and we also have software programs now that are much easier to use and much more sophisticated.

So now we kind of have gerrymandering on steroids and the adverse effects of that are that voters are discouraged from voting because they feel like their votes don't count because if one party controls the district the minority party feels like their vote just doesn't matter.

So it discourages voting.

It also discourages competitiveness because who wants to spend the money and the time and the energy to run for office if they really don't think they have a chance of winning the election?

And the third thing that happens is that you get very polarized districts because when you when you don't have to compromise, when it's all under the control of one party, you tend to get extreme ideas and extreme politicians and the moderate voices just get lost and as changes are really only possible every 10 years in 10 years is a long time to wait in between in between moments and Tom, I'm wondering if in this moment that this is why there has been renewed interest by all in democracy to create the commission of which you're a part you know there is an organization made up of about 40 different organizations that is called All in for Democracy that decided after the state legislature did not agree to establish a citizen's redistricting commission in this state which does exist in many states throughout the nation and works very well and Democrat and Republican leaning states both.

The decision was made a good year ago to put together a redistricting commission.

I'm going to use the word shadow commission because that's what it is.

It's not appointed officially by our elected officials.

We have interacted constantly with elected officials.

However, it includes three Democrats, three Republicans and three independents and I should mention I'm an alternate member but I've been heavily involved with all of the activities of the commission including nine public hearings going back several months throughout the state and each of the different nine congressional districts where a couple of thousand people showed up and several hundred asked questions and offered input.

>> Now this year that everything's accelerated it seems and I guess we say it the census causes the Redit but that the actual gathering of data to have the census from which to then do redistricting it's been different this year.

>> Yes.

Yes, it certainly has.

Well because of covid and all of the things that happened in twenty twenty everything was delayed and it was difficult for the census to do their work but they did get it done.

>> They have released the data .

Our legislators have it and they are working on the maps.

We are hoping that they will give us more time to view these maps once they are developed but that's going on right now.

>> But yes, it was delayed and that was primarily because of covid and the deadlines.

Tom, as you know from experiences in pursuing elective office, everyone in all 50 states are looking at the end of the year from here trying to be sure that districts are done so that other matters for primary season next year and so forth can can follow their course.

>> That's true.

And there are several states throughout by the way, I want to point out this is not just an issue focus on Indiana's Republican Party or the Democratic Party and other states which are which are gerrymandered like Maryland, Massachusetts, Illinois, Hawaii.

I think basically everybody on the Indiana citizens redistricting Commission and folks of the League of Women Voters and Common Cause and other organizations that have been involved look at this as a an important challenge which is bipartisan in every way and I think if we were living in Massachusetts we'd be participating in discussions like this or in discussions like this with the same goal to have input and to have all of the at least tentative maps drawn up early so citizens could review them and comment and and an official public manner.

>> And so here we have this moment where the learning curve needs to be scaled by as many individuals and communities to understand what it is that's going on around them and to the degree that there is a participation opportunity and we'll be sharing that as we go forward to be able to to include that.

>> But even so, the time available for all this to happen has really been truncated so far during the show we have heard the word gerrymandering.

>> We may hear the word cracking.

We may hear the word pecking and there may be some other terms of phrase that you'll hear as part of the redistricting conversation.

And so coming to terms with the terms is something that the League of Women Voters found a way to do with a gentleman who will provide some tutorial for us but essentially pocket change.

>> Take a look.

>> Partizan redistricting or gerrymandering is about fractions percentages.

>> These coins represent voters in an evenly divided state.

Fifty dimes, fifty pennies.

>> These one hundred coins elect ten representatives.

That means each voting district must contain ten coins.

>> Now real people don't live in neat rows so let's mix them up.

>> OK this is our hypothetical evenly divided state.

Let's see what happens if the dimes draw the maps.

Ten coins in each district for the dimes first thing we do is pack the pennies, give them to safe districts but pack them solid.

The remaining eight district are won by the dimes by smaller but still comfortable margins.

The Dimes in eight districts and the pennies win to the dimes overwhelmingly controlled legislature.

>> Of course if the pennies drew the district lines the opposite would be true.

>> Let's rig it for the pennies for the pennies we follow the same pack and crack strategy pack the dimes into two safety districts and crack the remaining eight districts to win by the same margin eight to two .

>> Well now that we've destroyed democracy, let's consider what this map would look like if the districts were drawn for compactness and keeping communities of interest together you get evenly divided districts in an evenly divided state.

Some go heavily dime, some go penny but that's to be expected .

>> People live where they live and that is what democracy is about.

It's not about party bosses rigging election districts so they can fix the election results is the quest for something called fair maps which seems elusive, perhaps evasive.

>> But help me both of you to define that concept.

What makes a map fair and how would we know if we had won?

>> Well, there are there's been a lot of research on this and there are some WellDoc good best practices for redistricting and when we had as Tom said when we had our meetings, there were a lot of things mentioned by citizens that they wanted and I and many of them relate to good redistricting practices and they were things like having communities of interest remain together and communities of interest our neighborhoods and groups that have common cultural, economic and other factors that keep them drawn together and we want to keep those together so that their voices don't get cracked like you saw in the video.

And we also want in a fair map to have geographic boundaries respected so that we have as little division as possible in cities, towns, counties and so forth.

So those are two good redistrict principles and we want districts that are competitive that don't unduly favor one party over the other.

There are many other good redistricting practices too but I don't know how much time we have to discuss this but basically a fair map is a map that No one the process to draw it is open and transparent because as you can guess, maps are less likely to be drawn unfairly or gerrymandered if they see the light of day if citizens can view the process, if it's open and transparent so all of them should be transparent all the map drawing processes and then we want good redistricting practices put in place.

Unfortunately in Indiana we only have one requirement and that antiquity and that just means that there that all the areas of the district must be connected.

But there are many, many other good redistricting practices, three of which I just named and these are done by many other states.

I mean we don't have to reinvent the wheel here.

They're well known and well studied and when when they're used it is found that you get fairer districts.

>> Why don't we?

Because a picture can speak a lot of words, share a couple and Tom and Peg can walk us through these.

>> Here is the first one.

This is a portion of an Indiana map showing Indiana Senate districts.

>> Tom, what are we looking at?

Yeah, it's best I can see that Senate districts 14, 15 and 16 that go basically divide up the southeast section of Fort Wayne where there a I will mention for instance with regard to communities of interest is a huge Afro-American population there that has specific interests.

They have been carved into three different Senate districts, one of which goes all the way up to Auburn that Senate district fourteen one of which goes up into the northeast Fort Wayne suburbs and one which goes way out into the western the southwest and western suburbs.

That's at least one example.

There's another example in this area and this by the way, when you talk about communities of interest on a broader scale, almost every city in Indiana has been carved into several different districts for no these are communities of interest.

The communities like Bloomington that used to vote they used to be part of the eighth or ninth congressional district.

They used to have fewer state House districts and now they're like five different state House districts for Bloomington that chopping into several small parts.

>> So those are basically some egregious things that are being done.

And again, I will state they're being done by our Republican leadership here in Indiana.

They're being done in other states like Maryland, Massachusetts, Illinois and other other states Hawaii bye bye the other party.

So it's definitely a bipartisan problem that we're looking at on a national scale.

>> And similarly this is a section of the Indiana House district maps and again with with Fort Wayne in the middle and to just the right of center there from that of pink section there's there's a lot of division going on and then one that's probably most instructive.

Let's share district fifty.

Let's call that one up and pick walk us through this one.

>> Well, if you look very carefully you'll see that it covers both Huntington and Wells County.

>> This is on the left hand side.

Yes.

I'm sorry the left hand side the number fifty and you'll see that most of it is in those two counties.

But then if you look to the top right, you'll see a little sliver of Fort Wayne that was carved out and put into this primarily rural district which I mean otherwise rural district.

>> And if you look that very carefully you'll see that there was about a ten block area.

Now we're looking on the right side of the screen and this is just to illustrate this this small sliver this is just part of that small sliver but there was about a ten block area around Foster Park that was carved out I would say with almost surgical precision.

And if you look at it carefully you'll see that neighbors in the people in the same neighborhood living across the street from one another on Ruidoso Boulevard or South Wayne Street or Lexington Avenue they are in the same same neighborhood living on the same street but they have two they are in two different districts with two different representatives.

So that I think is a classic example of extreme gerrymandering and what's going on here.

>> I think this freeze does boil it down.

The elected officials are picking their voters rather than the voters picking elected officials mayor.

It's a sad situation but that is what's going on.

>> I noticed across the country one one stat that that came forward that within the United States Republicans have control over the redistricting process in 20 states Democrats control the process in about ten.

Then there are divided governments in four states and the rest rely on a nonpartisan or bipartisan entity to draw political maps.

>> That's a significant diversity around a common theme of trying to come up with common.

>> A common scorecard for what makes a district fair is the answer in independent commissions.

>> Yeah, the answer is it the independent commissions they're not totally independent.

The process is always under control of the elected state officials period.

It's under their control.

The elected state officials, state House, the Senate governor they could get to vote yay or nay on the maps but that is worked well and again here in Indiana we have only a and we have an independent Indiana state redistricting commission which is not official.

We love to have the state House and state Senate say what you've done a good job.

You had nine public hearings that oh by the way, we didn't have you've had nine public hearings, lots of feedback.

You've issued summaries and reports of what you've learned we're going to adopt the recommendations of the Indiana Independent Redistricting Commission and move forward from there.

>> We love to have them say that it's so possible I'll be an optimist.

Yes, for sure.

Struck one writer for The New York Times that with Republicans had an advantage in legislatures including states like Texas and Florida that are gaining seats in Congress.

>> That redistricting could flip control of the House in twenty twenty two without a single voter switching sides.

>> Your reaction to that?

That's extreme gerrymandering and it is happening and as I mentioned before, it's getting worse because it's getting easier to do that because of the ease of the software programs and the data that's available on voters very freely.

It's a very sad situation and this is not as Tom has mentioned and you have it's not just going on in Indiana.

It's going on throughout the country and this is a national movement now in our state, for example, we cannot do a citizens initiative on the ballot but in Michigan they can in their in their constitution and they actually through grassroots efforts developed an independent redistricting commission and that has happened in a number of states.

I think we now have nine or so with totally independent redistricting commissions and we have many other states with with a political but often bipartisan commission.

So there's all kinds of different ramifications and different options.

But we really want to avoid the very obvious extreme gerrymandering I might add with regard to this.

>> These are all legal matters 50 50 different state levels.

You might wonder about the court system the courts have had to say about this.

I won't say fortunately or unfortunately although I have a view about that.

But the Supreme Court is apparently already said in a series of statements that if because of the Voting Rights Act that they will act it will review cases that have to do with racial gerrymandering.

>> They will not even they have said if I was a lawyer I know the exact term Rimando or whether or well they're not going to settle those they're not going to settle anything that involves political party versus political party.

I guess the same thing that must have must go back to the days of Elbridge Gerry and Juryman where it came from.

I really wish our federal officials had written into law after political parties developed some kind of control over this but they did not in the time we have.

>> There are some suggested next steps for viewers who are with us and wanting to again get under the hood a little here on on redistricting and this one is all in for democracy coalition.

What happens next in Indiana?

The next slide to share would be one that also speaks for ways in which individuals can help and name one or two of those.

>> Well, call your legislators call, call, call and call now because as we said, this is in process now and we want to let our legislators know that we want to be the lobbyists this time.

>> You know, this is a bill like any other bill and we can we have very competent people here in Indiana and we're here.

>> We're ready to help.

We the ICRC did a great job.

They have a lot of good recommendations and maps.

So tell your legislator that you want them to pay attention to the recommendations from this ICRC and also you even have an opportunity to go on the website that I think we had on the screen to draw your own maps.

>> Yet if you would like to do that you can draw your own maps, submit them to the ICRC.

They are having a map drawing contest and they will be deciding which maps best meet the criteria that the citizens indicated they wanted and they're even giving cash prizes for that and that will be announced on the 13th.

But the maps chosen then will be presented to the legislature so you can get involved with the map drawing.

>> You can call your legislators.

>> It can go down to the state house to next week for that matter.

They're going to be having another public hearing on the 16th and on the fifteenth for the House House maps we were talking about the the ramifications of redistricting beyond election and how it impacts so much.

Can you say a couple of words, both of you regarding the ripple effect of redistricting even after the election is over as far as dollars shared or influence or access to resources?

>> This is a national thing.

It is well, I would say the primary ripple effect is to discourage voters from even being involved with the system they think the system is totally rigged and loaded.

Their vote doesn't really matter.

They know that in that they're that a given representative who won the primary in that in that gerrymandered district is almost automatic .

You going to win the fall election?

Why vote?

And if you're if you don't necessarily care for this particular person who is running, why even vote in the primary?

So that is one of the reasons Indiana's we I think we're tenth from the bottom in terms of percentage turnout in in voting we are talking about school funding and the impact on education even in addition short time we're sure it does and we have our local redistricting and but even the state redistricting that we're talking about there was for example, a teacher who presented at one of the public hearings that was actually here in Fort Wayne and one of the things she mentioned is she was in a neighborhood she works in a neighborhood school and most of the students live within a one mile radius.

But they the school was covered by about three to five different districts.

So trying to coordinate a voice to help her students meant she had to go and get their exact address, figure out which district they were in, who's who the parents or or she should call for help and so forth.

So it gets very confusing.

It makes a difference.

Our community should not be divided like that and it affects the finances too.

>> For more information you can head out to your Google machine and type in LW VFW dog there it is for the League of Women Voters.

Yes, there is a phone number with that as well and you'll also find access to all in democracy and of course Tom Hayhurst organization representing tonight the Indiana Citizens Redistricting Commission.

>> Tom, thank you so much.

Dr. Hayhurst, thank you very much.

>> Peggy McGinn is with us from the League of Women Voters for Fort Wayne.

Thank you so much for having me and for watching as well for all of us with prime time on Saints.

>> Take care.

We'll see you again next week