Move along, you don't need to know

The Michigan Center for Election Law and Administration along with the Michigan Redistricting Collaborative held a contest. With the help of the Public Mapping Project and Dr. Michael McDonald, who wrote the software, they held a Michigan Citizens' Redistricting Competition. Participants created redistricting maps which were then evaluated according to the criteria set up in state and federal law -- balanced population size, continuity, compactness, required districts where minorities could elect one of their own, etc. Best maps have already been selected and they will be given to the state legislature.

Alas, both chambers in Michigan, plus the Governor, plus a majority of the state Supremes are GOP. Yesterday, the Free Press reported the redistricting process is underway behind closed doors. Heaven forbid we should be allowed to take interest. It will likely create 9 GOP and 5 Dem safe seats in the House, and will so narrowly meet the criteria for compactness that it can squeak by any federal challenge.

I tried this software. It can be a real timewaster. I found it to be quite slow and I could make it hang up rather easily. At least I could log out and back in again and would only lose the last attempted change. I'm sure whatever the GOP is using is a lot faster and gives all necessary statistics (rather than a few) in real time. I'm sure their version also highlights the homes of the current incumbents to know whose districts to combine (we lose a seat) and whose to protect.

In the process I realized one problem facing mapmakers. As the software indicates, Michigan is entitled to two Black majority districts. Each district has about 705K people. Detroit has now shrunk to 714K. One district could cover most of the city, but Detroit needs to be split in two with districts extending into suburbs. Which means one district could cover Highland Park, western Detroit, Dearborn, Redford, Inkster, and the eastern edge of Livonia. I haven't checked what the race ratio of such a district would be. That leads me to a personal question. Would I rather be in a district that includes half of Detroit and would reliably vote Democratic, or be part of one that stretches to the western half of Oakland County and would be reliably Republican? I think I'd go with Detroit.