Expert witness in Michigan redistricting trial explains Democrats' geography problem

KALAMAZOO — In pursuing its mandate to draw fair maps, Michigan's redistricting commission had to contend with a political reality that has plagued Democrats for years: the concentration of the party's voters in urban areas, an expert witness for the redistricting commission testified Monday in a federal voting rights lawsuit challenging Detroit-area legislative districts.

The Michigan Independent Redistricting Commission drew the current maps under which Democrats won majorities in both chambers of the state Legislature for the first time in 40 years. Compared to the GOP-drawn maps in place the previous decade, the commission drew districts with lower shares of Black voters in Detroit by crossing 8 Mile Road, pairing neighborhoods in the majority-Black city with suburban communities in Oakland and Macomb counties. A group of metro Detroit voters sued the redistricting commission, alleging that the new districts illegally disenfranchise Black voters.

Jonathan Rodden, a political science professor at Stanford University, took the witness stand on the fourth day of the trial to rebut the expert report on which plaintiffs rely to assert their claims that race was the driving factor behind the commission's decision to draw the lines where they did.

Rodden told the three-judge panel — all appointees of former President George W. Bush, a Republican — that Democrats have a political geography problem. With their voters concentrated in cities, Democrats tend to run up large margins in heavily Democratic districts, winning elections sometimes with as much as 70% of the vote or more. Meanwhile, Republicans don't tend to experience as many of those kinds of landslide victories with voters more spread out across rural and suburban areas. In other words, GOP voters are distributed more efficiently across space than Democrats, creating what Rodden has termed an "unintentional gerrymandering" that occurs just based on where voters live.

The commission's state legislative maps drew more GOP voters into Detroit-area districts, Rodden explained using a map showing dots of red and blue indicating where Democratic and Republican voters live. The commission didn't bring enough GOP voters to flip Detroit-based districts containing inner-ring suburbs from blue to red. But it left fewer Republican voters available to contribute to surrounding districts.

"And what all of this means is more competition," he said.

Rodden pointed out another big difference between the new maps and the GOP-drawn ones previously in place.

Those old maps "follow the lines of racial segregation," he told the panel. Drawing Detroit districts without crossing 8 Mile Road resulted in overwhelmingly Democratic districts in Michigan's biggest city and a map that overall politically skewed toward Republicans last decade, according to Rodden. Race and partisanship are highly correlated in Michigan. To create a fair map, the commission had to adjust districts that in the past had a large share of Black voting age population.

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Lisa Handley — a voting rights analyst hired by the commission — also took the stand Monday to testify about the work she completed for the commission reviewing racial voting patterns in past elections and her conclusions about the first major test to the new state legislative lines.

Looking at the 2022 Democratic primary elections in the new Detroit-area districts, Handley reached a conclusion that matched the advice she gave the commission: mappers did not need to draw districts in which racial minorities make up a majority for Black voters to have an opportunity to elect their preferred candidates.

The trial continues Tuesday.

Contact Clara Hendrickson at chendrickson@freepress.com or 313-296-5743. Follow her on X, previously called Twitter, @clarajanehen.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan redistricting trial focuses on where Democrats live