Michigan voters approve anti-gerrymandering Proposal 2

LANSING — Michigan voters on Tuesday night gave a big "yes" to a ballot proposal that would significantly change the way Michigan's political lines are drawn for congressional and state legislative districts.

The Associated Press called the race before midnight Tuesday, and with 89 percent of precincts reporting, the "yes" side had 61.1 percent of the vote, compared with 38.9 percent for the "no" side.

Proposal 2, a constitutional amendment borne out of widespread concerns about the effects of political gerrymandering in Michigan, will take the power to draw those lines out of the hands of partisan state lawmakers and give the job to an independent redistricting commission.

It would create a 13-member citizens redistricting commission made up of four Republicans, four Democrats, and five people who identify with neither party. The proposal would bar partisan officeholders, their employees, lobbyists, and others with ties to the current system from becoming commissioners.

"I think it's a game-changer in so many ways," said Voters Not Politicians board president Nancy Wang, as she celebrated with supporters in Detroit.

"I'm so hopeful at this moment."

Protect My Vote, the group formed to oppose the redistricting measure, said trhough creation of an "unelected and unaccountable" commission is bad policy.

"We look forward to educating Michigan residents about their rights under this amendment and will keep all available options open moving forward," said group spokesman Tony Daunt.

The Voters Not Politicians initiative started as a Facebook post from a young Michigan woman, Katie Fahey, after the 2016 election. It grew into an unlikely all-volunteer effort to collect the more than 315,000 signatures required to get the question on the ballot. It survived expected court challenges and exploded into a professional campaign, assisted by top-line consultants and massive media buys, that raised about $16 million, of which more than $12 million came from left-leaning groups from outside of Michigan.

Voters should choose their politicians, not the other way around, had been the rallying cry of the proposal's proponents.

RESULTS: Election results for Michigan, metro Detroit

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Opponents got a late start but had raised more than $3 million to pay for TV ads to fight the proposal. Of that amount, about $2.9 million came from the Michigan Freedom Fund, a nonprofit group backed by the conservative DeVos family of west Michigan.

"At 3,200 words, this is a complex mess that doesn’t belong in our constitution," said fund spokesman Tony Daunt. "It’s a blank check to 13 new unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats."

In an interview Monday, Fahey, the 29-year-old founder and executive director of Voters Not Politicians, said TV ads recently aired by the group opposing the proposal, Protect My Vote, were causing some confusion.

"I keep hearing, 'There's no accountability' " with the proposed commission, Fahey said. "How do we have any accountability when we don't know how the lines are drawn right now?"

It's beyond dispute that gerrymandering has played a role in the way many political lines have been drawn in Michigan over the last several decades. Depending on which party was controlling the process, carried out every 10 years after the census, Republicans and Democrats have agreed that gerrymandering is a problem.

Anyone who doubts that need only look at some of the usually top-secret documents created during the most recent, Republican-controlled redistricting in Michigan, which were made public as a result of a recent federal lawsuit.

"We've spent a lot of time providing options to ensure we have a solid 9-5 (congressional) delegation in 2012 and beyond," Republican consultant Robert LaBrant said in an email about the closed-door process of drawing the maps.

A Republican congressional aide, Jack Daly, crowed that the GOP-drawn proposed redistricting plan "in a glorious way ... makes it easier to cram ALL of the Dem garbage in Wayne, Washtenaw, Oakland and Macomb counties into only four districts."

A key selling point of the proposal has been that it would take the drawing of maps out of the backrooms and in to the light of day, with ample opportunities for the public to have input through commenting on proposed district maps.

Proponents have said it will help reduce divisiveness and tackle the state's many problems because when Republicans and Democrats are packed into separate districts, elected representatives have less incentive to listen to or appeal to views from the other side.

Opponents said the plan, though presented as nonpartisan, was a thinly veiled Democratic effort to gain partisan advantage.

They argued it would move decision-making away from elected officials to people who are not accountable and have no relevant experience. They said the way Michigan's political lines are drawn is largely dictated by federal and state law and the geographical reality that Republican and Democratic voters are concentrated in different areas.

Oddly shaped congressional districts, they said, are mostly a product of federal requirements to preserve two majority black districts, while at the same time keeping the number of people in each district roughly equal, as Detroit's population has declined and more blacks have left the city for the suburbs.

Kevin Gallagher, 33, an information technology worker from Ada in Kent County, said Tuesday he wrestled with how to vote on Proposal 2 because he is not completely happy with the current redistricting system.

"I actually voted no because there was too much uncertainty to know whether it was going to be better," said Gallagher, a married father of three.

Gallagher's main concern? How would the public know the commissioners who identify themselves as "independent" truly are independent?

Darleen Arnold, a farmer in Missaukee County in central northern Michigan, said she voted yes on the proposal.

She said she wants a commission made up of "13 people who are going to take care of the whole of Michigan, and not just whoever is up there in office," Arnold said.

A late October poll conducted by EPIC-MRA of Lansing, commissioned by the Free Press and its media partners, showed that 59 percent of those surveyed supported Proposal 2, while 29 percent were opposed.

Contact Paul Egan: 517-372-8660 or pegan@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @paulegan4.