New State Senate Map Drafts Submitted by IPPSR
EAST LANSING, Mich., April 3, 2024—The Institute for Public Policy and Social Research (IPPSR) at Michigan State University has submitted a proposal to the Michigan Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission outlining possible State Senate maps. The proposal was drafted by Jon X. Eguia, a Professor of Economics at Michigan State University, and provides a remedy to the current Michigan Senate maps, which is required by the Federal Court ruling in Agee v Benson. It achieves this by editing the boundaries of eight districts in the metro Detroit region.
"I utilized a three-step process to create the new maps per the Federal court ruling," said Jon X. Eguia, the proposal's author. Eguia continued, "First, I drew districts without attention to race or any data input on race. I then evaluated whether race-informed targeted adjustments were needed to attain compliance with the Voting Rights Act. Finally, I sought comments from the communities affected by the redraw. The resulting map creates more opportunities for Black representation and also better represents communities with common economic interests while preserving the partisan fairness of the official 2022 MI Senate map."
IPPSR Director Dr. Matt Grossmann added, “IPPSR hopes that this proposal can serve as a proof-of-concept for the Michigan Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission as it considers new Senate Maps. We believe that Professor Eguia's work and evaluation on the previous round of House Maps helped the Commission and people across our state to better understand how they could comply with the Federal Court order, and IPPSR hopes to provide the same service this round.”
A copy of the full proposal can be found here.
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