Good afternoon. Welcome to the ford school. I am Tom Ivacko, interim director of the Center for Local, State and Urban Policy. Can you hear me in the back okay? I am interim director of CLOSUP, the Center for Local State and Urban Policy and it's my pleasure it kick off today's discussion. I would like to thank our co-sponsors. The event is sponsored by CLOSUP and the Gerald R. Ford school of public policy as part of the policy talks series. It's co-sponsored by the school's program and practical policy engagement. The student group, domestic policy corps, the university's Ginsberg Center for community service and learning as well as Detroit public television, which is live streaming the event online and by voters not politicians. We're grateful for all of their support. At the end of the panel discussion, we will have 15 to the audience. Please write your questions on the index cards that were handed out. If you need another one, flag down a staff member. We'll start to collect those at around 4:30 or so and will continue as the discussion continues. For those of you joining us online, please tweet your questions using the hashtag #policy talks. We will add them to the list generated here. The topic of today's discussion. Michigan new approach to redistricting through an independent citizen's commission is a particularly important issue. It's one that has the potential for far-reaching and long-lasting impacts on the state of Michigan. And because of that, tied to the event today, close up has also launched a research and service project. We're working with the Michigan secretary of state's office to advise the Independent citizens redistricting commission about our interests. We have worked closely with the department of State and sally marshall has been a tremendous partner on that. We are grateful to the secretary of state, sally marsh for partnering with us on this. The project is conducted by a team of talented ford school students under the direction of John chamberlain, professor Emeritus. Joining us on the panel are the ford school team. Sophia merchant and Nick NAGer will have question sorting by Sarah GRUN and Sara graph. And also like to thank Bonnie Roberts, close up events manager for pulling this all together. Always a great job. Thank you. So let's turn to the event. We have an outstanding panel of speakers today. Begins with opening remarks or remarks when she gets here, actually just about perfect timing. We can welcome Michigan secretary of State, Jocelyn Benson. Hi. Thank you so much. So, yes, we will have opening remarks by Michigan secretary ofstate Jocelyn Benson. First I will introduce our moderator and she will introduce the panelists and kick off the discussion. Our moderator is Nancy wang, founding member of voters not politicians, the impressive grass-roots organization that led the 2018 campaign to pass a constitutional amendment to end partisan gerrymandering in Michigan. Truly remarkable accomplishment. Nancy led the policy committee that wrote the constitutional amendment language with significant input from the public. And she served as president of the voters not politicians board of directors during that campaign. Prior to that, Nancy had an accomplished career as an educator and attorney and served as the director of the university's environmental law clinic. She also has played the key role in assembling this terrific panel for us today and we're grateful for all that work. Thank you, Nancy. So with that brief introduction, please join me in welcoming our moderator, Nancy wang. [Applause] hi. Thank you so much for being here. I see a lot of friendly faces out in the audience including a lot of voters not politicians volunteers. It's great to see everyone. We really have an all-star panel here today. I'm thrilled for the conversation that's going to be before us. Thank you to Tom and to Bonnie for hosting us today and for the ford school for having us and Detroit public television for broadcasting this live. lots of reasons. One big one was 2.5 million citizens crossed the state of Michigan from all political parties all across the state voted in favor of proposal 2 to take politicians out of our redistricting process. To make Michigan's days as one of the most gerrymandered in the entire country no more. And to put in its place a new citizen-led process. And to make unconstitutional gerrymandering where politician drew up maps to give them safe districts. We look forward to a citizen's commission forming now. And whose job it is will be to draw fair maps that don't favor one political party or candidate over another and draw map that is reflect and respect our communities of interests. This is central to our new citizen-led redistricting process. What exactly does that mean? Where do we care about communities of interest? Why do we put them at the center of our election maps and how is the citizen's commission really going to do that? How will it know where our communities are? What can we expect our maps to look like once this next redistricting cycle is done? So what will our 2022 maps look like? The first elections where the commission drawn maps will be in effect and when will this happen? What is the time table and how can you be a part of it? Those are questions we will be posing to our expert panel today. We will have them walk us through the new redistricting process and explain how this works in real life. What we can learn from California citizen-led process they underwent in 2011 and I'm here to introduce and thank so much our panelists, secretary Benson. Secretary Benson is Michigan's She is a graduate of Harvard law specializing in education and election law. Served as dean of Wayne state law school and became the youngest woman to lead a top Under our constitutional amendment, the secretary of state's office is in charge of administering the application process for people who will be applying to serve on the commission. That means that her office is in charge of making applications available. She opened the application process on October 24th recently and by all accounts, it's been very, very well received and there's been a ton of public interest and a lot of applications have been submitted which we are thrilled about. We are also thrilled she really is leading this application process in a way that's inclusive and transparent and really is presenting this opportunity out to all Michiganers. Next we have to my life, Connie Malloy, she is a California commissioner from the 2011 redistricting cycle. And its current chair. She serves as executive director of the panta rhea foundation. It partners have individual donors and other entities on grant-making strategies and served as portfolio director of the James irvine Las office. I am excited to have Connie's first-hand account of how the California commission took in all the public input from across the state of California and made decisions balancing between different voices and sometimes conflicting opinions about where communities lay. And then to her left, we have Chris Thomas. Chris Thomas is, he retired from the Michigan Department of State on June 30, 2017, after 40 years of election administrative services which included 36 years as Michigan's director of elections. I'm really excited to have Chris Thomas here to talk about what communities of interest we have, what the lay of the land here is in Michigan. And finally, last but not least, Chris lamar travelling from Washington, D.C.. He is legal council dedicated to strengthen the Democratic process across all levels of government. Chris works on redistricting policy and litigation. It includes creating and protecting redistricting independent commissions across the country. [Applause] thank you so much. With that, I would like to invite secretary Benson to please deliver opening remarks. Thank you Nancy. It's really exciting to be here in this capacity and the individual charged with administerial way administering the commission and the selection of commission. I want to talk about what we're doing there and my fellow panelists as well and everyone here. I am, I come at this office as many of you know not as a politician but academic. I focused on best practices and also data and making solution-oriented approach to things. But also ensuring that we are preserving everything that we do for future decades in which this citizens redistricting commission will move forward. But in the midst of all that, has been reflected in many other areas of my office, I know as an academic, the best way to approach something is to collect data and best practices and make informed decisions based on that. What the panelist reflect are a lot of the experts who we consulted with as we worked to develop a citizen redistricting process that is independent, citizen led and transparent and I'm grateful for the expertise of those here with us today who care about these issues sincerely and have been helping advise our office as others have been as well as to how we can factor all perspectives into the equation as we make decisions of the administration of this commission. And before this panel dies into the concept of communities of interest and takes into consideration some of the issues that the citizen commissioners will have to weigh, I want to take a moment to talk about the big picture. And the importance of this moment that we are very much as well, as much as we in many may celebrate the successes of the effort that amended our state constitution to give citizens the power to redraw district lines, which is something as a private citizen advocated for over a decade, as exciting as it is to see that vision come to fruition, this is not the time to take a victory lap. Now is the time to dig in and get to work ensuring this commission which million of citizens envisioned is a success. We define success in our office as ensuring the process itself is truly citizen led, is truly independent and nonpartisan and is transparent in every step of the way. So those three pillars have defined our approach to this in addition to wanting to collect and talk to you stakeholders and experts from around the state and country of varying perspectives to ensure everyone is engaged. I'm also going to talk about everyone here watching today and at home can get involved in this historic moment. It's truly a historic moment in democracy in this state and for this country. The fact is that Michigan is really the only second state in the country to take on something like this where citizens are empowered and selected in the way they are in the process to draw the congressional state legislative and Senate district lines for years to come. And in our view, this precedent and the work that we do over the next two years to create this citizens redistricting commission and see to it it's successful will really determine the success of future commissions not just in Michigan but around the country. I highly suspect though Michigan is the second state to take something like this on in this way, it will not and should not be the last. Everything we do we recognize as midwest state as a purple state reflects what can happen and come to fruition in other states as well. So recognizing that, citizens have a historic role to play in ensuring the commission's success and being a part of the first-of-it's kind for Michigan voters to create fair and impartial districts in this state. As we announced and Nancy mentioned, we announced the application process and I will talk a little bit about that. But I want to emphasize everyone can go to redistrictingMichigan.org to get all the information about the process and see everything from public comment on the application, access the application itself, and track the data as we make it available throughout the next few years. Or really throughout the next year until the commission is seated a year from now. I will note that we are in phase one of a three-phase process we see. The phase one of the process is applications. Everyone right now around the state is invited to apply to be one randomly selected to serve on the 13-member commission. The election process will happen next June which is the beginning of phase two, what that means is that you have from now until June 1st of next year to apply. Plenty of time, all the time in the world but still a finite amount of time to put your name in the hat to be selected. And what we have seen October 24th this was launched. Within the first hour of us announcing these applications were available, 100 people applied. By the end of the day, a thousand people had applied. [Applause] we're now close to having several thousand people apply and that is compared to California, which has four times our population, very likely that we will eclipse the number of applications that California received in its process. That's great. But as I have been saying to every audience. My team and I have been going around the state that really truly what our bar and metrics of success is, is everyone feel they serve to have a seat at the table. Does everyone know that no formal education or experience is required to entitle you to have a seat as a part of the commission. The only thing we ask is you're a registered voter who is not a politician or lobbyist, otherwise eligible to be a part of process and willingness to serve and so through that we have seen a number of citizens step up and we hope every single one of you in the room tonight eligible to apply will do so and we have plenty of resources on hand to walk you through it. RedistrictingMichigan.org is any way you can access the application and encourage others to do so as well. This commission will be seated a year from now. In the fall of 2020. There's not much else going on in the fall of 2020. There will be lots of time to focus on this. Phase one of the process is the application process. Go to redistrictingMichigan.org to apply. Phase two begins in June of next year. In June of 2020, applications will close and there will be a random selection process. There's two other aspects of phase one worth mentioning. Number one, we continue to post data of those applying through this process on our website once we have statistically significant data to post to see what communities are applying, what perspectives are on the table and any work to lean into communities or geographic locations that need attention and encouragement to apply. Transparency will be online and the second thing we are doing and this is required in the constitutional amendment. Proactively mailing invitations to apply to thousands I will say, thousands of eligible residents throughout the state. This is going to be a random selection from the qualified voter file. that. That is happening tomorrow. It will be streamed live on Facebook. Facebook live streamed and redistrictingMichigan.org has the details. Just as another reflection of the work we're doing, not just to live up to the will of the voters we will continue to be proactive in reaching people and encouraging them to be a part of this process and assuring them they have a seat at the table. Phase two begins next June. At this point, applications will close. selected with the statistical waiting for demographics and geographic information. Contact information will be retracted but basic information will be posted online. Again transparency and the 200 names will be submitted to the state legislature at which point the four quadrant leader will have the opportunity to veto five for a total of 20 vetoes for people they feel shouldn't be selected in the final pool. That's the only qualitative check on the process. The 180 go back to the random lottery and four Republicans, four Democrats and five unaffiliated voters will be selected. If you or anyone, we know 13 will be selected to sit on the commission. You get $40,000 compensation for your time. The commission will have one year from next fall to draw the maps that will be the next congressional state legislative and state Senator districts for the entire state. During that year which is phase three, it is probably more critical, citizen engagement is probably more critical for that phase than for me any other phase. As much as we want everyone to apply. The need for citizens to be engaged and involved and defining communities of interest and what they want their districts to look like will be critical. We don't want to take this time and only lobbyists and politicians to come to the meetings. We want citizens to draw maps to the commission for consideration. The commission is going to be required to hold 15 public hearings around the state. That's also in the constitutional language and town halls we hope that is just the bear minimum of work we all will do to engage citizens in map drawing part of the process. One year for the commission will be engaging citizens, listening and hearing and agreeing and accepting maps for Congress, state Senate and the state house. They will go into law 2021. This will be the first decade worth of elections that go into place. As you see in my view, it's critical citizens are engaged as watch dogs and engaged citizens at every step of the process with also the knowledge that everything we do over these three phases for the next two years will not just impact the districts for the next decade, but they will determine the process and precedent that goes into state and influence the development of several citizens redistricting in other states. The stakes are high and we're ready to meet them and the expectation of all of you who want to ensure this is a success. One of the ways I think it will be a success is if all of you here engage, apply, tell your friends and families and neighbors about this opportunity and stay engaged throughout this process. Because this truly is your opportunity to influence and draw Michigan's future. With that, Nancy. Are you coming back up? Thank you all and thank you for being a part of this. [Applause] this is beyond exciting to see all of this coming to life. So the reason we're talking about communities of interest is because under the constitutional amendment, this commission has certain strict rules written in the constitution it must follow when it's drawing the maps. The last thing we want is another system that we had before where a different set of people can go behind closed doors and draw maps for political gain. So, there are these specified criteria that are in the constitution. First and foremost, all maps drawn by the commission are adopted by the commission have to comply with all federal laws. The federal constitution, one person one vote. The voting rights act and also all districts have to be contiguous. They have one one connected shape. You can't have one district where it has one island over here and another here. So that's like common sense. Number three, is communities of interest. We really elevated the importance of communities in the redistricting process in our state. And the reason for that is something I would like to discuss with you all. But first, Chris lamar, do you find just describing for us what does community of interest mean and is that a novel or radical concept? First of all, I want to back up, secretary Benson and challenge you about not doing a victory lap. Looking at this room, I have been in other states. This room is amazing. Seeing people expected. We can have a victory moment. A pat on the back. But having said that, I work as kind of what was mentioned in creating, protecting and implementing communities, independent redistricting commissions across the country. I can tell you right now the idea of a communities of interest and not a rare thing. interest. Some only for legislative. Some only for congressional publics. Others for constitutional amendments. By itself, although it sounds like this new idea actually isn't. The other thing that's also important to know is the way that communities of interest have been defined. Communities of interest generally include racial, social, economic considerations. One of my favorite or one of the things I liked about the California commission is that they talked about based on what they did in the district. If there was a lot of forest fires and there was a lot of outdoor activities and the economic activity was based on the things they did sort of socially and economically, that was the way to do fine a community of interest. I had one more thought and escaped me. I would say that, the other point is Michigan defines in its constitutional amendment that the map criteria shall reflect the diversity of the state and communities of interest. For the purposes of avoiding gerrymandering say communities of interest do not include affiliations to political parties or incumbents. That is very important to me. I have seen examples in other commissions where you will see voters say their community is the politician when that's not true. It's people you go grocery shopping with and who you send to the state capitol. So. Anyone have anything else to add to that? Connie, I would like to ask you about how California defines communities of interest and what parallels you see between the Michigan language and California's Sure. So in California, we had a similar approach which is that a community of interest needed to be contiguous. That big word that means they physically need to be connected that share common, social or economic interest. I really want to underscore if nothing else today for to all know that you as MichiganDERs are communities of interest. As a commissioner, I was given census data to work with. It's a really critical input into this process because you need to know how many people you have if you hope to arrive at what does one person one vote look like in percent. You get basic demographic data and there's so much the census doesn't tell you. It doesn't give you information about the economy, geography or the history of a place. That is something where the testimony from the public and your lived experiences is really critical to be able to inform how the commission takes these dry kind of numbers and statistics from the census and makes it come Alive into a set of fair maps that make sense for the community. No matter how representative of commissioners you have around the table. There's no way to think that all various perspectives of communities of interest will be represented. It's a great opportunity to be engaged in the democracy and being help provide our appointed officials with the information they need to be able to do their jobs well. The commission successes really depends on each of you weighing in and on the commission's ability to listen to what you say and translate that into fair maps. As one example when I was in middle school, I lived in Lansing and I could just sit in California with the census data and I could try and draw and district maps for Lansing but I know it's hard to believe a few years have passed since I was in middle school and the community may have changed The things I remember about the neighborhood and my neighbors, all of that has evolved. It's common sense to think the districts should evolve and each should have a say in what should be involved. I remember us getting a lot of questions during the prop 2 campaign about what we had then and proposing now. Chris Thomas, I would like to ask your opinion, first do you mind explaining for the audience what the A poll standards well. Again it's a pleasure to be here. It is not an acronym, it's Bernie Apol's last night. He was referred to as Mr. Election in Michigan. Michigan in the '63 constitution provided for a bipartisanship no independence or not affiliated. A bipartisanship legislative apportionment commission for Republicans for Democrats. They drew a lot of plans but never agreed on a single one. '64, '72 and '82 they never came together and so it always ended up in a Michigan Supreme Court. So in '72, the Democrats I believe put two plans forward and the Republicans one. And the Democrats went after sort of a zero deviation. Every district would be as nearly equal in population. Which is not all that necessary in the legislative apportionment. And the court picked that plan. And than plan sliced and diced communities where it went in to grab population. To bring another district to a zero deviation. And there's probably political considerations as well when they sliced and diced. Which made the election process very difficult. We tried to have precincts back then and in particular, that were not split between districts. So in other words, a precinct doesn't have two different state house districts in it because things get complicated, people are given the wrong ballot and it gets messy. It's not surprising in 1982 when Mr. Apol retired a couple years prior to that, he was called upon to be the master by the Michigan Supreme Court to assist in drawing the plans that year. The court decided they had enough of the partisan of playing that role. So they pretty much ended that process, that commission that was their last go around. So the Apol standards which were likely authored by justice lemon, Charles lemon and Ann Bernie, looked at jurisdictional lines. So after you did the federal population and the voting rights act and contiguity, you then drew a plan that split the fewest number of county lines and then within those counties, split the fewest numbers city and township lines. It sounded very neutral. There's some consideration that it really didn't turn out to be that neutral in a partisan sense. So that's what was used in '82. And then it went forward from there in a different iterations. It was put into state law used in '99 or put in '99. Used in 2001, 2002 process by The legislature said one legislature can't bind another legislature. They did adhere to it. They clearly weren't bound or had to adhere to every single piece of it. That's the limbo and where it was left. It was nice from election and administration viewpoint that communities were not chopped up. But, as I have been told through my entire career by lawyers and judges and attorney general system that an election officials and administrative convenience does not have a high priority. So I can see how political boundaries and Apol standards had a certain appeal. Can we either Chris lamar or secretary Benson talk about why states have, is it, first of all, is it fair to say, states have moved away from political boundaries and kind of looked more toward drawing maps around communities of interest? Is that a trend? Is that a best practice? I'm thinking, sorry. I would say that communities of interest are being given more consideration probably than they have been in the past. But I wouldn't say they are being considered more than political boundaries. I think political boundaries are still considered to be an important thing to think about. So our legislative districts as well. But I think the challenge though is one of the things that we have seen in the past is that lines have been drawn for partisan reasons but they rely on just saying Oh, well that's the political boundaries we couldn't help it and nothing to do about it. When you look at a map, you can see that's not particularly true. I think Dave Daley, the author of the book, I can't say what it's actually called. Talks about this district that is Michigan 14 and the Michigan's 14th congressional district and 11th congressional district. They almost look like. One is a snake and the other is the puzzle piece that fits around the snake. There's a piece where Farmington is cut out of Michigan 14 and Dave Daley calls it looks like the state of Oklahoma is being balanced on top of an index finger. It's cut out of the rest of Michigan 14th district. Dave Daley continued on and has a conversation with the person responsible for drawing this map. He says that's just a political boundary. There's nothing I can do about that. You could have put it Farmington in with the rest of Michigan district 14 kind of thing. It's always one of the concerns. Using political boundaries can be a pretext for partisan means instead. Actually thinking about what the communities really look like and prefer. So you know, Connie or others, what is the purpose of us concentrating on communities of interest and why would states like California focus on drawing maps around communities what is the concept behind that? Well, in California, the way our process was organized cities, counties, neighborhoods and communities of interesting were given the same level of ranging in the priority. We had to think about the trade offs between the two. What is more important to preserve the jurisdictional boundary or is there a neighborhood that has precedence. If you asked 10 people in the same neighborhood, they might give you a slight variation. I will give you a couple examples of putting on the map. When we were in inland California, we were in an area that four different counties came together. So it was a kind of a corner where they all just met. And we were doing hearings and found out this was an area where the community really felt like their jurisdictional boundaries were so dated. There had been an area where this community they shared an economy. They shared schools and it actually overlapped all four counties and while we were tried to really minimize splits, we came to talk about where we did make splits what is a responsible split here? How can we both preserve the integrity and how rarely jurisdictional boundaries change. They don't reflect the community that has grown up around them. In northern California, as many of you probably enjoy the wine that comes from California. You know that agriculture is really critical to our economy and our first set of maps we realized that the grape growing areas and the processing of those grapes were in one district and we had inadvertently put all the distributors in a different district. To have representatives to be an advocate and support for the industry, we wouldn't have known that as commissioners not from the area if it wasn't for the communities of interest that came in and helped shape the map, so by the time we finalized them, they were a better reflection of the community that was there. There's so many gaps in terms of that census data set and a need to be able to supplement that and have a good understanding of what is important in a given place. Can you describe for us the process California went to get feedback like this. Sure. We had a set of hearing and we decided ourselves to do some hearings before we even put a maps, even did any drafting to get a general sense of what the public's interests were. Then we did a set of hearings that happened once we had a set of draft maps and as we were continuing to change the maps in realtime. So we would have live visualizations that were always live streamed where people could weigh in as we were in the map making process. We had various options on how people would be able to contribute testimony. Many times people wanted to say what they individually thought their map should look like and they were other groups where they tried to express a collective voice. Might be a civic organization. A neighborhood, you name it. We had in the hearings, we would have a number of hours set aside for public testimony where all of the commissioners were present. It was like a city council meeting. Everyone would come up and have their two to three minutes to be able to express their thoughts and everybody was welcome to submit in writing or by e-mail what their opinions were. We heard from thousands of Californians in person across the state but we also received tens of thousands of written submissions and e-mails with the folks submitting a collective opinion, many times those came in the form of a small memo or report, something that was able to aggregate up information from a number of individuals. I think that ability to have different mechanisms for different communities and they were times when we would be in a community where they might have a number of numbers of that community who were limited English proficiency. We had translators in the sessions we did that would come up in the stand and help translate in advance so we could also receive not just those who knew English well, but those even if they knew it, it might not be the most comfortable way for them to express themselves. And what did the commission find was sort of the most helpful input in We learned this by trial and error from having received some testimony early on that we thought who are we going to do with that. The most important parts is identify the who. Who are you talking about and where do they live work or play. At the end of the day, we have to draw maps. If we don't have a way of physically locating what you're talking about. It will be difficult for us to reflect in a set of maps. The boundaries can be from a street to river to landmark in a community and take many different forms. It needs to have a way of boundaries to understand where it would physically go on the map and for us to document why should this people be kept together for political representation. Not because they like each other or have fun hanging out together, there must be something they really stand to gain or lose depending on whether they're grouped together or not. In some cases, there was a story around it made, it was important to be kept together safer in a congressional map but more flexible in assembly map. There might be federal funding critically at stake. We had a federal super fund site. For that area to be kept together was important for them to be able to keep doing the environmental work they needed to do. That's really the elements. The who, where they are and why it matters. Having that documented on the record was what we needed to be able to do our jobs. Secretary Benson, you mentioned phase three, the community mapping process. Can you describe for us what that process will look like and what tools the commission will have at its disposal. The commission once it's formed is completely autonomous. All of the decisions outside of what is in the constitutional amendment will be theirs and theirs alone including how to weigh different factors, how to define communities of interest. In that regard, really the first step of the commission once convened is to put them in front of experts from all different perspectives and backgrounds they select because they will have again the autonomy to do that and so they can begin to educate themselves how to best make informed decisions moving forward. The public engagement component of that year is critical. Because they will be hiring their own staff. Identifying their own data and software and VENDors and all the rest. And hosting their own town halls. And in doing so, they will be inviting members of the public to submit maps. My office hopes to be providing software and data to citizens throughout the state via schools and libraries and other networks so that citizens can ahead of time or without attending a town hall draw their own maps and persade the commission to consider them. So it's going to be the commission will be autonomous. Our office will be kind of focused still on the citizen engagement component of this effort. At every point, it will be the citizens who lead the way. Not those just to the commission and those who are not advocating for their communities. One of the best stories is where you had two communities of interest submit who were neighboring communities submit maps who came from commissioners themselves and submitted maps that were in conflict with each other. That's another kind of, the inherent subjectivity in many ways of the definition can lead to two people in the same geographic area having two different definitions of the boundaries and aspects of what makes the community of enter. The commission basically said to the two entities that came forward with the conflicting maps. Work it out amongst yourself and come back to us with a compromise. They went away and redrew the map. That's what this process should be about. Engaging citizens at every step of the way. My hope is the commission will similarly do that. My expectation is they will based on the large amount of people who are going to be I think involved in the engagement process. But again the commission itself once seated is entirely autonomous. And will be up to the commissioners themselves to determine how to proceed. Great. Thanks. So Connie, can you help our commission kind of sore how can the state set up the commission. What are the greatest challenges you came up against in terms of evaluating the information you were getting or the amount of time you had to process all the information about communities and turn them into actual maps? Because the commission is autonomous. They will have a number of decisions they have to make how to organize themselves to do the work that will have a material impact on the maps drawn at the end of the day. I do think it's important for those who care about the integrity is just as important to weigh in on that as it is to weigh in on the communities of interest piece. I will give you an example. Because of dirty baggage redistricting has. When we were seated, doesn't matter who we chose on the commission, whatever their political party was, our commission was going to have the image that party had more influence on the commission. So we decided to establish a rotating structure of leadership where we would always have someone from a different party in the chair and vice chair seat. If we have a Republican in the chair seat, we have to have a Democratic or independent on the co-chair. Anyone who wanted to be part of leadership was part of the leadership. That helped to manage the image this commission was for the people, all of the people and to guard against undue influence. There's a number of policy decisions that the secretary's office won't be able to dictate but the public can weigh in on. I encourage you to do that. I think the sheer volume of testimony is a real challenge and particularly given this was the first time out the gate that anyone in the nation it done a restricting truly independent process, the interest level was shocking. I remember sitting in at hearing in Los Angeles and being looking at hundreds and hundreds of people. We only booked the hearing room for three hours and ended up, we passed five hours and finally when we were getting close to six hours, the venue kicked us out. They were times where we had flexibility in the venues and others we didn't. There was a pent up demand where people are upset about their districts and want to vent. And then as they vent, they will have an opinion around what a solution could be it was cathartic. There was a huge volume of information to be managed. There's ways technology has continued to evolve since we did our process nine years ago, staffing or consulting staff that managing the inflow of information and be able to show what the trends are and the density of feed back is really important. We had day jobs and the commission roles. A night I would be there with my one-year old and scrolling through thousands of e-mails trying to make sense of them all. The conflicting communities of interest is going to happen. In any state, it will happen and what the secretary was referring to with the different groups coming together was called the unity maps. That was where as a commission we just got stuck. They were and areas of the state they were so densely populated with competing interests that we were very transparent with the community and said, if you know, if you don't figure out to compromise, we're going to have to make the decision for you and we will do our best but we don't know the community you do. We strongly encourage you to come back with something more integrated and so their ability to do that I think they are much happier with the districts they ended up with than if we tried to do that just kind of from a blank slate. I think the piece around the policy. How you set yourself up and what that means in terms of day-to-day is critical. I know Michigan has funding coming and it's modest compared to the task at hand. How they determine where and to do hearings, where are they going to put all of the resources? So many people across the nation don't even know what redistricting is. As a commissioner, so so wanted to educate the public as a precursor for them to show up at the meetings. We didn't have the money to do that. You have the volunteer associations, community-based hearings and libraries, it will be a great way for you to have feedback. We are going to leave time for questions. But I would like to pose one more question for each of the panelists. You see everyone who is really interested obviously in the success of the commission. What is one piece of advice or suggestion for anyone in the audience how to get involved or they help the commission be more successful. What is a role they can take? Number one. Apply. Number two, get everyone you know to apply as well. And number three, once the commission is seated, if you're not selected, be involved in hosting an event to be a precursor to a town hall where you're educating and having a conversation even amongst a community or in and way kind of doing that preparation and thought process to SXHIS your own maps and ensure that yours and other opinions are heard. The selection is only one aspect of the citizen participation. That critical component will come as the commission is seated and I think what I will underscore as well is that I have seen, on the front lines and having an office in Lansing, is to not underestimate efforts of those who are not in this room or maybe. Who do not support this process. And I think VNP saw it first hand through the campaign. There are folks out there who usually have had this power and influence on both sides and they're not happy they don't have it anymore. And they're not just going to sit quietly. There will be efforts to try to de-legitimize the process. We are ready to be the shield and take the hits. But it's important that the truth and the narrative of citizen engagement breaks through any other attempts to confuse the process or wrongly define the processes one that is anything other than independent and transparent and citizen-led. If you can help tell the story as well to ensure that citizens know how, what a great opportunity this process is and how truly transparent and citizen led it will be is going to be I think really important to the commission's ultimate success. Connie. When we first got going as a commission, we were hated in our, in Sacramento, So everyone apply. The reason I say that is because we were really striking at the nerve center of how will politicians were wielding their power. They didn't want us to order pencils or have a meeting room to go into. As the commissioners get seated, whether or not you're one of them, being able to tell that story and be an ambassador for the process, I'm more and more confident there's no perfect set of maps or commissioners, but the standard to hold ourselves to, is will this process be more fair, more transparent and better than what it was before and know it's also a learning process This is the first time Michigan is doing this. I know in California, we had so many things we learned the first time that we quickly did additional legislation. To take from the spirit of can we be better and know that we're going to get it even better the next time. The only I would just say in terms of all of your roles, that education role is so critical. I know voters not politicians, the network that you have is so vibrant and strong in different areas of the state. To think of this as the next phase of your work to continue to be ambassadors and to be connecting the dots. Most people don't care about redistricting. The second you say that word, they might tune out. What do your neighbors and family care about? And help them to see how redistricting helps shape at the end of the day, what their local schools look like or what their parks look like. Go to that level and back into the restricting because once you make it personal for people, they will care. But otherwise there's a very kind of small and eclectic group of us that care about redistricting. Please don't lead with that. Very small and very eclectic. Chris. Well, I observed as many did in 2018 the fact that there was an issue on the ballot without paid circulators. That is incredible. The only other group that can do that today is the right to life. I watched many, many ballot proposals come. It cost well over a million dollars to put one on the ballot to pay circulators to go out and get signatures. When I was an undergraduate just a few years ago, I remember I could not convince my friends that where a line was drawn with regard to an electoral district made a difference. Look where we are today. This went on the ballot and the turn out it engendered across party lines is one of the most significant movements. My recommendation and advice to you all and your friends and neighbors, is one, don't get discouraged when as secretary Benson indicated, those forces will come out and try to derail this. There are already lawsuits. There will be more. That is you probably the only given that will walk out of this room today. There will be more lawsuits. That's okay. There's a process for that. But don't be discouraged by that. As you learn about the community of interest, you the more you talk about, the more you will hear. Wow, it might be one as well. If you see something that looks like a community of interest, don't just walk by it. Talk to someone about it. Raise it within your community as something people ought to rally around and take a real serious look at. Quite honestly there's nothing to add. Applying. Playing an active role if you're not a commissioner is very important. This commission doesn't work if people don't show up to talk about what their communities are and the way they believe those maps should look like. One thing I will add, I had a couple workshops around the country just talking to people trying to draw a map yourself and talk about how difficult this process is inherently. There's websites like districtR.org where you can fill in precincts based on where you think your community is and what you think a legislative or congressional district is. We did this in Utah with a couple people. They were doing it everyone had like good aims and all this kind of stuff. It's really hard to actually draw some of these maps. It's very much a give and take in terms of how these maps look. One example we did was we said all right, you have to put one congressional district. Salt Lake City has to be in one congressional district. Utah has four congressional districts. If you put Utah in one, every other district has to be one district. Woe to that representative to run from northern Utah to the southern tip of Utah. I think that's important that people have a context for what challenges the commissioners are dealing with to draw the maps in a fair and transparent way. Maybe it's not just about your particular community of interest but the way you interact with other communities of interest. Maybe you had representation that a particular community doesn't. It's important for the general public to think about the ways that all of these things sort of interact with each other. I have one last question. So Connie, this raises for me something you mentioned as we were preparing. You said there are things the commission can do and also assist with. To get the commission ready. Because there is a lot of there's a lot of things that kind of interact with each other. There are certain exercises that we can or the commission can go through to set itself up for its best success. One thing to came to mind is just being able to already know what census data looks like. You know what it has and doesn't have The information about the economy, the geography, the history, et cetera, those are all things that already exist in other places. There's trade associations, there's chambers of commerce and there's folks in communities to help fill those things out. We had our mapping consultants provide us with regional snapshots as we would go into a region so we would be briefed before we went into a place to have an understanding. Here's the main components of this community and we will probably hear this. It also helped us to identify if we read something in a report and heard nothing about it in the actual hearings, we needed to dig for more information. There's a lot of information gathering that can happen in advance to be able to have the commission be prepared to receive the public testimony in a more informed way and those it seems like there are strong partnerships with academia, with different non-profit and community organizations to help to just get that going. From VMPs, from my point of view, I'm thinking of like layered education too. To the public. That's great. Thank you so much. Secretary Benson, I know you have other engagements, I would like to invite you to be part of the Q& A. Sorry, I can't stay for the whole event. If you have questions for me specifically, e-mail at secretary@Michigan.gov. If you have any questions, redistricting@Michigan.com is the e-mail. Redistricting@Michigan.gov if you have questions. I'm just secretary@Michigan.gov. You will hear back from me. Sally, my team. That's a way if you have further questions you can reach out directly. Thank you so much. [Applause] now for Q and A. We have ford school students who will help us with the Q and A section. Hello my name is Nick NAGer. I am a second year policy masters student. Our first question from the audience. How might you explain to a voter who has never heard of a community of interest, how to express what a COI is and how to map it. And we had a couple around the idea is what if you are part of multiple communities of interesting and how do I balance competing communities of interest? So, I would say quickly that I worked with B & P on this with having workshops on this. What is your community? We were talking with high school kids or college students and I was just like, what is your community to you? They had to actually, one made a really good comparison where he talked about his high school. He was like my community in high school were the kids I played football with. He talked about like and extrapolated from that. I can understand a community of interest sounds the way you can have a conversation to broaden that out a little bit. Yeah, I would add that being able to layer that with what do you need from your leaders? Communities or communities that you're apart of, what do you have to gain or lose from your leaders being responsive to you and helps you drill down concretely as it leads to the political representation piece. On the commission in California, there's so many conflicting testimonies. So many of us have different hats we wear. Different perspectives or things important to us. At the end of the day, there are judgment calls. The goal is not everyone walks out thrilled with the maps. That's not the way this works in a democracy where we share space and political power. The goal is that we have a set of fair maps that everybody can live with. I do think that as we all educate our communities around restricting, it's important to say that. There are some who may think that my personal interests will be reflected, even as a commission, they were so many things that I might have individually done differently in the maps that didn't make sense and you're trying to balance a whole diverse state and the different interests there are. So we really tried to look at who has the most to gain or lose and make sure that prioritize that in terms of how we were thinking about communities of interest. If we actually had to choose between one community of interest or the other, and as I mentioned earlier, they were times when we were able to keep a communality of interest whole in one set of maps, say in the congressional or the assembly or Senate but not in all three sets of maps. That gave us and flexibility as a commission to say, we're not going to be able to give everyone everything. We want to make it fair. Thank you. I'm Sophia merchant, a first year master students. What is the reasoning behind assigning such a huge priority for communities of interest and how will this reflect fairer democracy in Michigan? As Tom mentioned at the beginning, our constitutional amendment draft and process it started with 33 town halls and had a lot of public input into it. On the voter side, we knew what we had and what we had were maps that had no connection. Where communities were targeted and split and cracked and packed for political gain. We went back all the way to like elemental, what are these maps supposed to accomplish? They are supposed to help us as the people who are living within a geographical area who share some interest we want to see represented in government. This was supposed to enable that to happen. That's why we elevated communities of interest above things like political boundaries or other things that might have seemed to make sense maybe at and point. But had become increasingly outdated and weaponized. This question is for miss Malloy specifically. What is the FLIP side of your wine industry example? How do you balance communities of interest without concentrating shared political interests? I will give an example that is not an economic example but related to race. In California, we have a very diverse population particularly in our urban areas. We had to wrestle in a certain part of Los Angeles with how to design a set of congressional districts in a way that balanced what had historically been a long standing African-American community that was now expanding and having many more immigrants coming from Latin America and from Asia and pacific islands. And there was differing opinions on how to be able to do that. Either opinions would have been completely legal. One was that you give make two districts with African Americans are the majority in the districts. And the other option was to spread that same African American population out over three districts where they have an influence but they are not the majority within the districts. And you know both options are legal. Everyone on the commission may have had their certain opinion of what they think is most strategic for that community. At the end of the day, the community of interest testimony is what made the decision for us because the community was the one that told us we want the three district proposal. Our communality has evolved. We work in coalition more and don't want to be packed into two districts. That doesn't reflect who we are. It was an example where if we had just looked at the maps, we may not have had the rich testimony that helped to drive our decisionmaking. We would have thought that we would have been making the best decision on that community to give them yes, you got a majority in these two districts. That's not really what they wanted or reflected their own experience. It's an example where we actually divided a bit more. So one audience wrote that many people worry that Americans are becoming more insuLAR. Is there any ideas that make us less able to compromise? I think it's one where to the point around communities of interest, very few of us even in this room probably identify with one community of interest. With a definition as broad as shared social or economic interests, you know there's like I am a mom. I have kids in the public school system. I own a home but I rented a home for many years. I care about my environment. There's so many different cuts that you could take on what it is to have a community of interest. I think one benefit of having a transparent public process. The public showing up with their individual opinions, they didn't just leave with their own opinions, they were able to see and hear from their neighbors on what they cared about and had the benefit of hearing us as a commission wrestle with how to integrate all of that information. Whereas the past, how redistricting was done. None of that was aired. There was a set of maps that was behind closed doors. The public didn't have a chance to weigh in. They had to live with it. If done right in a public process that is inviting and balances all of that, it's a step towards better understanding who our neighbors are and being able to work together in districts that balance all of our competing needs and aspirations. I think that's 100% right. The way the system was prior to the voters approving the constitutional amendment. The lines were drawn in the back room and less about what the economic and culture concerns with, but more with how people voted to make sure certainly politicians got certain seats versus what voters wanted during the election. That's something to think about. I can understand critiques about being insuLAR. The hyper partnership we find ourselves in today is a reflection of the gerrymandering that happened in 2011 in the first place. In addition to public testimony from citizens, what role can data play in the commissioner's interpretation or what role should it play? It's critical. And I think in Michigan, because the commission is autonomous, the only thing you know if are sure is they're going to have to use the census data. It's up to the commission to decide what other information is useful to be able to solicit. The public can get ahead of that and start to weigh in and have this information around what are the important thing the commission should be looking at to complement that data. Because of the high volume of information that's coming in, that being able to take advantage of new ways of Amassing information and doing data analysis while public testimony is coming in, will make it more manageable with the time constraints and really trying to show up and do their job. At the end of the day, we have to prioritize communities of interest testimony as a type of data. I think we can often get into the binary where if it's not a number in the way that the census data is not data and it's all different kinds of data The complexity of the job that the commission has to do is how do you really merge both the numbers and statistics with the story and the texture and the physical terrain of a place and that together makes a set of fair maps. Let me make the note, data they will have when they begin, the bureau elections works with various folks in state government will be 10 years of election return data that gets based on census tracks and maps blocks and tracks. That will be that data and it's also political data. Nobody should be disabused of the fact that politics is still involved. So each precincts carries some sort of political information attached to it. And many of the communities of interest will also have a political identity. So, you know that's you are never going to take it all out. Just wanted to note this is the age of big data. There's all sorts of data available. The commission will have the ability to access whatever data they want. The difference is, in the new process, the public will know exactly all of the different sources of data that the commission has consulted when it draws the maps. So this will be the last question we have time for and it's directed to Mr. Thomas, what do you foresee is the biggest concern or biggest challenge that Michigan will encounter in implementing this new process? Well, I think that just from procedures, they could probably use more money which is always the case and should be well funded to make it a success The voters of this state spoke. It wasn't a close election. It's incumbent on state government to make sure that one, it's properly funded and two, that strings are not attached. In terms of final result and how that translates over into the elections themselves, it may be a little challenging. I'm starting to see communities of interests be similar to jurisdictional lines. Some will not follow given where people live and how they spill out of. You may look at one community and think, hamTRAMACK has a BENGALI population. And then when that is a coupled with Detroit. The districts will come out. This is going to be a challenge. And it will be a challenge to election officials to put precincts together. But it's all doable. It's just a different way of doing it. The equipment and technology for voting systems, is far superior that can handle precincts with multiple splits with electronic poll books. There are challenges but we have the direction from the voters and that's where we need to go. Please join me in thanking the panel. MRAUZ -- [Applause] and well will be a reception immediately following this. Thank you so much for your great See you out there.