The Associated Press has declared that Michigan voters have passed Proposal 2 and now the process of how the state’s political districts are determined will be changing.
With 58 percent of the vote counted the proposal had a commanding 61 percent to 31 percent margin.
The battle over drawing up district lines has traditionally been a political club wielded by whichever party was in power in Lansing. Gerrymandering, as the process is known, has lead to, what critics would call, illogical boundary lines in drawing up legislative districts. The argued this did a disservice to the public.
Proposal 2 was written to take the power to draw legislative lines out of the political arena and place it in the hands of a commission created solely for the purpose of drawing up districts after each decennial census.
The commission will be made up of 13 people. Four of those people will be self-declared Republicans, four Democrats and five independents. It will be that commission’s responsibility to come up with representative maps. The commission will be assisted by consultants and rely on input from the public.
Proposal 2 had widespread support among Democrats and was widely opposed by Republicans.
According to BridgeMI.com, the nonpartisan Citizens Research Council of Michigan found two benefits would be the transparency of how state and congressional lines are drawn and the reduction of partisan influence in drawing those districts.
