HANCOCK COUNTY — After a decade of strong population growth, the results of the 2020 census are expected to lead to changes in the shape of the U.S. House and state legislative districts that include Hancock County. But how should those changes be made?
That’s a question that the Indiana Citizens’ Redistricting Commission tries to answer in a recent report based on feedback it sought in a number of public hearings.
The commission, a project of the Indiana Coalition for Independent Redistricting, held a virtual public meeting in each of Indiana’s congressional districts to ask citizens what they thought the process of redrawing Indiana’s legislative boundaries should look like.
According to the report, citizens want to see districts that encourage more competitive elections, while also keeping communities of interest — areas with significant commonalities and common concerns that legislation might address — together.
Paulette Vandegriff, a leader in the Hancock County League of Women Voters, said the conclusions of the report didn’t surprise her: Most of them are the same ones advocates heard during the last redistricting process, in 2011. But this time, she’s hoping things will be different.
“I’m hopeful that more people are paying attention,” she said. “…There’s lots of things that really need to be addressed, and hopefully the general assembly will allow time for citizens to be heard.”
The report highlighted several problems that are caused by the state’s current legislative boundaries. Participants said Indiana’s districts encourage elections where only one party has a chance of winning; that they separate communities into too many districts; and that in doing so they often combine parts of larger communities with more rural, geographically distinct, areas.
“We heard from many people, particularly people living in the largest cities in Indiana, that their communities are divided into multiple districts,” the report said. “This is confusing for voters and can make it difficult for communities to get the representation they need. This is particularly problematic in districts that combine rural areas with urban areas. Constituents in these districts often have very different needs and concerns, making it difficult for their legislators to fully represent everyone.”
The commission’s goal is to create a redistricting process that avoids the potential for partisan redistricting, in which the party in power draws maps that protect its own political interests.
Julia Vaughn, policy director of Common Cause Indiana, one of the groups included in the coalition, said the group got a lot of feedback about the makeup of Indiana’s 6th Congressional District, which includes Hancock County and is represented by Republican Rep. Greg Pence. Vaughn said participants cited the length of the district as problematic, grouping together some communities on the Ohio River with distant cities like Muncie, which are more than 100 miles away.
“The Ohio River communities were mentioned over and over again in three different congressional districts,” Vaughn said. She said the towns near the borders of Ohio and Kentucky, for whom the nearest big city is Louisville or Cincinnati, feel they don’t have much in common with the more central Indiana areas that share their representatives and could benefit from being grouped together instead.
Vaughn said some participants also shared the idea of grouping the “doughnut counties” surrounding Indianapolis, including Hancock County, together into one congressional district, since their populations tend to be similar demographically and politically, in contrast to Indianapolis.
In an ideal redistricting process, Vaughn said, the general assembly would be doing outreach to communities in Hancock County and would do its best to accommodate their desires in the eventual congressional district that’s drawn around them.
“What it should be about is what benefits the voters in these communities, not the politicians,” she said.
Vaughn has also used the district boundaries of state Sen. Michael Crider, R-Greenfield, as an example of what partisan redistricting can look like. Crider’s district includes mostly rural areas and small towns, but it also extends into a narrow finger of Marion County, whose neighborhoods have little in common with the ones in Hancock County. Common Cause has cited districts like that as examples of how Indiana’s Republican majority diluted the voting power of the city’s more diverse, more Democratic urban population. It’s one example, she said, of how rural voters in the state benefit to the detriment of voters in more densely populated urban areas.
The next step for advocates of a changed redistricting process is attempting to capture the attention of lawmakers. Getting them to listen could be difficult. With Republicans enjoying a supermajority in both the state House and Senate, there’s little incentive for them to change the way they handle redistricting.
The coalition has asked supporters to reach out to their individual representatives in the Indiana General Assembly and encourage them to read the report and consider its conclusions.
“The only way we’re going to have a process that benefits voters is if they get involved,” Vaughn said.
Rep. Bob Cherry, R-Greenfield, represents District 53. It’s centered in Hancock County, but like most House districts, it includes portions of multiple counties. Two other House districts include smaller portions of Hancock County.
Cherry said he isn’t sure what his district will look like after the redistricting process concludes. With the population of his district growing faster than the state average, it could get smaller while more rural districts grow.
Whatever the final maps look like, Cherry said, they will likely be challenged in court by Common Cause or another group, and he expects them to stand up to that scrutiny.
Cherry said he has supported a nonpartisan commission to handle the redistricting process in the past, but when Democrats were in control of the state legislature, they were opposed to it.
“When the Democrats drew the maps, they were far more gerrymandered than what (Republicans in 2011) did,” he said.
Linda Genrich, chair of the county Democratic Party, said she knows both parties have in the past used the redistricting process to get their desired outcomes. Still, she said, she’s “cautiously optimistic” that this year’s process might bring change.
“I would love to see a district that allows for representation for each section of the 6th District,” she said of the far-flung boundaries of Pence’s district.
Redrawing of the boundaries is based on census figures. Because of the delay related to the COVID-19 pandemic, legislators likely won’t get results from the census until September, meaning the process won’t be finalized until later this fall. Crider and Cherry said they were concerned about the small window incumbents and others interested in running for office will have to decide whether and where they want to run in 2022.
So far, Crider said, he doesn’t know much about what this year’s redistricting process will look like, other than that the legislature hopes to offer plenty of time to hear citizens’ comments and concerns. However, he said, that has to be weighed against the ability for candidates to make decisions about running in a district where they might have a chance. Residency in a district for one year is required before a candidate can run to represent it.
“There is a strong desire to have a good opportunity for public input,” he said.
Vandegriff said she hopes elected officials will read the report and consider the way redistricting leads to the kind of hyperpartisanship that makes it harder for them to do their jobs.
“You can always hope, but with the supermajority in both the House and the Senate, I don’t know,” she said.
This is the third round of redistricting Vaughn has been involved in, and so far, change hasn’t happened. However, she said, she’s optimistic that things could be different this time around; she said the public has become more aware of the issue.
“Public pressure is key,” she said.