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Michigan redistricting panel seeks input

The Michigan Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission has unveiled preliminary maps for all state and federal legislative districts. Now you have a chance to offer input, or even draw your own boundaries. You can do so here.

The panel has gotten push back over its plans for western UP districts. Current intentions are to shed Baraga County and add the western half of Dickinson County, including Iron Mountain and Kingsford, to the 110th, currently represented by Greg Markkanen. Baraga would join Marquette in the 109th and the 108th would extend from the eastern portion of Dickinson to Chippewa County.

Commission member Doug Clark says the idea has been received sourly, particularly because of the composition of the group.

We don’t have anybody from the UP and that was one of the comments that we got. They wanted to know why they weren’t represented on the Commission.

When speaking on his candidacy for Secretary of State, Beau LaFave, who currently represents the 108th District, said he thought the new boundaries would worsen the relationship between citizens and their elected officials.

My future old House district will now stretch from Wisconsin to Canada. Why? I have no idea, but they are making the districts more impossible to traverse, and making it harder for the citizens of the Upper Peninsula to address their grievances with their state representative in a meaningful way, at an office hour or a coffee hour.

Public comments made on the Commission page recently are not in favor of the new lines. Ottawa County residents, near Grand Rapids, have expressed similar concerns about having the jurisdiction split between multiple districts. Detroit groups warn that efforts to make elections more competitive in metro Detroit could violate federal law by erasing minority-majority districts currently in place.

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