Panel was 'playing dice' lowering Black voter numbers in Detroit districts, analyst says

Kalamazoo — Michigan's redistricting commission was "playing dice" when it drew House and Senate districts that lowered the number of African American voters in majority-Black Detroit to the point where they were no longer majorities, an expert witness testified Thursday at a trial over the legality of Michigan's legislative district boundaries.

Without districts where African Americans make up more than 50% of the voting age population, Black voters in some Detroit districts have been unable to push a preferred candidate through the primary despite federal law requiring as much in districts where there is evidence of racially polarized voting.

Sean Trende, a senior elections analyst for RealClearPolitics, reviewed in court several August 2022 Democratic primaries, but zeroed in on the 8th Senate District straddling Detroit and southeast Oakland County suburbs, where incumbent Sen. Mallory McMorrow of Royal Oak defeated Sen. Marshall Bullock of Detroit in a Democratic primary after the redistricting commission drew them into the same district.

In that case, Black primary voters broke 80%-20% for Bullock and White voters broke 96%-4% for McMorrow, according to Trende's estimates. The race was a clear example of racially polarized voting that would usually require under the Voting Rights Act a majority-minority district; instead, it was drawn at 40% Black residents eligible to vote, Trende said.

"This looks like something out of Alabama in the 1960s," Trende said of the 8th Senate District primary.

Trende, a witness called by the Detroit voters who filed the challenge to the maps, testified in Kalamazoo federal court Thursday in a trial examining whether 13 House and Senate district maps drawn by citizen commissioners in December 2021 diluted the vote of Black Detroiters in violation of the Voting Rights Act and 14th Amendment.

The litigation, brought by several Detroiters in March, is a major test of the work of the Michigan Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission, which was established by a 2018 voter-approved constitutional amendment that stripped state lawmakers of their power to draw their own district boundaries. If the federal panel hearing the case orders the maps redrawn, it could cause headaches for incumbent lawmakers who would have to run in new districts or against colleagues drawn into their same district.

In order to prove a violation of the Voting Rights Act, plaintiffs have to show the Black voting age population concentrations were lowered below what would be needed for a Black-preferred candidate to have a chance in a primary. To prove a violation of the 14th Amendment equal protections clause, plaintiffs must show race was a driving factor in the commission's decision making.

The commission is expected to start calling its own witnesses Friday, the third day of the trial.

'Playing dice'

Some commissioners testified Wednesday that they felt pressure from their experts to stretch the Detroit districts into White suburbs to lower the concentration of the Black voting age population in majority-Black districts and undo "packing" done in past redistricting processes by Republicans.

The pressures was so much, Commissioner Rebecca Szetela said, it felt the experts' guidance had become "100% about race."

More:'100% about race': Trial examines legislative maps' impact on Black Detroit voters

Two of the key gerrymandering techniques the Voting Rights Act protects against are referred to as "cracking" and "packing." Packing occurs when map drawers pack a certain population into as few districts as possible to minimize the number of seats they can win and, as a result, their influence in the state House and Senate. Cracking occurs when map drawers break apart a certain demographic to dilute their influence among several districts.

Other commissioners said Wednesday they didn't feel the same pressure and disagreed with descriptions that indicated race was a predominant factor in drawing the maps.

"It was an objective that was fluid, and we had to balance that objective against other criteria," Commissioner M.C. Rothhorn said in court.

But Trende on Thursday said race did seem to be a predominant factor in the districts. To test that theory, Trende said, he used a computer software to generate 50,000 Metro Detroit district maps with the primary parameters being compactness, contiguity and keeping county and municipal lines intact. Race was left out of any of the guiding criteria for the models.

When the averages of those 50,000 models were compared against the maps produced by the commission, there were large differences that could only be attributed to race-based guidelines given to the commission, he said.

"These bizarrely shaped districts can only really be accounted for by race," Trende said.

The end result, he said, could be that Black representation decreases further in the House and Senate, especially as incumbent Black Detroit lawmakers leave their seats.

"The commission was playing dice with Black voters' ability to elect their candidates of choice by drawing these districts down to 40%," Trende said.

Stretched districts

In response to the testimony about the 8th Senate District, McMorrow said Thursday the district offered one of the starkest changes in the new maps in part because it pitted two incumbents against each other. The stark divide in votes, she said, could also be attributed to McMorrow and Bullock’s constituencies simply voting for the person they knew.

Nonetheless, McMorrow acknowledged there's been a history of racial division between Detroit and Oakland County that’s eased somewhat since the days of longtime Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson, a Republican and longtime Detroit antagonist who died in August 2019.

“I understood it was my responsibility to build trust,” McMorrow told The Detroit News. “That’s what I’ve been trying to do ever since.”

Former state Sen. Virgil Smith, a longtime Detroit Democratic operative who helped draw Wayne County redistricting maps in 2010, testified there has always been a history of racially polarized voting in Metro Detroit. The new maps, he said, only exacerbated the issue.

Smith worked on Bullock's Senate campaigns in 2018 and 2022 and remarked on the difference in the reception campaign workers experienced in 2022 when they knocked on doors in Oakland County. Homeowners wouldn't answer doors for Black campaign workers, and some areas were openly hostile, he said.

"In Berkley, they were angry we were out there," Smith said. "They thought we had no business representing them."

LaMar Lemmons, a former state representative who's worked in Detroit politics for about 50 years, testified to similar experiences while working on campaigns in the last cycle. In Rep. Donovan McKinney's race for House District 14, Lemmons said he convinced other Black candidates to withdraw from the primary because they couldn't risk diluting the Black vote under the new maps.

In the suburbs, residents have been "hostile" to canvassers going door-to-door, he said.

"We try to have White canvassers to work the White neighborhoods," Lemmons said.

Both Smith and Lemmons said the policy focus between Detroit and its Democratic suburbs is markedly different. Issues of priority to Black Detroiters — such as affirmative action, reparations, criminal justice reform or an end to insurance redlining — don't carry the same weight in the White Democratic suburbs. That difference plays out within Democratic legislative caucuses as well, where the concerns of the suburbs override Detroit needs, Smith said.

Both Smith and Lemmons argued Detroit's influence would wane even more so under the new maps.

"They just don't respect us the way they did," Smith said.

eleblanc@detroitnews.com

House and Senate districts challenged in case

House District 1: Held by Rep. Tyrone Carter of Detroit

House District 7: Held by Rep. Helena Scott of Detroit

House District 8: Held by Rep. Mike McFall of Hazel Park

House District 10: Held by House Speaker Joe Tate of Detroit

House District 11: Held by Rep. Veronica Paiz of Harper Woods

House District 12: Held by Rep. Kimberly Edwards of Eastpointe

House District 14: Held by Rep. Donavan McKinney of Detroit

Senate District 1: Held by Sen. Erika Geiss of Taylor

Senate District 3: Held by Sen. Stephanie Chang of Detroit

Senate District 6: Held by Sen. Mary Cavanagh of Redford Township

Senate District 8: Held by Sen. Mallory McMorrow of Royal Oak

Senate District 10: Held by Sen. Paul Wojno of Warren

Senate District 11: Held by Sen. Veronica Klinefelt of Eastpointe