New Report from Fair Maps Project Shows Flaws In MICRC’s Analysis, Cloaking Massive Republican Electoral Advantage
LANSING, MI — The Michigan AFL-CIO Fair Maps Project today released a 19-page report (LINKED HERE) demonstrating that the Michigan Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission (MICRC) collaborative state legislative maps disproportionately favor the Republican Party to an even greater extent than previously known.
Using the MICRC’s own data to double-check the Commission’s count of districts that favor each political party, the report finds that 5-10% of the seats in every single Commission collaborative map were misleadingly categorized as “Democratic” seats despite having a baked-in advantage for the Republican Party.
In 5 of 6 maps, the error is large enough to give Commissioners, and the public, the false impression that the maps could reasonably be expected to produce a Democratic majority or a tie, when in fact they are likely to produce a Republican majority in a neutral political environment.
The report corroborates the unanimous finding of the Commission’s three other academic measures of partisan fairness, which all found a significant Republican advantage in every single Commission draft. Zero maps drawn by the Commission – collaborative or individual, state House or state Senate – favor the Democratic Party on any of those three metrics.
“When over two million Michiganders voted to put partisan fairness in our Constitution, they deserve to get it,” said Michigan AFL-CIO President Ron BIEBER. “As Michigan’s largest community of interest, when we told the Commission how to draw fair maps, we meant it. We want the Commission to succeed in their mission and set an example for other states and future commissions. This report shows that they have a lot of work to do. Michigan needs fair maps now — no excuses.”
The Fair Maps Project previously released a 237-page report outlining its recommendations for state House and state Senate maps, including a full dataset of demographic and partisan data for all 148 state legislative districts it proposed. Today’s report includes an apples-to-apples comparison of the MICRC maps, the 2011 gerrymanders, and the Fair Maps Project.
The Fair Maps Project uses basic arithmetic to assess the partisan advantage in each district compared to the state as a whole. For example, if the state votes 52% Democratic to 48% Republican (a margin of D+4%), but a particular district votes 49% Democratic to 51% Republican (a margin of R+2%), that district has an advantage of 6% toward the Republican Party — meaning that in a neutral political environment (a statewide tie), that district would be likely to vote Republican by a margin of 6%.
More on the Michigan AFL-CIO’s Fair Maps Project can be found at www.miaflcio.org/fairmaps
