Northfield Residents Speak Out on Redistricting

Members of the Minnesota Citizens Redistricting Commission were seeking opinions at the on Aug. 11.

And that’s exactly what they got.

Residents told the commission how they thought proposed state legislative boundaries should be redrawn and how the redistricting process should be reformed.

Many said Minnesota lawmakers should base their remapping decisions on such variables as municipal boundaries and demographics, and not in a way that many may construe to be politically motivated.

In contrast, others said the put forth by the Legislature this year was not that bad.

“If people would have spoken their minds, maybe Gov. Dayton would have signed it,” said Bron Scherer, chair of the Rice County Republicans.

The variety of input is what David Wheeler said he had wished for from the meeting.

“It’s important for citizens to get involved in this,” said Wheeler, program coordinator for Draw the Line Minnesota, which helped create the redistricting commission. “The Legislature is supposed to do it [redistricting], and they haven’t been able to.”

Once a decade, Minnesota goes through reapportionment, an often contentious process that alters legislative district boundaries to match changes in population. Thus, each district ends up having about the same population.

State law says that if the Legislature and the governor cannot agree on a redistricting plan, a five-judge panel would set the new boundaries. That’s the case this year, as the GOP-majority Legislature and DFL Gov. Mark Dayton couldn’t come to terms on new boundaries.

The Minnesota Citizens Redistricting Commission—a 15-member group that Wheeler said was comprised of members of all the state’s major political parties, as well as independents—was formed this year to gather comments from residents across the state and, from them, develop a redistricting map that will be presented to the five-judge panel.

“This is an experiment,” said Wheeler. “This has never been done this way in Minnesota.”

One member of the redistricting commission is Northfield resident Karen Saxe.

The chair of the Department of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science at Macalester College, Saxe said she was interested in the math behind the redistricting process.

“A big question I had about the commission was whether anyone was going to listen to us after we finished,” said Saxe.

She added that her concerns were answered by an voter expert in New York, who told her that people around the country pay attention to what Minnesota does about voting and election issues.

The Northfield meeting was the second public hearing the redistricting commission had conducted. After several more hearings across the state, the commission will develop a redistricting map, then have a second round of meetings to gauge sentiment about what was developed.

The League of Women Voters of Northfield-Cannon Falls helped sponsor last week’s event.