ANN ARBOR, MI (MPRN)— Michigan will soon have three new commissioners sitting on the beleaguered board that draws the state's electoral maps.
The new commissioners will be randomly drawn from a pool of semifinalists who applied to be on the commission, but not everyone in that pool is weighted equally. There's some data magic to adjust for sex, age, race, ethnicity, and geographic regions to try to randomly draw a commission that reflects the population of Michigan.
Charlie Beall is with Voters Not Politicians. That group backed the ballot measure that created the Michigan Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission and set out the process for choosing its members.
"The random selection process gets us a set of everyday citizens that are public servants,” he said.
Three of those everyday citizens have resigned recently, creating the soon-to-be filled vacancies.