(Photo/Xain Ballenger of The Statehouse File)
By Marilyn Odendahl
The Indiana Citizen
February 21, 2024
Despite an earlier unsuccessful attempt to insert language that would have pushed Indiana toward a nonpartisan redistricting process, Senate Bill 135, which extends the deadline for municipalities and school corporations to redraw their election maps, passed the Indiana House on Tuesday with no opposition.
Authored by Sen. Mike Gaskill, R-Pendleton, SB 135 would give a temporary reprieve to the estimated 100-plus local governmental units across the state that did not redistrict as required by state law following the release of population data from the 2020 U.S. Census. The bill advances the deadline to June 30, 2025, for either completing the new electoral maps or certifying that the current maps are compliant.
In the House, the measure passed on a 90-to-0 vote, which mimicked the Senate’s vote of 49-to-0.
Rep. Timothy Wesco, R-Osceola, sponsored the bill in the House. The only lawmaker who rose to speak on the bill during the third reading in the House was Rep. Kyle Pierce, R-Anderson, who said he was “very thankful for this bill.”
Also, Pierce acknowledged he represents the city of Anderson, which is being sued for not redistricting in decades. He cited stats from the lawsuit that claims while state law allows a population deviation between electoral districts of 10%, the total deviation for Anderson’s six city council districts is 46%.
How the Anderson lawsuit could be impacted if SB 135 is signed into law is not known. None of the plaintiffs – including Common Cause Indiana, the Anderson-Madison County NAACP Branch 3058 and the League of Women Voters of Indiana – have testified before lawmakers about this bill. In addition, when the measure was introduced, Gaskill, whose district includes Anderson, speculated the bill would give the city the opportunity to resolve the lawsuit outside of court.
Pierce, however, did point to a provision in SB 135, which could be an incentive to redistrict for the counties, cities, towns and school corporations that, to date, have not redrawn their maps. The bill calls for the salaries of officials to be withheld if redistricting is not completed by the new deadline.
“Going into 2030 redistricting, I think we should find similar language like this where if you’re not redistricting, you can’t have pay,” the Anderson Republican said. “You have districts in a city for 40 years (that) haven’t been touched. That’s bad policy for those constituents and it’s a bad outcome as they’re trying to lead their cities and towns.”
Attempt to remove partisan politics
On Monday, Rep. Matt Pierce, D-Bloomington, offered an amendment to SB 135 that he said would remove politics from the redistricting process. Currently, state and local lawmakers redraw the Indiana electoral maps every 10 years in accordance with the U.S. Census, but Pierce’s amendment would give the job to an independent committee.
“I think that we need to take this action because we know that an elected official who’s drawing their own districts, whether they’re the school board or here in the legislature, (has) an inherent conflict of interest,” Pierce told his colleagues in the House. He added elected officials are interested in how the districts are drawn because the maps can have a profound impact.
“All these maps … should be drawn by people who are not directly interested in the outcome,” Pierce continued.
The amendment would create a nonpartisan redistricting task force to study state and federal laws as well as other states that use independent redistricting committees. It would then make recommendations, including drafts of proposed legislation or proposed amendment to the Indiana Constitution, for enacting a nonpartisan redistricting system in Indiana. Also, Pierce pointed out, the task force would be required to complete its work “well ahead of the next redistricting cycle,” which will occur after the 2030 U.S. Census.
Pierce has tried to change the redistricting process before. In 2021, he offered similar amendments to Senate Bills 398 and 353, which would have reassigned the task of redistricting to the Legislative Services Agency and prohibited the resulting maps from favoring a particular individual or political party.
Just as with the two 2021 amendments, Pierce’s proposed amendment for SB 135 was defeated on a party-line vote of 67-28.
Rep. Jerry Torr, R-Carmel, did not speak directly to the merits of Pierce’s amendment but did say the task force was not necessary because it had been done previously. A committee formed in 2015 and had already studied nonpartisan redistricting.
“We’ve done this,” Torr said. “There’s no reason to rehash it. We know what to do, we just need the will to do it.”
Public support for a new redistricting process
Several Democrats spoke in favor of Pierce’s amendment.
Rep. Tonya Pfaff, D-Terre Haute, told the House about her time serving on the legislature’s redistricting committee that toured the state in 2021 and held public meetings to get input from Hoosiers on the proposed maps. Of the more than 500 individuals who spoke at those meetings, Pfaff was struck by what the public did not say.
“Not one of the people who came to speak was in favor of Indiana’s current redistricting process,” Pfaff said. “Despite overwhelming support from Hoosiers to establish nonpartisan redistricting, that simply did not happen. It’s time to restore the integrity of Indiana’s elections through fair redistricting. Give us a chance. Let the public choose their elected officials, not the other way around.”
Both Pierce and Rep. Chuck Moseley, D-Portage, highlighted what they see as the impact of partisan redistricting extending beyond the maps.
Pierce blamed gerrymandered districts with fueling an increase in extreme political ideas, as candidates try to appeal to their base. Moseley noted that with the legislature dominated by a Republican supermajority, those lawmakers have little incentive to compromise once they arrive in the Statehouse.
“The only way that we can best serve all of the people of the state of Indiana is to come together and have that ability to say, ‘Well, you know, maybe somebody over here has a little bit better idea how to make this better than I believe it currently is,’” Moseley said. “It’s about balance. It’s about service to the people that sent us here.”
After his amendment was defeated, Pierce linked Indiana’s partisan redistricting process to the state’s declining civic participation, including its poor ranking in voter registration and participation, as highlighted in the 2023 Indiana Civic Health Index.
“In the 2022 election, Indiana ranked 50th for voter turnout in the United States,” the Bloomington Democrat said in a statement. “Perhaps Indiana voters don’t vote because the Republican-drawn maps allow for little to no competition in our elections. My amendment would have made many more elections competitive, giving people more reasons to participate in our democracy.”
Dwight Adams, a freelance editor and writer based in Indianapolis, edited this article. He is a former content editor, copy editor and digital producer at The Indianapolis Star and IndyStar.com, and worked as a planner for other newspapers, including the Louisville Courier Journal.
