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By Marilyn Odendahl
The Indiana Citizen
July 22, 2024

With the lawsuit over redistricting in the city of Anderson seemingly stalled in federal court, the common council recently took an action it has resisted for years – it quickly redrew and adopted a new map, reconfiguring the boundaries of each of the six council districts.

However, despite being passed June 13, the new map has not been presented to the court nor has the council revealed what information it used to draw the new district boundaries.

Linda Hanson, president of the Indiana League of Women Voters, one of the plaintiffs in the case, said she is frustrated. In particular, she said the plaintiffs have no idea what data or calculations were used to produce the new maps.

“I wish we could get the answers,” Hanson said. “I hope they send it in to the court soon. Dragging it out is not going to help anything.”

By law, federal, state and municipal voting districts are supposed to be redrawn every 10 years after the new population count is released by the U.S. Census. The city of Anderson allegedly skipped the redistricting process after the 2020 census, according to court documents filed in Common Cause Indiana et al. v. City of Anderson Common Council, 1:23-cv-1022. Also, public officials have said the district boundaries had not undergone any major changes since the 1980 census, The (Anderson) Herald Bulletin has reported.

Since the Southern Indiana District Court denied the common council’s motion for a stay in April, the federal docket on this case has been quiet.

Council members took action in the interim. In May, they discussed hiring an outside consultant to redraw the district maps, according to the minutes of the meeting, but decided against that option. Instead, they adopted Ordinance 14-24, which includes descriptions of the physical boundaries of the redrawn districts and a color-coded map of the new council districts.

Ollie Dixon, a council member for District 4, said the outline of his district has not changed since he was first elected 36 years ago. To draw the new map, Dixon said he and Councilmen Greg Graham of District 3 and Jeff Freeman of District 2, along with City Attorney Rosemary Khoury walked “every inch” of District 4, knocking on doors in neighborhoods where others do not dare to go. A neighborhood was added to District 4 in the new map, he said.

Khoury and the other attorneys listed on the federal court docket as representing the defendants in this case did not reply to messages requesting comment. Also, Lance Stephenson of District 5, who is also council president, did not respond to messages. In addition, the attorney representing the plaintiffs declined to comment.

Court documents assert that Dixon’s district is the smallest with just 7,490 residents, but Dixon said he does not trust the census data. He believes there are about 8,500 people living in the district because several families are living in some single apartment units and homes.

Describing his district as comprised of “a lot of poor, minority, disenfranchised, and forgotten people,” Dixon said the population of District 4 has been undercounted. He said the census workers have a “bigoted attitude” and residents will not open the door when they see “a white man in a suit with a pencil and a clipboard.”

“Poor people don’t want to talk to arrogant-assed people who don’t care about them,” Dixon said.

Waiting on the federal court

In June 2023, Common Cause Indiana and other voting rights groups filed a lawsuit, seeking to force the council and the local board of election to comply with the law and redraw Anderson’s voting districts. The plaintiffs calculated that each of the six council districts should have about 9,130 residents each. However, the current districts are “severely malapportioned,” creating a population variation between the low count of Dixon’s District 4 and the high number of 11,644 in Graham’s District 3.

Plaintiffs have claimed that Anderson’s out-of-balance voting districts violate the U.S. Constitution and state law by giving some voters a stronger voice than others.

Two times the common council and board of elections have lost in the Southern Indiana District Court. The defendants failed to get the case dismissed and, most recently, lost their motion for a stay to the proceedings so they could redraw the maps.

The federal court denied the motion for a stay without explanation on April 24, but since then, the case has not moved forward. Common Cause and the other plaintiffs did file a motion for partial summary judgment, asking the court to declare that the districts violate the 14^th Amendment and to set a deadline for redrawing the council maps.

The court has not issued any ruling on the summary judgment motion nor entered any order.

“I don’t understand why it’s not moving,” Hanson, of the League of Women Voters, said of the case. “I don’t know why this court has not done something.”

Dixon said he does not think the district maps needed to be redrawn and he fears if others determine the district boundaries, the city will lose its only minority majority, which is District 4. He said he takes care of his district, often talking to the residents, getting them connected to services when they need help, and, each year, hosting a back-to-school picnic that provides the students with crayons, book bags, calculators and other supplies

Also, Dixon lashed out against the lawsuit, saying the plaintiffs pursued the case hoping to profit from it.

“They have no idea what is going on in the district and they don’t care,” Dixon said.

A new state law and a local ordinance

In their complaint, the plaintiffs had asked the court to order the district maps to be redrawn then require that the council members elected in 2023 under the old maps run again in a special election in 2024 in the new districts.

The motions for a dismissal and a stay took so much time that the request for essentially a new council election in 2024 was never addressed.

Council members introduced Ordinance 14-24 at their May 9 meeting, 15 days after their attempt to pause the legal proceeding was denied by the federal court. The council then held a special meeting May 30, specifically to discuss hiring an outside consultant to draw the new districts. However, the five district and three at-large members who attended the meeting voted against making the hire, according to the meeting minutes. Freeman, the minutes noted, was absent.

At the June 13 meeting, the council members adopted the ordinance. Which council members voted in favor of adoption is not known, because the minutes of that meeting have not been posted online.

Included in the ordinance is a description and map of each district’s new boundaries. Also, the ordinance notes that Senate Enrolled Act 135, passed by the Indiana General Assembly while this case was pending in the federal court, extends the deadline to redistrict to June 30, 2025.

The council members had highlighted the new state law in their motion for a stay. They argued they were no longer in violation of the redistricting requirement since SEA 135 provided them with more than a year to draw new maps. The plaintiffs pushed back, asserting even though the defendants had been given previous extensions by the court for settlement discussions and to file documents, they still had not redistricted or offered any timetable for completing the redistricting process.

Hanson said the federal judge in this case should be asking the council members, “Where is your map?”

Dwight Adams, an editor and writer based in Indianapolis, edited this article. He has been a content editor, copy editor and digital producer at The Indianapolis Star and IndyStar.com, and a planner for other papers, including the Louisville Courier Journal.

The Indiana Citizen is a nonpartisan, nonprofit platform dedicated to increasing the number of informed and engaged Hoosier citizens. We are operated by the Indiana Citizen Education Foundation, Inc., a 501(c)(3) public charity. For questions about the story, contact Marilyn Odendahl at marilyn.odendahl@indianacitizen.org.