Lavora Barnes, chair of the Democratic Party, said she does not want to see the diversity of lawmakers diminished. The lawsuit, if successful, would force the commission to revise the maps. We can do better than this,” Gay-Dagnogo said. She urged the Michigan Democratic Party “to stand with us” even if the maps are fairer to the party as a whole. “We want to make sure that our children have an opportunity to see themselves in the Legislature and for people that will fight for them in our classrooms, in our schools to advocate for policies.” Sherry Gay-Dagnogo, now a school board member. “Detroit deserves to have Black leaders,” said ex-state Rep. But she also noted a lack of data to discern how Black candidates may be affected by white voters in primaries, which decide many races. She submitted a report to the panel saying candidates preferred by Black voters can win general elections if the seats are not 50% African American. Many of the minority-opportunity districts drawn in 2011 had far more African American voting-age residents than were needed to elect candidates of choice, according to Lisa Handley, one of the commission’s experts. It will have eight under the new map, for instance, after new seats were combined with suburban areas in Oakland and Macomb counties. The city had five state Senate districts. Commissioners undid “packing” of African American, heavily Democratic voters in Detroit, which has one of the highest percentages of Black residents in the country. The voter-created panel took over the once-a-decade process that had been handled by the Republican-controlled Legislature and resulted in partisan gerrymandering. “As shared previously, we believe in the advice of our Voting Rights Act legal counsel that we comply with the Voting Rights Act,” commission spokesperson Edwards Woods III said. Bruce Adelson, who advised the panel on Voting Rights Act compliance, told commissioners there was a lot of “misinformation” or “a lack of information” being circulated by critics of its approach. The 13-member commission and its lawyers have said federal law does not require majority-minority districts. Nabih Ayad, a lawyer planning to file the complaint in the Michigan Supreme Court, said the new maps - regardless of whether they are good for Democrats or Republicans - disenfranchise African Americans who are left with the “short end of the stick.” 1 map-drawing criteria for the panel was to comply with the 1965 law, which bans discriminatory voting practices and procedures. Voting Rights Act and the Michigan Constitution. The suit, though, will allege violations of the U.S. Commissioners have said Black voters can still elect their candidates of choice without comprising at least half of a district’s electorate.
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