While congressional redistricting has been making headlines, Indiana communities have also been looking at how they draw their own council district maps. Bloomington, Monroe County, Goshen and now Valparaiso have established citizen-led redistricting commissions. Appointed members draw a proposed map, which then goes to elected officials for further consideration.
City council member Barbara Domer introduced Valparaiso’s ordinance, working with Common Cause Indiana. "I just really feel like it’s about good governance, and I think that the elected officials should not be drawing the maps to determine who they are going to be representing," Domer says. "It should be the other way around."
Domer stresses that Valparaiso is not planning a mid-decade redistricting effort, and commission members won’t be appointed until after the 2030 census. She says good district maps may lead to more competitive elections, “But that shouldn’t be the motivation for drawing the map. It really should be about determining the communities and the neighborhoods of interest.”
For example, she says she’d like to see each city council district include at least one park and one school, especially since the Valparaiso City Council appoints members to the local school board.
Determining who should be on the commission has been a topic of debate for the communities that have them. In Valparaiso, Domer ended up voting against the ordinance she introduced, in part, because of an amendment that limits the number of members from a single political party. She also worried that a change to an even number of members could lead to deadlock and delay the map-making process.
Still, Domer believes that involving citizens in the redistricting process will help them build a closer connection with their elected officials and, potentially, improve voter turnout. "I think that trust would be increased with regard to the residents and the citizens and their local government," Domer says. "I just feel like local control of the process is really important."
Common Cause Indiana is working on similar efforts in other communities. Executive Director Julia Vaughn says it’s working on independent redistricting in Michigan City and exploring possibilities in three other cities.
