An Indiana redistricting expert says the Johnson County Board of Commissioners has the most imbalanced districts she has ever seen.
Each of the county’s commissioner districts are comprised of three townships, with District 3 representing White River, Pleasant and Clark townships, District 2 representing Union, Franklin and Needham townships, and District 1 representing Hensley, Nineveh and Blue River Townships. Because a large portion of the county’s population is concentrated in White River and Pleasant townships, one of the three commissioners represents more than 70% of the county’s population.
District 3 Commissioner Ron West represents 117,338 people. In contrast, District 2 Commissioner Kevin Walls represents 31,634 people, and District 1 Commissioner Brian Baird represents just 12,793 people.
There is a nearly 200% deviation between the districts, according to an analysis from Kelsey Kauffman, a retired professor who is an expert on local redistricting. That is the biggest population imbalance she has seen in her research of all 92 counties spanning multiple decades.
“Your commissioners are almost surely one of the worst in the state in terms of misrepresentation,” Kauffman said.
Though the imbalance exists, the commissioners don’t have to address it, she said.
Indiana law gives commissioners wide latitude to create their own districts. Each county of 250,000 or fewer people must be divided into three districts composed of contiguous territory that is reasonably compact. The boundaries must not divide precincts and should cross township boundaries only when necessary to accomplish another redistricting standard, according to state law.
Any redistricting that is done will be done at the commissioner’s discretion, said Trena McLaughlin, Johnson County clerk.
McLaughlin is part of a redistricting committee that also includes a commissioner, the county attorney and a representative from the GIS, or Geographic Information System, department. The committee is aware of population imbalances for both the commissioners and Johnson County Council and has been discussing redistricting for both.
Whether the commissioners should redistrict is not for her to say, McLaughlin said.
“I don’t think I have a preference with it,” McLaughlin said. “I mean, I think that if that is something that commissioners wanted, then we would with them to make it work.”
Kauffman says the commissioners should take action.
The inequality is amplified because commissioners are elected in county-wide elections, though they represent a specific portion of the county. Anyone in Johnson County can vote for all district representatives, so voters in District 3 have more say over who is elected for Districts 2 and 1 than the people who live there.
“If your voice counts 10 times as much as anyone else’s, that is a clear imbalance,” Kauffman said.
Voters have a couple of options to address the population imbalance if county officials do not act. They could write or call their commissioner to ask them to take equal representation seriously. If that does not work, underrepresented voters can recruit a candidate who will take action and run on a platform of changing the map. And if neither of those options work, a voter could challenge the the residential district system, which governs commissioner districts, in court, she said.
The fact that the commissioners are discussing updating the map puts them ahead of some other counties, Kauffman said.
She and a partner have reached out to all 92 counties, and at least 88 are discussing redistricting right now, she said.
Though the commissioners do not have to redistrict, the county council does. Only voters who live within a district may vote for a council member to represent them, meaning the council operates on an electoral district system.
County councils are required to redistrict if there is greater than 10% deviation between the population of each district. Right now, there is a 20% deviation among districts, according to Kauffman’s analysis.
Housing growth in District 2, which includes part of Pleasant Township and all of Franklin Township, has prompted the need to redistrict, McLaughlin said.
As the map is now, District 2 represents 45,779 residents, while the next closest district has 40,225, and other districts have less than 40,000 residents, according to Kauffman’s data.
The clerk’s office and the committee are working as quickly as possible to submit all redistricting documents for state approval before the Dec. 31 deadline, McLaughlin said. The new maps have to be in place by the first day of candidate filing Jan. 5.
The clerk’s office has also been working on drawing new boundaries for four precincts that have already crossed or are expected to cross the 2,000-person maximum population in the next 10 years. State officials asked the county clerk’s office to redraw two boundaries, and they are being proactive by redrawing two that are on the cusp of over-population, she said.
The redistricting process normally takes six months, but county officials are being asked to complete the process in six weeks, McLaughlin said.
All state and local deadlines for redistricting were pushed because the 2020 U.S. Census was delayed due to the pandemic.
