Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
By TOM LAVENTURE
Bessemer — The Gogebic County Apportionment Committee on Thursday approved the new population-based voting district map to go into effect on Jan. 1, 2022.
The committee membersall favored the same mapping plan from four different options. The Michigan Bureau of Elections provided two options and two more were drawn up by Ramona Collins, county clerk and register of deeds, which included option one.
The work was to adjust to the current county population of 14,380, which is a 2,400 overall decrease from the 2010 Census, Collins said. State law requires district variance changes to remain under 11.9%.
District 1 will include portions of Bessemer Township and Ironwood Charter Township. The change will move the portions of Wakefield Township that were in District 1 to District 5, which contains other portions of the township, along with the city of Bessemer and parts of Ironwood Charter Township and Bessemer Township.
District 2 and District 3 remain the portions of the city of Ironwood. The only changes were a slight pulling from the eastern edge of District 3 into the city of Ironwood portion of District 4.
District 4 includes all of Erwin Township and portions of Bessemer Township, Ironwood Charter Township and the city of Ironwood. The change moved a portion of Ironwood Township into the district from District 5, which proved to be the most significant change in the reapportionment.
In all four plans there were no changes to districts six and seven. District 6 contains the city of Wakefield and portions of Wakefield Township and District 7 includes Marenisco and Watersmeet townships.
“There was no reason to bring Wakefield further over to Bessemer Township,” Collins said. “There was no reason to bring Watersmeet and Marenisco any further over into Wakefield Township or Bessemer.”
The District 1 population of 2,151 in the 2020 Census presented a 4.71% variance, or 97 more people than the target district size of 2,054. To resolve this, the southern portion of District 1 moved into District 5, which had experienced a 0.454% variance, with an added 19 persons.
“The most logical conclusion was to pull from District 1,” Collins said.
The goals for apportionment are to maintain contiguous, compact and square districts as far as the population distribution allows, Collins said. When possible, a township will not be divided or combined with a city.
District 1 is contiguous, but it does not appear balanced, Collins said. It is not possible to create the perfect dimension in most cases because the population distribution, the township and city borders and the natural geography don’t always allow it, she said.
Committee member Nicholas Jacobs, county prosecuting attorney, pointed out that District 3, which is largely downtown Ironwood, had a “jigsaw puzzle” appearance that some might suspect as gerrymandered — a term for district boundaries that intentionally benefit a single political party — but did not believe it to be the case.
“This isn’t weighted towards a political party, that’s for sure,” Jacobs said. “I don’t think anyone can figure it out.”
Collins noted that, when considering adjustments to districts the goal is to use natural boundaries such as rivers, or manmade boundaries such as roads, entire neighborhoods or landmarks. District 3 proved impossible to square off due to the population distribution, as changes still need to comply with apportionment guidelines.
“I made the jigsaw puzzle worse instead of better when I tried fixing District 3, because of the population of downtown Ironwood,” Collins said.
The precincts are divided only to meet the population standard and are not altered to offer a partisan political advantage, she said. It was not possible to know voter preference using the population software, she said.
The chairpersons of county’s two major political parties were present as committee members and said they were satisfied that option one did not alter the status quo in terms of voter district adjustment.
“I think Ramona did a tremendous job of doing the best with the least interruptions,” said Rachel Slaughter, chair of the county Republican Party. “I’m very happy with the way things are.”
Democratic Party chair Will Buergey said he was pleased with the apportionment software from the state Bureau of Elections. The software included apportionment proposals from the state that made more changes than the two proposals created by Collins.
“This helped us out, although there were some issues getting in and out of the program,” Buergey said. “But I think the overall goal was to try to leave things as original as possible, but yet meet the current guidelines, and we were able to do that.”
Committee member Lisa Hewitt, county treasurer, was in support of option one but was the lone vote against the 4-1 approval. She wanted some more time to review the options while the other members felt confident in the choice and were concerned about prolonging the process into a busy election season.
Hewitt wanted to know if there were opportunities to address any district boundary issues from past years with this census. Collins said the only complaints in recent memory came when the county’s population decline resulted in the move from nine districts to seven.
The November 2021 elections are already scheduled under the current apportionment map, Collins said. There does not appear to be any county commissioner or other elected city or township official who will have their primary residence moved outside of his or her district due to redistricting, she said.
