Detroit: the map the voters took back
Metro Detroit votes 55 percent Democratic, and for a decade its map was one of the most effective Republican gerrymanders in America.
The 2011 map, below, double-packs Detroit: the 13th and 14th each run near 80 percent Democratic, the 14th snaking from Detroit to Pontiac to soak up as many blue voters as possible, leaving the suburban seats around them lean red. In 2012 Democrats won more congressional votes statewide; Republicans took nine of the fourteen seats.
Then the voters took the pen away. A post-election Facebook post by a 27-year-old, Katie Fahey, became Voters Not Politicians: 425,000 volunteer-gathered signatures put an independent citizens' commission on the 2018 ballot, and 61 percent of Michigan said yes. The commission's 2022 map is below: the packs are gone, and the 10th was decided by 1,600 votes, the third-closest House race in the country.
Seats now follow votes: seven-to-six Democratic in 2022, and when Michigan swung red in 2024, the delegation swung with it. Not perfect, a court later made the commission redraw some Detroit state-legislative seats over racial vote dilution, but the metro's districts finally move when its voters do.
You are playing the Democrats on the commission's fair terrain, and nobody says you have to keep it fair. Fifty-five percent of the vote can take nearly everything: spread Detroit's votes and win a majority of the seven districts.
Clinton 54.8%, Trump 41.2%. Wayne, Oakland and Macomb's combined 2016 presidential vote.
The 2011 map, shaded by the 2016 vote: Detroit is double-packed into the 13th and 14th, both near 80 percent Democratic, while the districts around them stay just red enough.
The commission's 2022 map: the packs dissolve, and the metro's seats spread across the spectrum, from safe blue to genuine toss-ups.