How Independent Redistricting Commissions Work, From Arizona to Michigan

The Arizona legislature went to the Supreme Court in 2015 with an argument about a single word. The Constitution's Elections Clause says the times, places and manner of congressional elections shall be prescribed in each state "by the Legislature thereof." Arizona's voters had used a ballot initiative in 2000 to take congressional mapmaking away from the legislature and give it to an independent commission. The legislature's lawyers argued that the voters had no power to do that, because the Constitution said "Legislature," and the voters were not it. On June 29, 2015, five justices disagreed. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for the majority, held that "Legislature" in that clause includes the people of a state acting through the lawmaking process their constitution provides, initiatives included. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote a sharp dissent, pointing to the Seventeenth Amendment, which took the election of senators away from legislatures and gave it to the people, and asking why a constitutional amendment had been needed if "Legislature" already meant the people. It was a close call on a real question. And it is the reason that, in a handful of states with tens of millions of residents, politicians no longer draw their own congressional districts.

In short: Independent redistricting commissions take mapmaking away from legislators and give it to panels chosen to balance the parties and include unaffiliated voters. The Supreme Court upheld them in Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission in 2015. They work best when members are chosen by a process politicians cannot easily game, when the rules require cross-party agreement and when the public is involved, and they fail when deadlock is rewarded.

Not all commissions are independent

The word "commission" covers very different things, and a lot of confusion comes from lumping them together. It helps to sort them into three rough types.

Politician commissions. Some states hand redistricting to a board of elected officials, such as the governor, secretary of state and legislative leaders. Ohio's commission is of this type. These boards can be bipartisan in membership, but the members still have a stake in the outcome.

Advisory or backup commissions. In some states a commission proposes maps, but the legislature can reject them and draw its own, or a commission only steps in if the legislature fails. New York's is advisory in this sense.

Independent citizen commissions. In Arizona, California, Michigan and Colorado, among others, a commission of non-officeholders draws the final map, and the legislature has no power to override it. These are the ones reformers usually mean.

The details of how those independent commissions are built are where they succeed or fail.

Arizona: a small commission with an independent chair

Arizona's Independent Redistricting Commission, created by Proposition 106 in 2000, has five members. A state commission that screens judicial nominees produces a pool of candidates, with ten Republicans, ten Democrats and five people registered with neither party. The four legislative leaders, two from each party, each pick one member from the pool. Those four then pick a fifth from the unaffiliated group, who serves as chair.

The design puts enormous weight on one person. If the four partisan members split two and two, the chair decides. That makes the selection of the chair the main event, and it makes the chair a target. In 2011 Governor Jan Brewer, with the consent of the state senate, removed the commission's chair, Colleen Mathis, accusing her of misconduct in the way draft maps were drawn. The Arizona Supreme Court quickly reinstated her, finding that the removal did not meet the constitutional standard. The episode showed both the vulnerability of the design and the importance of courts willing to protect the commission's independence.

California: random draws and a long application

California's Citizens Redistricting Commission is larger and more elaborate. Its fourteen members are five Democrats, five Republicans and four registered with neither party. Anyone can apply, and in practice thousands do. The state auditor runs the process. A panel of three auditors screens applicants for conflicts of interest and qualifications, narrowing the pool. Legislative leaders may strike a limited number of names. Then the first eight commissioners are chosen by random drawing: three Democrats, three Republicans and two others. Those eight choose the final six, with an eye toward the state's diversity of geography, race, gender and background.

Approving a map requires a majority that includes votes from each of the three groups. Nobody can push a map through on a party-line vote.

The California commissions after 2010 and 2020 held many public hearings across the state and took tens of thousands of public comments. The process was slow and occasionally messy, and partisans on both sides complained about particular lines. But the maps survived legal challenge and produced more competitive districts than the incumbent-protection map they replaced.

Michigan: a commission born from a Facebook post

Michigan's commission has one of the best origin stories in reform politics. After the 2016 election, a young woman named Katie Fahey posted on Facebook that she wanted to take on gerrymandering and asked if anyone wanted to help. The group that formed, Voters Not Politicians, collected hundreds of thousands of signatures with volunteers and put Proposal 2 on the 2018 ballot. It passed by a wide margin.

The commission it created has thirteen members: four who affiliate with Democrats, four with Republicans and five with neither. The secretary of state mails applications to randomly selected registered voters and accepts applications from anyone else who is eligible. People with recent ties to politics, such as officeholders, party officials, lobbyists and their relatives, are excluded. Legislative leaders may strike some applicants. The final members are chosen by random drawing.

Michigan's constitution also ranks the criteria the commission must follow, in order: equal population and compliance with federal law first, then contiguity, then communities of interest, then a ban on maps that give a disproportionate advantage to a party, then a ban on favouring or disfavouring incumbents, then respect for city and county lines, then compactness. Communities of interest, the places that share economic, cultural or historical ties, come ahead of tidy county lines. Final maps need a majority including at least two Democratic members, two Republican members and two unaffiliated members.

The first Michigan commission, in 2021, was made of people who had never drawn a map. Some of its work drew lawsuits, including a challenge under the Voting Rights Act over Detroit-area legislative districts, and a federal court later ordered several of those districts redrawn. Yet the maps produced the most competitive Michigan elections in years, and control of both legislative chambers was genuinely up for grabs.

Colorado: the judges' role

Colorado's voters approved two amendments in 2018 creating separate commissions for congressional and legislative maps. Each has twelve members: four Republicans, four Democrats and four unaffiliated. Retired judges play a central part in choosing them, and professional nonpartisan staff draw the initial plans. A map needs at least eight votes, including at least two from unaffiliated members, and the state supreme court reviews the final plan to make sure the commission followed its criteria, which include a direction to maximize competitive districts where possible.

When commissions fail

Commissions are not magic, and two recent failures show why design matters.

Virginia created a hybrid commission by constitutional amendment in 2020: eight legislators and eight citizens. When it met in 2021, the members split along party lines and could not agree on maps. The job passed to the state supreme court, which appointed two special masters, one nominated by each party, who drew maps together. The result was reasonable, but the commission itself had failed at its main task.

New York's commission also deadlocked in 2022. The Democratic legislature then drew its own congressional map, which the state's highest court struck down as a partisan gerrymander that violated the state constitution. A court-appointed special master drew replacement maps on a compressed timeline.

The common lesson is that a commission which can deadlock, with a fallback that hands power back to politicians or courts, gives members a reason to deadlock. Strong designs make agreement the only path, or make the fallback something neither side wants.

Ohio and Washington: two more warnings

Two other states show how much the fine print matters, even when voters are enthusiastic.

Ohio voters approved redistricting amendments by large, bipartisan margins, in 2015 for legislative maps and in 2018 for congressional ones. The amendments did not create an independent commission. They gave the job to a commission of elected officials, the governor, state auditor, secretary of state and appointees of legislative leaders, and added rules meant to discourage maps that unduly favoured one party, along with incentives for bipartisan agreement. In 2022 the Ohio Supreme Court struck down the commission's maps several times for violating those rules. The commission kept producing plans the court found unconstitutional, the deadlines ran out, and maps the court had rejected ended up being used anyway. Reformers then put a citizen commission on the ballot in 2024. The measure was defeated after a fight over ballot language that its supporters said misdescribed it.

The lesson from Ohio is that rules without an independent referee and without a real enforcement mechanism can be outlasted. A commission made of the people who benefit from the maps can simply decline to comply until time runs out.

Washington uses a commission of four voting members, one appointed by each of the four legislative caucus leaders, with a nonvoting chair. It has a long record of negotiated maps. In 2021, though, the commission missed its constitutional deadline amid confusion about whether it had actually voted on final maps in time. The state supreme court declined to draw new maps itself, and the commission's work was allowed to stand. It turned out fine, but it showed how a commission built around partisan appointees can stumble under time pressure.

These states are not arguments against commissions. They are arguments for building them carefully: an independent membership, a clear tie-breaker, firm deadlines and a credible consequence when the commission fails.

The best arguments against commissions

Critics of independent commissions raise three points that deserve an answer.

First, accountability. Legislators face voters; commissioners do not. If a map is bad, who is responsible? The answer is that commissions answer through courts, public hearings and transparency rules, and that the "accountability" of legislators who draw their own districts is precisely the problem: they can shape the voters who would hold them accountable.

Second, the claim that commissions are less independent than they look. Partisan groups can recruit applicants, coach testimony and fund lawsuits, and some commissioners have been accused of hidden loyalties. This is a fair worry and the best defence is design: random selection, strict conflict rules, required cross-party votes and open meetings.

Third, the claim that they disarm one side. When some states adopt commissions and others keep partisan maps, the reform states may hand an advantage to the other party nationally. That argument drove California's Proposition 50 in 2025. It is a reason for a national standard, not a reason to abandon the idea.

What a commissioner's job is actually like

It is easy to picture a commission as a tidy panel issuing maps from on high. The reality is closer to jury duty that lasts most of a year.

Commissioners in the citizen models are usually ordinary residents: retirees, small-business owners, teachers, engineers, students. They are paid for their time, but the work is heavy. They must learn census geography, the Voting Rights Act and the state's own criteria quickly, usually with help from hired staff, lawyers and data consultants whom the commission itself selects. They sit through long hearings, read stacks of written comments and review draft after draft, often under a hard constitutional deadline that census delays can squeeze further. After the 2020 census, data arrived months later than usual because of the pandemic, compressing every commission's schedule.

They also become public figures overnight. Commissioners have faced harassment and organized pressure campaigns from both parties, and every line they draw will disappoint someone. That is part of why selection matters so much: the people chosen have to be willing to hold up under that pressure and to change their minds when the public gives them a good reason, while refusing to change them when the only reason is a party's advantage.

How to judge whether a commission is working

If your state has a commission, or is considering one, here are fair questions to ask. Can politicians or their staff serve, or are they barred? Is selection partly random? Does adopting a map require votes from more than one group? Are meetings and draft maps public, with time for comment? Does a deadlock send the job to a neutral body or back to the legislature? And do the resulting maps keep communities together and produce some districts that could go either way?

Those questions matter more than the word "independent" on the letterhead.

What you can do

• Learn your state's system. Our voting rights and redistricting topic page tracks commissions, ballot measures and lawsuits state by state.
• Apply. When application windows open, citizen commissions need applicants from every background, including people who have never been involved in politics. Watch your state's election office announcements, linked from the voting page.
• Ask lawmakers where they stand. Find your representatives and ask your state legislators whether they would support an independent commission with random selection and required cross-party approval.
• Join a reform group. Citizen campaigns built every commission described here. The organizations directory lists voting and democracy groups in your state.