Ruth Greenwood

Speakers from Voters Not Politicians, the group that wrote and helped pass the constitutional amendment establishing the Michigan Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission, discussed Monday the state's redistricting process. They were joined by a speaker from Harvard Law [Ruth Greenwood, visiting assistant professor of law and director of the Election Law Clinic].

Michigan's first-ever citizen redistricting commission is finding itself on a steep learning curve as members race against the clock to draw new maps ahead of the 2022 election, crunching a months-long process into a matter of weeks following an unprecedented delay in census data. ... While some states include competitiveness in their redistricting criteria, the commission isn’t required to draw districts that ensure that candidates from each political party have an equal chance of winning. But the maps overall can’t give any party a leg up. The result is that Democratic and Republican voters will be treated fairly, said Ruth Greenwood, the director of the Election Law Clinic at Harvard Law School, said during a recent event held by Voters Not Politicians. While those who make up a political minority in their district might not feel represented by the legislator from their district, Greenwood noted that individual voters are also represented by the entire legislative body. "When they make a decision, it doesn’t matter what your rep has said, it matters what the whole body does," she said.

With the arrival of the 2020 Census redistricting data, voting maps have become the latest front in America’s never-ending, two-party battle for control of Congress and statehouses. ...Attorney Ruth Greenwood shares Bradlee’s and Duchin’s belief that better and more data can improve redistricting outcomes, but she brings a different skill set to this challenge. The director of the Election Law Clinic at Harvard Law School, she is actively engaged in election law litigation, and took two partisan gerrymandering cases from trial to the Supreme Court. Greenwood is a co-founder of PlanScore, a free online resource that measures partisan gerrymandering against four distinct measures. ... “When we started, it would take 10 minutes to run a plan, which was still amazing compared to my many hours of work to analyze a plan,” says Greenwood. Since then, the software has evolved to be able to accomplish this task in under 90 seconds.