INDIANAPOLIS — The Indiana General Assembly voted in April on a redistricting plan that revamps state legislative districts, but when it goes into effect depends on which side of the Statehouse those legislators are on.
State senators were told by their leaders to start representing their new districts July 1 and to immediately begin serving constituents in their newly carved territories.
House members, though, were told the redistricted maps, which are created every 10 years and are driven by census numbers, don’t go into effect for them until after the November 2012 election.
The result is that Senate members who were elected by one group of voters are now representing some voters who elected someone else to the Senate, while House members are representing the same voters who put them into office last November.
The switch from old to new districts is causing some confusion that senators and their staff members are working to clear up. Their concern is that constituents who live in a community that was shifted into a new Senate district might not know who to call if they need assistance dealing with a state agency.
“I don’t want anybody to feel like they don’t have a senator,” said state Sen. Jean Leising, a Republican from Oldenburg who lost a part of her old district and gained two new counties when the legislature redrew political boundaries in the last session.
That sentiment was echoed by state Sen. Randy Head, a Republican from Logansport who's been spending time this week at the Carroll County Fair, meeting with constituents in his newly drawn district. “If somebody from my old district needs help, I'm going to make sure they get helped,” Head said.
The new legislative and Congressional districts were drawn up to comply with the constitutional requirement to draw new maps every 10 years to reflect changes in population. The 2010 Census showed significant geographic shifts in Indiana’s population and a 6 percent growth in the number of people who now live here. That meant the political boundaries of the new maps shifted significantly for many legislators.
Jeff Papa, chief legal counsel for the Indiana Senate, said the redistricting bill passed by the legislature in the last session contained language that made the maps effective as of July 1.
But House leaders read the bill differently. A statement released by House Speaker Brian Bosma said “House Republicans were elected in November to a two-year term, and will fulfill their elected duty by representing their current districts until the next election.”
Rep. Jeff Espich, a longtime member of the House from Uniondale who’s been through three redistrictings, said he read the bill that way, too. “I don’t think legally they start representing a new district until they’re elected by voters in that district,” Espich said.
The Senate’s decision to move ahead with implementing the new districts caught some House members by surprise. In late June, when the Muncie Star-Press wrote a story that said redistricting by the Republican-controlled state legislature put Muncie in Democrat state Sen. Tim Lanane’s district effective July 1, some House members thought the newspaper had erred.
But Lanane, like Leising and Head, was told by Senate leaders that he was to start representing constituents in his new district and refer constituents in his old district to their new state senator. Like Leising and Head, Lanane also vows to help constituents from his old districts, so that no one falls between the cracks. “We’re all here to serve Hoosiers,” Lanane said.
The different approach toward the new maps stems in large part from the logistics of Senate elections. While all House members are up for re-election every two years, state Senate terms are staggered. Each senator serves a four-year term, with half of the Senate up for election during one election cycle while the other half is up for election two years later.
Papa said delaying implementation of the maps would mean some senators would be elected in new districts that would overlap with the old districts of senators who had yet to face election. “This stops the confusion,” Papa said of the July 1 effective date.
Under the new Senate district maps, there is an incumbent state senator living in every district. But House members would have difficulty implementing the July 1 date because the new House district maps include nine new districts where there is no incumbent House member and several districts where two incumbents or more reside. If the House were to have adopted the new districts July 1, some communities would have no representation, while others would have had two or more House members representing them in the Statehouse.
Julia Vaughn, policy director for Common Cause/Indiana and a critic of how the legislature handled redistricting in the last session, said the Senate’s decision to move forward with adopting the new districts makes practical sense because of the staggered terms. But she said it raises some questions about what an election means. “You now have senators who are representing people who never had the choice as to whether or not they wanted to vote for that person,” Vaughn said. “And it has the potential to really confuse voters and constituents.”
Papa said Senate staff are working to minimize any confusion and have been instructed to work with anyone who calls to connect them to the right Senate office. “They should never be heard saying, ‘Sorry, you’ve called the wrong office.’”
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