The first meeting of the Governor’s Redistricting Advisory Commission on Tuesday was short and to the point — if the point was that there are still a lot of questions surrounding the commission’s work and not much time to answer them.
The five-member commission met virtually for a little over a half-hour in an organizational meeting that included almost 20 minutes of a primer on the Census from Maryland Department of Planning officials.
They spoke in general about shifts in state population from the 2010 to the 2020 Census, and the changes since then in annual Census surveys — although Planning Deputy Secretary Kristin Fleckenstein said the newer numbers cannot be used for redistricting. Any redrawing of congressional boundaries would have to be based on the actual 2020 Census numbers, the same data that was used for last redistricting, in 2022.
Most of the rest of the commission’s brief meeting was spent discussing the number and format of meetings, with Maryland Senate President Bill Ferguson (D-Baltimore City), a commission member, asking if the panel planned in-person meetings and how many. He noted that the last redistricting commission, in 2021, was required to “go to all parts of the state to maintain … constitutional validity.”
U.S. Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.), the commission chair, said meetings for now would be virtual, with people given the opportunity to testify, while the commission worked to secure locations for in-person meetings if necessary. Alsobrooks said she hopes to get in two more meetings before Thanksgiving, including one scheduled for 4:30 p.m. this Friday.
In this first round of hearings, Alsobrooks said, the commission is just planning to listen to voters to see how they want the state to proceed with redistricting, if they want it to proceed at all.
“Working together over the next month or so, we’re going to listen to Marylanders from across the state on whether Maryland should redraw its congressional lines, and what that map would look like,” she said at the outset of the meeting.
Without setting a specific timeline, or other hearing dates, Alsobrooks said she hoped the commission could work “quickly, to give the governor and the legislature the time they need to should they choose to draw new lines.”
The panel will have to work quickly: The General Assembly convenes two months from Friday, with the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays to work around in that time.
Alsobrooks said the commission would decide Friday how many in-person meetings will be held. Those meetings, she said, will be to “solicit feedback from Marylanders regarding whether or not they want this redistricting to happen.”
Both Alsobrooks and Fleckenstein said there are no proposed new congressional maps for people to respond to, that any such documents would not come until it’s been decided that redistricting is the way to go.
That is far from a settled question among lawmakers, who would have to approve any new district maps.
Redistricting is typically done every 10 years, after the decennial census, when the number of seats in Congress is redistributed among the states based on their populations, and the states redraw districts to reflect population shifts within their states.
That tradition was upended this year when Texas, at the urging of President Donald Trump, redistricted midcycle to create a map that is expected to give Republicans five more seats in Congress after the 2026 elections. Other states soon followed suit, both Republican and Democratic, with pressure from the national parties for states to get on board.
Some Maryland lawmakers have talked about redistricting since earlier this year, when Texas made its move. But Gov. Wes Moore made it official last week, when he appointed the commission to study whether Maryland’s congressional maps are fair — acknowledging that he was motivated in part by the “attack on our democracy” by the GOP redistrictings.
In Maryland, there is little to gain for Democrats, who already hold seven of the state’s eight House seats. That has been pointed out by critics, who say the state has much more to lose if its redistricting plans are rejected by a court or if the new boundaries weaken any of the seven seats that Democrats now hold. That could result in the party actually losing seats to the GOP, critics say.
One of those critics is Ferguson, who circulated a letter recently on behalf of his 34-member Democratic caucus saying it was opposed to a mid-decade redistricting. But Moore and supporters have vowed to press on.
Cumberland Mayor Ray Morriss, the only Republican member of the commission, asked at the end of Tuesday’s meeting what exactly was broken with the districts that needs to be fixed.
“Has anybody stated what the actual problem is that we’re looking to fix?” he asked. “I’m all in here, but I’m trying to figure out what the problem is.”
Alsobrooks said that’s the goal of the first round of meetings, to hear from Marylanders who will look at the current maps and weigh in on the current configuration of maps.
People who want to participate in Friday’s hearing can register to do so here, on the commission web site.