(WXIN/WTTV) — The Anderson Common Council was warned.
The deadline was quickly approaching. The 2020 US Census data indicated the city council’s six districts needed adjustments. By state law, the task had to be completed by the end of 2022.
In their December meeting of that year, Anderson City Attorney Paul Podlejski explained the consequences of failing to redistrict.
“If you don’t, you risk being sued and then you’re going to have to defend against that,” he said.
4th District Council Member Ollie Dixon was unmoved.
“We don’t have an accurate, true census report,” Dixon said.
Dixon has served on the Council for three decades. He claimed the census miscounted Anderson, adding that unnamed people were out to get him.
“There’s been a vibrant attempt to take away [my district],” he claimed. “They wanted to add 922 people to my district last time. I know what they’re after.”
At the end of the debate, without any evidence offered to back claims the city’s census was inaccurate, the Council voted 6-3 to keep the districts exactly as they were.
Lawsuit
Six months later, Common Cause Indiana – along with the Anderson-Madison County NAACP and the Indiana League of Women Voters – sued the Anderson Common Council. The case was filed in the US District Court in Indianapolis.
“They need to recognize that redistricting is not optional if your districts are malapportioned,” explained Julia Vaughn, executive director of Common Cause Indiana.
The lawsuit claims the populations of Anderson’s council districts are so out of balance that they violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution.
Vaughn said Common Cause is seeking a court order to redraw the district boundaries and hold a special election “because the council members who were elected last year in 2023 were elected under illegal, unconstitutional maps.”
Unbalanced
An analysis by Common Cause of the unchanged Anderson Council Districts suggests population numbers fluctuate widely.
- District #1: 9,354
- District #2: 9,151
- District #3: 11,643
- District #4: 7,490
- District #5: 8,786
- District #6: 8,364
If perfectly balanced, each district would have a population of 9,131. However, Federal Courts do not require state and local districts to be precisely even.
“You have to look at the numbers and you have to look at the districts and if they’re not within 10%, you better have a reason,” said Professor Luis Fuentes-Rohwer of the Indiana University Maurer School of Law.
However, the Common Cause analysis puts the deviation of the districts far higher than the federal standard at 45.5%.
Resistance
“They can’t beat me fair, so they’re trying to go about cheating me out of my district,” Dixon said in a recent interview with FOX59/CBS4.
Dixon is well-known in Anderson’s African-American community. Much of that notoriety comes from his continued presence on the Common Council. For 34 years, he’s led the annual “Ollie Dixon Back-To-School Parade and Picnic” which features free school supplies and a bicycle giveaway.
Dixon’s council district makes up a large chunk of the west side of the city. It is the city’s only district with a majority-minority population, with 40% African-American residents and 11% Hispanic.
That’s central to Dixon’s opposition to redistricting.
“I’m not going to let ‘em run over the minorities anymore,” he insisted. “We deserve representation.”
And Dixon points to the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act which he says allows state and local government to preserve districts where minorities make up the majority.
When asked if it was possible to draw a new 4th District that retains a non-white majority, Dixon replied, “There are 54,000 residents in Anderson. There are only 8,100 minorities in all of Anderson. It is impossible for you to draw a district unless you just spot it all over Anderson.”
The law requires districts to be contiguous, or in one piece regardless of shape.
Incumbency
Vaughn isn’t buying Dixon’s argument that his resistance to redistricting is about preserving minority representation on the Anderson Common Council.
“I think in Anderson what’s going on is incumbent protection,” said Vaughn, “and they’ve simply thumbed their nose at the whole concept of ‘one person, one vote’.”
One simple way to balance the 4th District with too few people would be to add people from the neighboring 3rd District that has too many.
That could be a potential political threat to Dixon, who is a Democrat. The 3rd District is overwhelmingly white at 81% and a majority of its registered voters are Republicans at 52%.
Overdue
In a court filing , it was revealed that redistricting city council seats in Anderson has not been something that had happened this century.
Attorneys for the council admit there was no redistricting done after the census in 2000, 2010 and 2020.
The only news account FOX59/CBS4 could find documenting a redistricting effort by the council happened in December 1982 when the city’s population was at 64,700.
Door-knocking
In an apparent attempt to thwart the Common Cause lawsuit, the Anderson Common Council in June approved a cobbled-together redistricting plan.
6th District Councilman Joe Newman declared it a solution.
“I’m pretty well fixed that these new district lines are concrete, where everything equals out,” he said.
Common Cause doesn’t think so.
Their analysis of the changes finds the plan moves about 700 people out of the 3rd District to the 6th District. About 300 people from the 6th District were moved to Dixon’s 4th District.
Typically, redistricting plans involve hiring specialists such as cartographers. The council opted for a do-it-yourself method.
Dixon explained it this way.
“Councilman Newman and [Councilman Greg] Graham [of the 3rd District], we got together. The three of us and we worked out a plan,” Dixon said. “We walked the district. We knocked on doors. We know the people. That’s the only way you can come near [having] minorities being represented.”
Common Cause data suggests the districts are still out of balance, and still deviate by 33.8%. Vaughn said the new redistricting plan is unacceptable.
Continuance
While members of the Anderson Common Council are satisfied the new redistricting plan is legal, attorneys for the council have not submitted the plan in the federal court case.
Additionally, in late August the Council held a closed-door executive session. There was one word describing the agenda for this private gathering: “redistricting”.
Chicago attorneys Devlin Schoop and Steven Laduzinsky, hired to defend the council in the Common Cause case, acknowledge they attended that meeting.
Laduzinski hinted activity in the case may pick up again soon.
Meanwhile, the cost of fighting the lawsuit is climbing. Documents obtained by FOX59/CBS4 through a public records request find the city has paid out $150,000 so far. Click here to access those documents.
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