House Leaders Reveal Redistricting Legislation

Changes to Indiana’s redistricting system likely won’t take place until at least 2017 under a new proposal from House legislative leaders.  The proposed legislation would create a redistricting study committee.

The committee would be charged with studying redistricting for the next two years, with a report due in December 2016.  Under the bill, the committee would consider several issues, including state and federal redistricting laws, the cost of a reform effort, and redistricting systems in other states. 

House Speaker Brian Bosma, who co-authored the bill with Minority Leader Scott Pelath, says he’d rather have studied the issue a year or two ago, something House leaders proposed but that didn’t get past the Senate.  Bosma says that, halfway through the decade, timing is getting tighter; he notes there are constitutional issues involved with redistricting reform – the Indiana Constitution requires the legislature to approve redistricting every 10 years.

“It probably requires at least some flexibility in our constitutional provision today," Bosma said. "There’s discussion about a resolution filed to get that process going.”

Bosma says the resolution to amend the constitution wouldn’t be too specific.  He says it would simply give lawmakers enough leeway to enact reform, such as allowing for the creation of a redistricting commission.