Chicago City Wire

The man who has been called the "Picasso of gerrymandering' will now have the job of drawing Michigan's congressional and legislative districts.

The hiring of Election Data Services  by the Michigan Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission has set off alarm bells across the state. The president of the Virginia-based company is Kimball Brace, who carries the reputation of being centrally involved in some of the country's most gerrymandered districts.

That didn’t stop eight of 13 members of the Michigan commission from trusting in him for the state’s redistricting. As part of its proposal to the Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission, even Election Data Services admitted it’s “sometimes viewed with Democratic leanings.”

Here in Illinois, the 4th Congressional District map, drawn in 1991 by Brace and company, has been branded as “champion gerrymandering.” That map was challenged in court.

In Brace’s own words during an appearance on The Daily Show in 2013, the district includes "the Puerto Rican part of the northern part of Chicago with the Mexican part in the southern part of Chicago."  He later added, "The problem is that you have a whole African-American community in the middle, you have to go out and around it."