ROCKVILLE, MD  (August 6, 2015) — Maryland Governor Larry Hogan today named Christopher B. Summers to the Maryland Redistricting Reform Commission, a bipartisan Commission charged with examining Maryland’s redistricting process and recommending improvements.  Summers is president of the Maryland Public Policy Institute, a nonpartisan research institute that has written extensively on the need to reform Maryland’s broken redistricting process.  

Embedded in the U.S. Constitution, redistricting is the process of redrawing electoral district boundaries to equalize district populations.  Maryland’s redistricting process is widely regarded as one of the most politicized in the nation, with incumbent politicians drawing lines to strengthen their political party rather than ensuring equal voting representation.  Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens called Governor Martin O’Malley’s congressional redistricting plan “outrageously unconstitutional,” and The Washington Post called it, “bald-faced Gerrymandering.”

“I applaud Governor Hogan for seeking to depoliticize Maryland’s redistricting process,” said Summers. I look forward to working with my colleagues on the Commission to offer sensible solutions that ensure redistricting is used for its original intent.”     

This is the fourth appointment for Mr. Summers since 2014.  He recently served on the Hogan-Rutherford Transition Team and was named to the City of Baltimore’s Tax Policy Review Group by Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake. In July he was named to the Maryland Chamber of Commerce’s Tax Policy Committee.

About the Maryland Public Policy Institute: Founded in 2001, the Maryland Public Policy Institute is a nonpartisan public policy research and education organization that focuses on state policy issues. The Institute’s mission is to formulate and promote public policies at all levels of government based on principles of free enterprise, limited government, and civil society.  Learn more at mdpolicy.org.

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