“Redistricting is about power,”  was the astute observation of one, Henal Patel, at the first meeting of a group charged with remapping the state’s 40 legislative districts.

Few would quibble with that.

Races are often won and lost, not so much by the attributes of individual candidates, but by the political makeup of the district.

Just how New Jersey’s 40 districts will change after the 2020 Census is now being decided by the state’s Apportionment Commission, a 11-member group composed of five Democrats, five Republicans and an officially neutral, tie-breaking 11th member.

That would be Philip S. Carchman, a former county prosecutor and state Superior Court judge. This group is distinct from a similar panel that is charged with realigning the state’s 12 congressional districts.

With much of the state’s political class still dissecting last Tuesday’s election, the Apportionment Commission held its first public meeting last Saturday via Zoom.

In what seemed an intriguing coincidence, one of the Democratic members of the commission is Senate President Steve Sweeney, who infamously appears to have lost his reelection bid.

One of the first speakers, Sue Davies, challenged the makeup of the commission itself. Introducing herself as a representative of non-aligned voters, Davies asked why the commission is the sole province of Democrats and Republicans.

She noted that there are about 2.4 million voters in the state who are not registered in either party. The number of unaffiliated voters almost matches the number of Democrats and is much higher than the number of Republicans in New Jersey.

“We simply don’t want to be forced to join a party to … participate fully in our electoral process,” she said.

The reference was to the fact that unaffiliated voters can’t vote in primaries unless they declare a political party.

It’s an interesting question and, in truth, what would be the harm of putting unaffiliated voters on redistricting commissions? Probably nothing at all.

But with the Dems and the GOP running the show, it’s hard to see that happening anytime soon.

A number of speakers, including the aforementioned Patel, urged the commission to look at the Census data.

The numbers show that the white population as an overall percentage of New Jersey is decreasing and that people of color are increasing.

“We must not have another map that over-represents white people,” said Patel, who lives in North Bergen and who works with the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice.

Other speakers made similar points.

One was Jerome Harris, who said that the current legislative map doesn’t represent the “emerging majority.”

Harris was also a bit cynical, noting that he hasn’t seen all that much change in how redistricting is done in 40 years.

But he acknowledged some changes.

Harris said that four decades ago, all commission members were white men. This year, seven of the 11 are white men.

Arranging districts to give more influence to minorities is not all that simple.

One option is to create districts in which the majority of residents are from minority groups. That can assure that minority lawmakers are elected.

Another option would be to spread the minority population among many districts, thereby giving such voting blocs influence at the ballot box. But that wouldn’t guarantee election of a minority legislator.

As we said, nothing about this is easy.

One other speaker with ethnic heritage in mind was Christopher Binetti of the Italian-American Movement.

He said only “legal” residents should be counted in terms of mapping districts. This is in contrast to counting everyone regardless of immigration status.

Binetti said the current method is unfair to Italian-Americans, who he said are already seeing “attacks on our symbols” in New Jersey. That was an apparent reference to the brouhaha in some locales over changing the official name of Columbus Day.

Binetti said his argument doesn’t always get respect, saying that some political leaders refuse to talk to him.

If nothing else, the commission listened.