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Fixes

Putting the Voters in Charge of Fair Voting

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My Fight Against Gerrymandering

In a video Op-Ed, Katie Fahey, a woman with no political experience, decided to try to put an end to gerrymandering — you know, that thing everyone should be against — in her home state of Michigan.

Elections in Michigan are currently not fair. Katie Fahey is fed up with the blatant gerrymandering in her home state of Michigan. Gerrymandering is one of those things that everyone should be against. If you don’t know, it’s when politicians manipulate district boundaries to cheat their way to majorities they didn’t earn. It’s how Michigan Republicans turned a nearly 50-50 split Senate race in 2014 into a 70 percent majority. How we draw our voting districts is one of the basic building blocks of our democracy. If we can’t draw districts based on actual communities or representation, then we’re really not having a representative democracy. With zero political experience or money, Katie changed the game with a simple Facebook post. It was, hey thinking about ending gerrymandering in Michigan. If you want to help let me know. Smiley face. Due to their work and nearly half a million signatures, gerrymandering will likely be on the ballot in November and hopefully the people of Michigan will have their say. We just started self organizing. We wanted to truly have an initiative and a solution that was for and by the people of Michigan. They gave it a name and came up with a plan. Voters Not Politicians has decided to do a ballot initiative for the 2018 election. We’ve written language with people across the state to amend our state constitution to reform how we’re currently doing redistricting in the state. Instead of having politicians drawing the lines, having people draw the lines. And don’t think it’s only Republicans who game the system. Right now in states like Maryland, the Democrats have gerrymandered their districts in unfair ways. And then there’s North Carolina and Illinois. And the list goes on and on for both parties. I feel like the political polarization that’s happening is making it feel like we can’t come together as just regular citizens or regular Michiganders anymore. That if you’re not belonging to one party or another, then you can’t be friends. But that’s not the truth.

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In a video Op-Ed, Katie Fahey, a woman with no political experience, decided to try to put an end to gerrymandering — you know, that thing everyone should be against — in her home state of Michigan.

Katie Fahey is 28 and lives in a small village just outside Grand Rapids, Mich. She works as a program officer for the Michigan Recycling Coalition. In her spare time, she founded and leads a massive volunteer effort that could end partisan gerrymandering in Michigan.

If you doubt that a private citizen can make a difference, meet Fahey.

Like many others, Fahey anguished over America’s growing polarization. After the 2016 elections, she resolved to do something. “Nobody trusted the system — on the right, on the left, on the middle,” she said. “I was nervous to go to Thanksgiving dinner. I didn’t want another holiday to be ruined by divisiveness.”

Then she thought of something her whole family could support. Two days after the election, Fahey posted two sentences on her Facebook page: “I’d like to take on gerrymandering in Michigan. If you’re interested in doing this as well, please let me know.”

Dozens joined her, then hundreds, then thousands. The organization they created, Voters Not Politicians, has collected nearly half a million signatures to put a proposal on the November ballot to create an independent commission to determine voting districts in Michigan.

Every 10 years, states redraw their electoral districts for Congress and the state legislature. This is what we too often get: the Seventh Congressional District of Pennsylvania, meandering in a crazed H-like pattern through five counties near Philadelphia. (On Monday, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that the entire state’s congressional map violated the state Constitution and would have to be redrawn by mid-February.)

Why such eccentricity? Because the state legislature usually draws the map, and the majority party tries to draw it as favorably as possible. For example, Republicans will concentrate Democratic voters in one district — so that all the others will be safe seats for Republicans.

By assuring incumbents of re-election, gerrymandering relieves them of worrying about what their voters think. They need to worry only about primary opposition, usually from more extreme candidates. Letting politicians choose their voters instead of the other way around robs people of their voice.

“Whatever your No. 1 issue, it’s not going to be resolved until we fix this,” said Carol Kuniholm, a Pennsylvanian who is a co-founder and chairwoman of Fair Districts PA.

Congressional gerrymandering is most extreme in Michigan, Pennsylvania and North Carolina, according to the Princeton Gerrymandering Project. For state legislatures, add Wisconsin to the list.

“In a certain sense, redistricting is the spoils of war,” said Samuel Wang, a professor of neuroscience and molecular biology at Princeton, who runs the Princeton project. “It’s legitimate as long as it’s a small advantage. But now we’ve seen such a big distortion of the process.”

One reason is the emergence of mapping software that can draw precise lines to maximize any desired outcome. Another is that the Republicans outsmarted the Democrats in the 2010 elections. The Republican Party focused on 18 states in which control of the state legislature was close. Republicans picked up 22 new state legislative chambers just in time for the 2011 redistricting — and were able to draw the districts for 193 seats in the House of Representatives. The Democrats controlled redistricting for 44. Control of the rest was either split between the parties or nonpartisan.

That’s why in Virginia’s state government elections two months ago, Democrats didn’t get to control the Legislature even though they won the statewide popular vote by nine points, a landslide. It’s why Michigan Republicans got 16 more seats in their State Legislature than Democrats in 2016, even though the total vote in the state legislative races split down the middle. It’s why North Carolina’s Republican congressional candidates won 10 out of 13 seats with just 53 percent of the total vote. Democrats also gerrymandered in some states where they got the chance, Maryland being the starkest example. They just didn’t have many chances.

States will redraw the lines anew in 2021. This time, the Democrats aren’t napping. Former Attorney General Eric Holder leads the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, which seeks independent redistricting commissions but also wants to elect Democrats.

Pennsylvania’s judgment is the latest in a series this month. One group of federal judges ruled that North Carolina’s congressional districts had been unconstitutionally gerrymandered for partisan advantage — the first-ever such ruling. A day later, a different panel found the opposite in Pennsylvania, but that was before the new judgment came down Monday from the state Supreme Court. Other state courts are dealing with lawsuits as well, and the United States Supreme Court has heard arguments on gerrymandering cases from Wisconsin and Maryland.

Then there are nonpartisan citizen campaigns that have nothing to do with Holder’s group. Michigan’s is the furthest along, but citizens are also organizing for ballot initiatives in Ohio, Missouri, Utah, Colorado and South Dakota. In Pennsylvania and Virginia, grass-roots groups sprang up to persuade legislators to establish independent commissions. Other gerrymandered states are still waiting for their Katie Fahey.

Fair Districts PA is an arm of the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania, the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit that yielded Monday’s ruling. The group will continue to campaign for fairer districts for the state Legislature, which was not covered in the lawsuit, and to insure a fairly drawn Congressional map. The legislative district map continues to pose a tough challenge: The Legislature must pass redistricting reforms in two consecutive sessions, followed by a successful ballot initiative. Nevertheless, reform has been doing pretty well; in the lower house of the Legislature, the bill had accumulated nearly enough co-sponsors to pass, including 30 Republicans.

Why Republicans? One reason is we might see a Democratic wave this year; if it lasts until 2020, Democrats may be drawing the maps.

Also, voters overwhelmingly reject gerrymandering, especially people who feel ignored — a trait common to many Trump voters. A Harris Poll in 2013 found that 74 percent of Republicans thought that those who stand to benefit from redistricting shouldn’t have a say in how it’s done.

“How do we win our country back? How do we get back to feeling heard?” Kuniholm of Fair Districts PA said. “The system is allowing the leadership in both parties to ignore you. A person is not going to solve this for you. It’s fixing the system.”

“People instinctively get this,” said Michael Li, senior counsel for democracy programs at the liberal-leaning Brennan Center for Justice at N.Y.U. School of Law. “The real disconnect is between political elites and what people on the ground know is fair.”

Rose Reeder’s story is proof. She is 70, a retired teacher. She has long been active in liberal causes, but she lives in rural Clinton County in central Pennsylvania, which voted 65 percent for President Trump.

After hearing a speaker on gerrymandering at the library, Reeder called the board of county commissioners and asked to give a presentation at the commissioners’ monthly meeting.

She hadn’t known much about the issue, but she read and prepared herself. She bought foam board at the dollar store and made eight posters. “I prepared visuals — just as if I was back in the classroom,” she said.

On March 20, the commissioners — two Republicans and a Democrat — listened carefully to Reeder. At the next meeting, they voted unanimously to oppose gerrymandering and endorse an independent commission to draw district lines.

That energized her. Clinton County has 29 municipalities. She decided to try to persuade all of them to take a similar position.

The meetings were always at night, some of them two hours away, over gravel roads. “The hardest part was finding some of these places,” she said. She went with her husband, Dan, and often with a friend, Joan Heller, who ended up doing seven presentations herself. “I’d go in, and they were looking tired and thinking ‘I hope she hurries up,’ ” she said. “As I presented, I could see them sitting a little straighter, more attentive. I could see that they changed their attitude.”

She had to visit three of the municipalities twice to convince them. But on Dec. 7, Reeder and the county commissioners presented 30 resolutions on the courthouse steps. All 30 governing bodies in a very red county were asking Pennsylvania’s Legislature to pass a fair redistricting law.

In Michigan, Voters Not Politicians held its first meeting on March 4, 2017, in Marquette, in the Upper Peninsula. They expected a few people and instead got 70 — standing room only in the public library. It was the first of 33 town hall meetings in 33 days, to ask people how they would design a fair system. V.N.P.’s volunteers also looked at other states and consulted election law experts. They put together a proposal for a ballot initiative and asked for comments.

The Board of State Canvassers approved the proposal on Aug. 17. Then V.N.P. had 180 days to collect 315,654 signatures (10 percent of the number of votes cast in the last governor’s race).

As in Pennsylvania, volunteers flooded in. V. N. P had no money; most of its donations come from volunteers themselves, and there still is no physical office or anyone to answer the phone. But Fahey estimates that 4,000 people collected or did data entries for signatures, and 10,000 people were involved in some way.

Fahey and her colleagues organized signature collection as if it were a political campaign. They divided Michigan into 14 regions, each with a director and field captains. While the weather was warm, canvassers worked Labor Day parades and state fairs. They collected signatures at the Cheeseburger Festival in Caseville and the Labor Day parade in Detroit. They went to the Michigan-Michigan State football game and the Michigan-Ohio State game (Ohioans were canvassing for their own effort) and put up signs: “Wolverines and Buckeyes agree, voters should choose their politicians and not the other way around.”

As it turned cold, canvassers had to move indoors, but some hardy ones still worked highway rest stops, their pens freezing. They asked businesses to display petitions for customers to sign.

Rebecca Lenk, a financial analyst who lives outside Detroit, had volunteered before — but only at her church and PTA.

“I was terrified to talk to people,” she said. “My husband said: ‘What do you think they’re going to do? Yell at you?’”

“Yes,” she said. “I’ll be crying on the street.”

But people were kind and receptive, she said. It helped to wear her “Hi, I’m a volunteer” button. She started carrying a petition with her all the time, just in case. She signed up her morning aerobics group.

On Dec. 18, two months before the deadline, V.N.P. gave the secretary of state 425,000 signatures, from all 83 Michigan counties. The state must certify the petition, and there is likely to be a lawsuit by Republicans — which will be heard by Michigan’s Supreme Court, which has a 5-2 Republican majority.

If the petition survives, the next step is to get it passed in November. The group must intensify its field operation and start buying advertising, which will take money. The opposition will certainly be well organized and funded.

There’s still time before the 2020 election for other states to catch up. “We’re in conversation about putting together a Fair Districts US coalition,” Kuniholm said. “Some things people learned could be helpful to others.”

In an ordinary year, Li of the Brennan Center said, “if you had said what Michigan did was possible with no paid canvassers, everyone would have laughed you out the door.” It hasn’t been an ordinary year, he said. “It’s time to re-examine a lot of conventional assumptions about what is and isn’t possible.”

Tina Rosenberg won a Pulitzer Prize for her book "The Haunted Land: Facing Europe’s Ghosts After Communism." She is a former editorial writer for The Times and the author, most recently, of "Join the Club: How Peer Pressure Can Transform the World" and the World War II spy story e-book "D for Deception." She is a co-founder of the Solutions Journalism Network, which supports rigorous reporting about responses to social problems.

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