Republicans tried to rig the vote in Michigan - but 'political novices' just defeated them
Republicans tried to rig the vote in Michigan – but ‘political novices’ just defeated them
After a Republican bragged about cramming ‘Dem garbage’ into certain districts, a grassroots campaign has given the power to redraw political maps to the people
Sam Levine in New York
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/nov/27/gerrymandering-michigan-citizens-voters-not-politicians
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In 2016, Katie Fahey, a Michigan woman with no political experience, put up a Facebook post asking if anyone she knew wanted to do something about gerrymandering, a pervasive practice of lawmakers drawing district lines to benefit their own party.
Michigan is one of the most gerrymandered states in the country. At that time, Republicans held majorities in the state legislature and congressional delegation, even though Democrats earned a significant share of the statewide vote, and the state is considered politically competitive. And the GOP lawmakers were not subtle: emails made public last year revealed a Republican aide bragging about cramming “Dem garbage” into certain Michigan districts in 2011, as they drew the current electoral boundaries.
But Fahey’s post would create a movement that could provide a roadmap for making US elections fairer. Coordinating over Google Docs and fanning out across the state, her effort grew into a group called Voters Not Politicians that would eventually amend the Michiganconstitution to strip redistricting power from lawmakers. This week, Voters Not Politicians succeeded in protecting the new reform from yet another attack from Republicans in the state – underscoring how deeply entrenched gerrymandering has become, and how hard it is to end.
Gerrymandering reform advocates believe the Michigan effort can serve as a model for reform elsewhere (a similar effort recently launched in Oklahoma). Even the supreme court chief justice, John Roberts, who wrote earlier this year that federal courts can’t do anything to fix partisan gerrymandering, has held up the Michigan effort as a pathway for fixing the problem.
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