Gerrymandering, the partisan process of redrawing political maps to favor one political party over the opposition, is often used unfairly to take power away from many voters.
Voters Not Politicians is a highly successful grassroots campaign against gerrymandering in Michigan that began with a simple Facebook post by its young founder, Katie Fahey. The group took on party bosses, won a ballot initiative, and changed state law. This episode discusses how this campaign could be a model for others.
In 2018, Michigan voters overwhelmingly approved a citizen-led ballot initiative to create an independent commission to draw up the state’s congressional and legislative maps. This week, a federal court threw out a second attempt by the state Republican Party to over-turn the result. Months from now a new state redistricting commission will be given the job of fairly drawing a legislative map.
This episode of \"How Do We Fix It?\" received funding from Solutions Journalism Network, a non-profit group that trains and connects journalists to cover what's missing in today's news: solutions, and how people are responding to problems.
Recommendation: Jim is reading \"Midnight In Chernobyl\" by Adam Higginbotham.
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