I hope you have all taken time to celebrate Thanksgiving and to breathe a little more freely since the 2020 election is over.
Our focus for the next six months, however, must look beyond Inauguration Day to our future as a representative democracy. Each of our votes truly matters and must be counted. To ensure a fair election process every time, we must have fair electoral maps and end gerrymandering. When Census data is returned in the spring, the maps drawn to reapportion our population in congressional and state legislative districts will determine how fairly we will be represented for the next ten years.
WHY MUST WE FOCUS ALL OUR EFFORTS AND ENERGY ON THIS ISSUE?
Our current system in Indiana allows legislators to choose their voters, instead of voters choosing their legislators on Election Day. Over the last decade, the supermajority in the Indiana legislature has obstructed every bill that would have changed that system.
Redistricting is fundamentally about fair representation—ensuring that people living in the district can elect legislators who truly represent their interests. FAIR MAPS cannot be discerned without hearing from those who will be represented.
Gerrymandering is eroding and threatening the fabric of our democracy. Essentially ALL issues fundamentally relate to the structural issues of partisan gerrymandering, voter suppression, access to the polls, etc.
- Our system functions best when there is public discussion of issues. When parties are able to draw boundaries that give them a significant advantage and the opportunity to make decisions in caucus rather than in the public eye, media outlets face increased challenges to keep the public informed.
- Decisions (about education, natural resources, election processes, energy, transportation, economic development) with lasting impact may be made by one party without adequate public discussion, dialogue, consensus, or compromise. Redistricting can occur behind closed doors with no effort to create maps fair to all Hoosiers.
OUR ONLY ALTERNATIVE TO CHANGING THE LAW NOW IS TO INFLUENCE LINES THE LEGISLATURE DRAWS.
All IN for Democracy, the redistricting coalition co-founded by the League of Women Voters of Indiana and Common Cause Indiana, is launching an influence campaign today, November 30, 2020. Essentially the campaign will gather public input regarding the criteria that will be used to draw the maps, and it will encourage the public to use the criteria to draw their own maps. Both the public-defined criteria and the public maps will be submitted to the legislature and broadly disseminated to the public in an effort to pressure the legislature to draw FAIR MAPS.
See Redistricting Update for more information.
Thank you for your continuing and persistent efforts to make democracy work!
Linda