Fall in Line for Fair Maps Event Sunday - we can fix this

Western WI for Nonpartisan Voting Districts (a project of PCGRO) and the League of Women Voters, Greater Chippewa Valley will be holding an event called Fall in Line for Fair Maps this Sunday. The event will be a progressive visit to local businesses to purchase food and talk about fair maps and Gerrymandering. Further details about the event are in our community calendar listing.

Wisconsin is one of the most heavily gerrymandered states in the country. The last redistricting of the state was done in secret by the Republican party and resulted in an extremely partisan districting of the state, where many areas are completely safe for Republicans, and leaving a much smaller number of districts for the Democrats. The party in power in the state has always done the every-10-years redistricting to its own advantage but the power of computers has made it possible to slice and dice the state extremely accurately at a level that has never been achieved before. In the 2018 election Democrats received 190,000 more votes than the Republicans, but the Republicans won 63 of the 99 seats. The unfairness of maps in the state affects all state policy, from how the state's elections are run to attempts to get our current coronavirus crisis under control.

We can fix this. There is a referendum on the Nov. 3 ballot to support fair maps legislation. The unfairness in the state could be fixed multiple ways, but the current favorite would be to have a non-partisan commission draw the maps for the state rather than having them drawn by the majority party. This has worked out fine in Iowa, and it can work in Wisconsin too.

The Governor has formed a commission to study the fair maps issue, and local LWV member Annemarie McClellan is a member of the commission. She will be present at the stops on the Fair Maps tour on Sunday, and will be glad to talk to you about Fair Maps at any of the stops. Other LWV members will also be available. 

I urge you to vote yes on the referendum on Nov. 3 (or now if you are absentee voting). 

As a matter of transparency - I am a member of the Wisconsin League of Women Voters.