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In November 2016, Katie Fahey posted on Facebook that she wanted to “take on gerrymandering in Michigan.”
Tired of the divisiveness in politics and frustrated with state district maps that she felt were preserving incumbents and not accountable enough to voters, Fahey, an independent, said she knew people were hungry for change after a presidential contest dominated by outsiders.
“If you want to help, let me know,” she wrote, adding a smiley face.
Thousands did. Nearly two years later, Fahey is the founder and executive director of a more than 5,000-person volunteer organization, Voters Not Politicians, that spent months gathering signatures to get a redistricting initiative on the ballot in November that would appoint an independent citizen commission to draw Michigan’s voting maps. This week, they won a major court battle after the state Supreme Court shot down a challenge to the initiative.
Voters trying to overhaul the redistricting process in other states that critics say have been gerrymandered are taking a similar tack. Colorado, Missouri and Utah will all have initiatives on the ballot that would, in varying degrees, remove lawmakers from the redistricting process. Organizers in at least four other states have made moves to mount similar changes, too.
“People recognize that elections just aren’t working,” said Fahey, 29. “They don’t feel like politicians are responsive or accountable to them as a voter.”
She said much of the campaign has been about trying to educate voters — redistricting policy is hardly a day-to-day concern for most people — and trying to tie it to more everyday issues like infrastructure and schools. To bring the issue to life, volunteers have dressed up in costumes, built wacky-looking districts out of Legos, and written songs and jingles about gerrymandering.
“Our government accidentally poisoned an entire city of people with lead,” Fahey said, referring to the crisis in Flint. “There are fundamental pieces that we depend on our government for, and they’re failing still. People just reached a breaking point.”
Every 10 years, state legislative and congressional maps need to be redrawn to account for changes in population growth after the decennial census. Most states allow the state legislatures to draw the maps, and legislators in both parties have gerrymandered to boost their futures and elect more of their party (by drawing districts with partisan aims in mind, either by spreading out the opposing party’s voters among districts that have more of their own party’s voters, or by packing as many of the opposing party’s voters in as few districts as possible).
But increasingly sophisticated districting technology and voter data has made gerrymandering more efficient, leading parties to unusually strong holds over certain districts and even state legislatures.
“The problem has gotten much more extreme this decade than it ever has before, and it’s only going to get worse in the next decade,” said Wendy Weiser, director of the Democracy Program at New York University School of Law’s Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan think tank. Decades ago, “people were not more pure of heart, but they didn’t have the tools to achieve the partisan ends as effectively.”
In hopes of barring lawmakers from choosing their own voters, some states have instead decided to let nonpartisan or bipartisan groups of voters draw the districts, achieving varying degrees of autonomy from the legislature. Currently, 13 states including California and Arizona have a commission whose job it is to draw the districts; five other states have advisory commissions, and another five states have backup commissions in case the legislature cannot agree on new maps, according to the National Council on State Legislatures.
They’ve been buoyed by advocates like Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has vowed to put his political muscles into the fight to end gerrymandering, and former Attorney General Eric Holder, who is leading redistricting efforts on behalf of Democrats.
“We’re at a turning point of the public really stepping up,” Weiser said.