Advocates for state political redistricting reform are optimistic about next year, the leader of a local group that promotes civic engagement said Wednesday.
“We can win,” Kate Cruikshank, president of the League of Women Voters of Bloomington-Monroe County, told a group gathered at Meadowood Retirement Community. “The momentum on this has been absolutely incredible.”
People have a real chance to take back democracy, she said, although it seems that’s unlikely to happen this year with a bill on redistricting that was denied a vote in a state legislative committee.
Ideas, of course, can come back through amendments before the end of the Indiana General Assembly’s current session in April — including the idea of creating an independent, citizen-driven commission to draw borders for the state’s congressional and legislative districts.
That’s something Cruikshank and many others support for one simple reason: Gerrymandering.
To explain gerrymandering, Cruikshank showed the group two maps. One divided an area of land in four simple squares, distributing political affiliation almost equally. The other consolidated one political party into a single district and gave the other three districts to another party through complicated and curved borders.
The main difference is competition — one option means competitive elections, and the other nearly guarantees one political party 75 percent of the districts in that area.