An End To Gerrymandering in Livingston County
Three Candidates to Support Nov 3rd
An End To Gerrymandering in Livingston County
Three Candidates to Support Nov 3rd
The Fair Vote Slate
Jordan Genso
Jordan Genso
Jordan Genso
Candidate for County Clerk
Dan Luria
Jordan Genso
Jordan Genso
Ragan Lake
Jordan Genso
Ragan Lake
Candidate for County Prosecutor
The Problem
As you can see from the video, the five members that make up a county's reapportionment committee are the county clerk, county treasurer, county prosecutor, and the Chairs of the county Democratic and Republican parties. They are tasked with redrawing the district boundaries for the county commission. The committee is supposed to abide by the law as set out in MCL 46.404. Unfortunately, it is all too common for some members of the committee to instead use the power entrusted to them as a means to draw the districts in a partisan way that benefits their political party and undermines our elections.
For Livingston County, the result was that the rigged, gerrymandered map adopted in 2011 helped the Republican candidates win all nine of the county commission seats throughout the entire decade, despite there being elections where Democratic voters in Livingston reached 43% countywide.
It's possible that, even if a fair map had been adopted in 2011, the county commission races would've had the same result. But that doesn't change how wrong it is when those who have been elected by the voters act in a partisan manner that undermines democracy and rigs the elections to benefit one party. We must prevent that from happening again in 2021.
The Solution
In 2018, a majority of Livingston County voters supported Proposal 2, which will help to prevent gerrymandering of state and congressional districts. But Proposal 2 did not change how county-level districts are redrawn. So the only way to prevent the county government from being gerrymandered again in 2021 is to elect individuals who are committed to serving in a nonpartisan manner.
What clearly separates us from our opponents is that we are promising to propose and support the following resolution at the first meeting of the reapportionment committee:
The Livingston County Reapportionment Committee shall abide by MCL 46.404(e), in that the committee shall not adopt a map that keeps fewer townships whole and has a larger population variance than any other map submitted to the committee.
Passing that resolution before the census numbers are released will ensure a fair process so that whatever map best meets the objective criteria shall be the map that is adopted.