One of the issues the Executive Board of The Charlotte Women’s March is focusing on this year is Gerrymandering.
Gerrymandering occurs when legislators draw boundaries of legislative districts to create an unfair advantage for political parties and incumbents. In so doing, they pick their voters – instead of the voters picking them.
Gerrymandering impedes progress for nearly every other issue impacting women in NC and throughout the country. There are currently two proposed bills to address gerrymandering in NC: House Bill 200 , introduced in the 2017 North Carolina legislative session by a bipartisan group of NC House members, and the companion Senate Bill 209 , introduced in the NC Senate. Both are as yet untouched in the General Assembly.
A new bill , NC HB 69, introduced in the 2019 legislative session by a bipartisan group of state lawmakers, would end North Carolina’s decades-long practice of allowing whichever political party controls the state legislature to draw the lines used to elect state legislators and members of the U.S. House of Representatives. Instead, House Bill 69 would create a committee of non-politicians who would be in charge of drawing the lines with help from legal and technical experts.
The Common Cause created EndGerrymanderingNow website provides a wealth of current information on this issue.
CWM is focusing on efforts to lend our voice to this fight, and will be working with numerous organizations going forward to push the NC leadership to action on this issue. One of these is FlushGerryMander.com, who is working to inundate the NC legislative leadership with the message that We the People will no longer stand for rigged elections and the political “non-representatives” the system produces. Check out his website to learn more about gerrymandering, its impacts, and steps to take to try to combat it.
We urge all CWM members to take the following actions: 1) Contact your state lawmakers and urge them to support nonpartisan redistricting; 2) Sign the Common Cause petition and, 3) share the petition with a friend!
#CharlotteWomensMarch, #EndGerrymanderingNow, #FlushGerryMander
Pingback: March to Movement