The words “help slay the gerrymander” were printed on a slip of paper in the Monroe County Public Library on Tuesday night.
At 6:30 p.m., the League of Women Voters of Bloomington-Monroe County and the Monroe County Public Library collaborated in a showing of the movie “Gerrymandering.”
Gerrymandering is the redistributing of district boundaries in ways that favor one party over another and gives that party more influence in the federal House of Representatives as well as almost all local government elections.
The current president of the local League of Women Voters, Kate Cruikshank, gave a short introduction before the movie started.
“If you think about it, if you’re setting it up in that way, you’re ignoring the fact that within any district there is diversity,” Cruikshank said. “Someone who is elected is elected to represent 100 percent of the people.”
The redistricting commission in Indiana is made up of the speaker of the House, the chair of the House committee on elections and reapportionment, the president pro tempore of the Senate and the chair of the Senate committee on elections and an appointment by the governor — all of these members in Indiana are from the Republican party, Cruikshank said.
The League of Women Voters is a local, state and national nonpartisan organization that originated during the time between the passage of the amendment that granted women’s suffrage and its ratification, Cruikshank said. It is an organization that initially helped educate women on the voting process to get them involved with elections, she said.
Now the organization helps people with voter registration and voter education. It takes positions on issues after much scrutiny and study, Cruikshank said.
The League of Women Voters is seeking to promote a nonpartisan, neutral committee in charge of redistricting, Cruikshank said.
Redistricting occurs every 10 years after the census takes place, which means legislation to implement a neutral committee must be complete by the next census in 2020, Cruikshank said.
She mentioned the passage of House Bill 1003, which introduced an interim study committee that evaluates the potential consequences of a change in the redistricting process, which includes the possible introduction of a redistricting committee, according to the Indiana General Assembly website.
The study committee was supposed to perform a comprehensive study on redistricting policies in other states, Cruikshank said. A report was supposed to be completed by Dec. 1, 2015, which failed to happen, she said.
The interim committee has met once on Oct. 1, 2015, Cruikshank said, and members were startled by the large amount of people present.
“One of the things I hope will come out of this movie is that people will be inclined to take action and to write the chairman of the committee to just tell them, ‘We care about what you’re doing. We want to see an independent redistricting committee in Indiana,’” Cruikshank said.
Present at the event was Bloomington resident Dan Morelli, 62, who is a member of the group Reverse Citizens United. He said the group aims to reverse the Citizens United Supreme Court decision in 2010 that allowed corporations to spend an unlimited number of funds to promote political candidates.
Morelli said he was present because the movie was on a topic he is interested in and it is something people don’t often hear about in the media.
“It’s really terrible that these politicians can get together and just, without regard to population and what the people want, and just create these things for their own benefit so they can have a safe seat,” Morelli said.
Gerrymandering is a major issue, Cruikshank said. The only way to get the interim committee to take action is through public pressure because all of the House members on the committee are up for reelection this fall, she said.
“The question is whether you feel that representative democracy is worth caring about,” Cruikshank said.
