To start things off one must have a solid grip on the concept and reason for redistricting.
Redistricting is not intended to streamline the election process, nor is it intended to keep ballot costs down. The sole intent and reason for the redistricting process is to establish election districts which provide representational equality for all potential voters…period, nothing more and nothing less. It is almost an embarrassment that a simple procedure that is intended to provide you as a voter reassurance that your vote will count equally as your neighbor’s can, and often does, turn into a political circus.
Voting equality is the base for our democracy. There are laws that work in conjunction with our Constitution that protect your vote from becoming diluted down, this is achieved by not allowing a section of the population to obtain an unfair advantage over another in governmental representation. Elected officials are to represent people…not areas.
The original proposed redistricting plan that came from the established Redistricting Committee for Menasha diluted 93% of the population’s representation which flies in the face of a fair and equal democracy. The original plan, by default, advocated one portion of the population within the city deserves twice the amount of representation on the city council than all others. This is a one-person-one-vote system, the redistricting map initially presented to the council gave District 8 voters a one-person-one-vote representation on the council while all other Districts had to have 2+ voters to equal the representation that one voter in District 8 would receive. This is clearly not within statutes and frankly is quite disturbing that there were people, including elected officials, advocating that the 6.4% of the population in proposed District 8 should receive 1/8 of the representation, while all other remaining districts contained 13.4% of the population each and would only receive the same 1/8 representation. Think about that for a moment, 6.4% of the population would receive 12.5% of the representation while all others would equate to 13.4% receiving the same 12.5% representation.
There are laws that govern redistricting and many written documents that clearly state what must be followed.
-There is case law with the United States Supreme Court (Wesberry vs. Sanders) where the high court found in Article 1, Section 2 of the Constitution a command that in the election of Members of the House of Representatives districts were to be made up of substantially equal numbers of persons…and they extended that ruling and requirement to all legislative bodies in the United States including municipal councils.
-Robert Marchant, Legislative Attorney for the Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau in 2001 (He is currently the Chief Clerk for the Wisconsin Senate) clearly states within the pages of “The Basic Legal Requirements of Local Redistricting” dated April of 2001 that “City Aldermanic Districts must be as equal in population as practicable” and goes further to state that past case law established that “Article 1, Section 1 of the Wisconsin Constitution guarantees persons the right not to have their votes diluted by unequal distribution of local legislative seats.”
- Within the pages of the Wisconsin Counties Association’ “WCA 2011 County Redistricting Guide” it states “Aldermanic Districts have to be substantially equal in population” and defines substantial as “an over all deviation of 10%”
- You would have to ignore the US Supreme Court, the Wisconsin Constitution, the past Legislative Attorney for the Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau and the Wisconsin Counties Association in order to arrive at the conclusion that a difference in population at the magnitude of 55%, as was presented in the initial proposed map, was acceptable. Even in light of solid fact that the city of Menasha
- My proposed plan did not increase ballot cost. The exact number of different ballots that are produced right now is equivalent to the amount of different ballots required for my new plan. As of today District 7 crosses county supervisory lines causing two ballots, District 8 crosses an actual county line causing an extra ballot and District 8 has two school districts causing an extra ballot…a total of 3 extra ballots.
- My proposed plan has District 2 crossing a county supervisory line causing an extra ballot, District 6 crosses a supervisory line causing an extra ballot and District 8 still has the dual school districts causing an extra ballot…a total of 3 extra ballots. There is no added cost to the tax payers and no added ballots.
- Currently there is one polling place (Clovis School) that has three ballots to deal with during every other election year, the rest have two a piece. My plan drops the Clovis ballot count to 1 ballot allowing District 5 voting to be moved to that school (which was part of the committees original plan by recommending the closing of Jefferson School as a polling location) leaving every polling place with two ballots except for the polling place for District 1 and 2 which would now have the 3 ballots instead…the exact ballot count as we currently have.
I must repeat…there is no added cost to the taxpayers above what we currently have for voting.
The Mayor threatened the use of his veto pen to this proposal and he listed three requirements to avoid a veto.
1) No wards could cross County Supervisory
2) It could not create multiple ballots resulting in additional, unnecessary costs…the proposed plan contains the same amount of various ballots that exists in our elections today and keeps polling places with the same amount of ballot distribution as it exists today.
3) It cannot create a Calumet County Aldermanic District larger than the average of the Winnebago Districts…unfortunately this requirement is statistically impossible to achieve. Calumet County Winnebago County
Cost is not the concern. If it were, the mayor would have vetoed the recent purchase of a $24,000 parking lot by the previous council. This purchase will cost another $20,000 for repairs and removes $1,400 of taxes each year from the levy which residents will have to make up. There was no concern about spending costs over ten years of a $70,000 un-needed parking lot because there was no veto…cost cannot be the concern here.
My proposed plan has the District 8 population amount sitting right at the median of all the District populations, half of the Districts have a higher population and half the Districts have a lower population. Alderman Benner’s population will be 239 people lower than if he had the proposed District 6 that was suggested in the map that was rejected by the council. District 8 is also comprised of neighborhoods with covenants, which by nature reduce most of the common complaints and concerns related with older sections of the city.
This is a good plan, a feasible plan and a fair plan for the residents of Menasha. Redistricting is to make your vote count just as equally as your neighbor. That cannot happen when your neighbor’s vote counts twice as much as yours for the same representation on this governing body. It is simple…one-person-one-vote…a very low population cannot have an equal representation on the city council as a population twice it’s size. This is common sense and the law…and quite honestly should send shivers up people’s spines to know there are elected officials out there that have no problem with diluting your vote for the benefit of others.
I am extremely proud to have put in the 52 hours of research and phone calls it took to protect your vote, and I would have no qualms of doing it again.
