MARK BREWER SPEAKS IN NILES TO MAKE THE CASE FOR REDISTRICTING

NILES – Area residents got the chance last week to hear an update on a subject very much in the news with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to wade into the topic of gerrymandering. The Supreme Court announced last week that they would hear an appeal of a Wisconsin case challenging that state’s partisan redistricting of legislative boundaries.
The Supreme Court announced last Monday that they will hear an appeal regarding Wisconsin redistricting with arguments to be held this fall. The Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling last year invalidating Wisconsin’s 2011 redistricting plan for the State Assembly
Mark Brewer, a Detroit area attorney and the former chairman of the Michigan Democratic Party, spoke at the South County Democratic Club’s monthly meeting. More than two dozen people attended the meeting at the Niles Senior Citizens Center.
Brewer is preparing a lawsuit against the state of Michigan over partisan gerrymandering but couldn’t say when he will be filing it. He did say that the lawsuit will be similar to one filed in Wisconsin that will now be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. He is doing crowdfunding to pay for the court costs of the lawsuit at www.endmigerrymandering.com. .
While the federal courts have struck down “gerrymandering” plans that discriminate against minority voters, there has only been one ruling when it comes to partisan discrimination such as is alleged in the Wisconsin case where Democrats claimed they had been unfairly disenfranchised.
Brewer noted that the Supreme Court has been waiting for the “right case” to address the issue again and he thinks the Wisconsin case is that case. “I think it has a good chance at the Supreme Court, they’ve been looking for the right case and what they did in Wisconsin was so extreme that it will offend the non-partisan court,” he said.
As for the word “gerrymandering” it comes from the combination of “gerry” which was the name of an early Massachusetts governor and “mander” for the salamander shape of districts drawn to maximize the advantage of one party over another. In Michigan and other states, legislative district boundaries are redrawn every 10 years after the census.
Brewer said that while there’s always been gerrymandering, sometimes to the detriment of African Americans and other minorities, it has gotten worse in recent years with technology. “It’s worse now with the power of computers that can draw endless configurations very quickly,” he said. “We also now have more data on people than we used to.”
During his talk, Brewer gave several examples of how partisan gerrymandering has given Republicans control of both the senate and the house in the state legislature as well as a majority of Congressional seats despite the fact that Democrats have received around half of the votes cast.
For example, Republicans got just slightly over half of the votes in 2016 but got two thirds of the state legislative seats. In 2012, Republicans got 45 percent of the vote but won nine of 14 congressional seats.
He reported that it’s not just a matter of sour grapes by Democrats. Non-partisan political scientists have analyzed hundreds of sets of elections over 40 years and found that Michigan had the second worst pro-Republican gerrymandering of any state except Wisconsin.
Brewer’s pending lawsuit against the state of Michigan comes at the same time that a non-partisan group, Voters Not Politicians, have announced plans to put a referendum on the November 2018 ballot. If approved, an independent commission will take over drawing the legislative district boundaries.
Voters Not Politicians organizer Walter Sorg spoke in Niles last month about the ballot initiative and said Monday that his group is still working to write the ballot language. Once the ballot language is approved, organizers will work to collect the 315,000 signatures needed to get the proposed constitutional amendment on the ballot.
“We believe the most dispositive solution to gerrymandering is to fix the underlying system with a non-partisan reform movement,” he said. “The lawsuit will no doubt increase the visibility of the issue which is very helpful.”