Vincennes City Council supports Common Cause initiative on redistricting

Common Cause has asked that cities and towns support legislation that more clearly defines how those lines can be drawn.

So far, Duane Chattin, the veteran council member who introduced the resolution Monday night, said councils in Michigan City, South Bend, Lafayette and West Lafayette have already passed similar resolutions.

He was thrilled to see Vincennes become the fifth.

“This is a good opportunity for us to weigh in with our opinion,” Chattin said, “on the need for independent redistricting, every decade when this rolls around, other than practices of the past.”

Majority leaders often use the process as an opportunity to make the districts more favorable to their party, a time-honored process called gerrymandering. And, Chattin argues, technology has made the process more sophisticated than ever before.

The U.S. Constitution requires that congressional districts be redrawn following the federal census, and states also take the opportunity then to redraw their own legislative districts.

While there is a requirement to review district boundaries and make whatever changes are required, the Constitution leaves the responsibility for how that work is done up to the states.

The districts are supposed to contain as equal a number of residents as possible. But while the total number may be equal, there is often an effort by the majority party to either put most of their minority party's registered voters in a particular district, or disperse them over a number of districts to lessen their electoral influence on political races.

Common Cause argues that the current system is set up to bolster the majority party and incumbents, leaving voters with little power to make changes.

Some states are looking to have an independent, “non-partisan” group do whatever redistricting needs to be done in the hope that it will eliminate gerrymandering.

Common Cause argues that the process has “sacrificed the integrity of cities” and discouraged people from running for public office or even voting at all, the resolution says.

“Voter participation is not what it should be,” Chattin said. “We all talk about it. And another trend is that we are seeing few candidates run for office. Part of the problem is that the districts they live in are so slanted one way or another that it doesn't do much good to run.

“Quite frankly, people just lose interest, and that's a shame,” he said.

A tighter process, one focused more on the equal distribution of population and less on stacking the deck in a party's favor, would create a “real opportunity for public feedback,” the resolution passed Monday says.

A new system would also “empower communities by allowing them to elect representatives that represent their interest in issues important to them.”

Chattin said the state House of Representatives passed legislation last year that created a study committee to spend 18 months looking at the redistricting process, with the intent that they would propose meaningful change.

That, council member Scott Brown said, is a significant step in the right direction, but he wonders if politics can ever really be taken out of a process run by politicians.

“It will be extremely hard to get away from,” Brown said. “But I'd like to see a little bit of change.

“Maybe they will consider this,” he said, “but it will always be a political process.”

Dan Ravellette said he saw the proposed legislation sponsored by Common Cause as having the potential to create “a much better situation.”

“I see it as being much more fair to everyone involved,” he said. “And I think it would help those who want to be candidates to step up and do that.

Judy Kratzner, president of the League of Women Voters of Knox County, too, encouraged council members to approve the resolution.

Leagues across the state, she said, studied the redistricting process in 2012, and their findings have led them to support Common Cause's efforts.

“We feel this model essentially agrees with what the League found,” Kratzner said. “So we would ask that you support it.”