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Rethinking Redistricting
Putting an end to Gerrymandering in Indiana has been a core objective of the Libertarian Party of Indiana for decades. A new approach to drawing the maps for the next decade was strongly advocated through our Secretary of State candidates. We'd like to think that Todd Rokita's two Libertarian opponents message of an independent redistricting commission in the session of the General Assembly helped inspire Rokita to launch the Rethinking Redistricting program.
We fully supported the plan put out by the previous Secretary of State. It drew the lines in a very logical way. We invite you to look over the plan here. Strangely, the plan's webstie was recently removed by the state government, but we have preserved it on our website.
Both Rebecca Sink-Burris (2002), Mike Kole (2006), and Mike Wherry (2010) have advocated taking the drawing of election boundaries out of the hands of politicians. Voters should be choosing politicians, not politicians choosing voters.
Earlier this week, we put out a call for the creation of an independent redistricting commission to be inserted in to the Indiana Constitution. This will ensure that no political party, politician, or self-interested group can draw their political ambitions in to our elections for the next decade. This commission was almost realized in 2011, but was killed when the House Democrats fled to Illinois.
The lines were drawn by the Republicans, with half-hearted public hearings held by the Indiana Senate. To their credit, they didn't take in to account incumbent addresses when starting a district, and their lines are cleaner that the previous decade's Democrat drawn lines. They are still far from perfect, and several districts are bizarre. Please take a moment and compare the current districts, the proposed GOP districts, and the Rethinking Redistricting districts advocated by the LPIN. We think you'll find a clear, common sense approach in one of them. We've laid the maps over Google Maps to help make it easier for you.
In Liberty,
Sam Goldstein
LPIN State Chairman
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