County should speak on gerrymandering

To the editor:

The Shawano County Board should pass a resolution urging the Wisconsin Legislature to ban gerrymandering and establish a process of independent, nonpartisan redistricting.

We’re falling behind on this in Shawano County. Already, 52 other county boards have passed such a resolution — including our neighbors in Langlade, Marathon, Oconto, Outagamie and Waupaca counties.

It’s time we stepped up.

Gerrymandering — the rigging of district maps — is undemocratic. It takes people’s voices away. It leads to uncompetitive districts and unrepresentative and unresponsive politicians. Those who are in “safe” seats don’t have to listen to citizens in their own districts who disagree with them. They can just blow them off.

Politicians should run scared. When I was in office and someone called me at midnight and told me they weren’t feeling well, I’d practically drive some aspirin over at 1 in the morning.

Because of gerrymandering and one-party rule in the Legislature, we’ve also seen that county governments lose their power. More than 180 laws were passed after the 2011 gerrymandering that took away our local control.

County board members, of all people, should be able to understand that.

So let’s fix this problem. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel here. Iowa solved the problem 40 years ago. It passed a law saying that career civil servants — not the politicians in power — draw the maps. That law specifies that they can’t use any data on how people voted in past elections when they are drawing the new maps.

This process has worked great in Iowa for four decades, and it’ll work great here in Wisconsin if we give it a chance.

Bert Grover, Gresham