In 2019, I joined the League of Women Voters to help build culture of evaluation focused on outcomes of our work. To this end, during the Fall of 2020, we launched the Semi-Annual Survey Project.
Prison gerrymandering is the practice of counting people based on where they're confined rather than where they're from. This inflates representation in areas where prisons are built and dilutes the voting power of the people who are incarcerated and their home communities.
In recent years, the filibuster has been abused as a partisan weapon of obstruction. The League supports reforming the filibuster to prohibit the minority party from blocking the opening debate of a bill. We support instituting a ‘talking filibuster,’ ending silent holds, putting the onus on the minority party to produce 40 votes, and lowering the cloture vote threshold to bring bills to a final up-or-down vote on the Senate floor.
Fair maps help residents as they seek to elect representatives who take their concerns, like clean water, seriously, who will work to clean up current pollution and prevent more from occurring.
Voters have an interest in knowing where politicians and organizations are getting their money and how that money is being spent. To that end, dark-money and wealthy special interest groups do not need more loopholes.
In 2020, during one of the most significant and contentious elections in decades, women faced a new public health crisis: COVID-19. More than one hundred years after the 1918 pandemic, Americans stared down this new foe and, once again, women led and supported their communities through civil and political unrest, unprecedented voter suppression, and simultaneous economic and healthcare crises.
The League of Women Voters is committed to the fight for fair maps in 2021 and beyond. We are throwing down on April 29, 2021 to shine a light on redistricting and demand fair maps through a People Powered Day of Action.
When district maps do not represent the people fairly, it prevents us from moving on issues that we care about – issues that can be a matter of life or death. One of these critical issues is healthcare.
To create more equitable maps, we recommend that states prioritize transparency and implement ethics rules to protect the integrity of commissions and hold politicians accountable for acting in the interest of the people.
For D.C., fighting to have our voices heard extends beyond redistricting and fair representation of our eight Wards. Fighting for fair representation also means we are working to secure D.C. Statehood.
