Redistricting Has Begun: Raise Your Voice in Support of People Powered Fair Maps

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Blog Post

Long-awaited Redistricting Has Begun!

The Reapportionment Committee announced four hearings:

9/8 LOB, Room 1E Hartford 7:00 pm
9/9 Room 335, Norwich City Hall, Norwich CT 1:00 pm
9/13 Auditorium, Shelton City Hall, Shelton 1:00 pm
9/14 via Zoom 7:00 pm

Visit the Reapportionment Committee online

LWVGH is urging our members to speak out to stress the importance of Fair Maps. The districts created this year will be in place for ten years. Key messages urged by the LWVUS and LWVCT are as follows:

The LWV believes the best way to conduct Redistricting is through independent non-partisan special commissions made up of groups and individuals that are representative of the relevant communities. Voters should choose their representatives rather than legislators choosing their voters.
Even though the CT process is embedded in the state constitution, and not easily changed, the process could be vastly improved. The redistricting website has much room for improvement. Many states have developed modern websites inclusive of plain language summaries and other resources. In CT conversely users must parse the technical language of state statutes to tease out exactly how the process works. We can do better.
The General Assembly could establish much better transparency requirements. The group RepresentUs assesses the threat of partisan gerrymandering in CT as “High” largely because of the absence of robust transparency measures. The CT Constitution is silent on transparency and public input but that could be remedied by legislative action to wrap such provisions around the current Constitutional provisions for Redistricting. Ask your representatives: Would you introduce legislation to create greater Redistricting transparency?
State legislative districts must be within 10% of the ideal population average, which is the state population divided by the number of districts for each body (36 for the State Senate and 151 for the State House). Some districts exceed the ideal while some are below the ideal. Ask the Reapportionment Committee and your state reps: How do you decide which districts will be above and which will be lower than the ideal population?
Ask your Representative and the Reapportionment Committee: What conversations have you been having internally about redistricting? What concerns have members raised among themselves? When maps are developed, the public should know what considerations- in addition to federal requirements and geographic contiguity- have been used to create districts.