League of Women Voters hosts family-friendly gerrymandering bash

The League of Women Voters of Orange, Durham and Chatham Counties held a “Gerrymander Bash” Saturday afternoon to inform the public of the dangers of gerrymandering while also having some fun.

The event was designed to be family-friendly and was held at the Chapel Hill Community Center. While some people played a board game that involved creating districts to get your team the most votes, others ate food and listened to short informative talks addressing why gerrymandering is bad and how to fix it.

Jennifer Bremer, a member of the state board of the League of Women Voters, said combating gerrymandering is part of their mission to promote democracy. 

“Our mission is to make democracy work and that means empowering voters and defending democracy," she said. "We organize candidate forums but we also fight for voter protection, and that includes fighting against gerrymandering because gerrymandering undermines people’s ability to pick the candidate of their choice.”

Bremer said the league organized the gerrymandering bash as a way to reach people who might not be able to come out to nighttime events or traditional lectures. 

“We do a lot of speaking around the state, more traditional lecturing, and we thought that we would try something different that would reach families and younger people who might not come out to an evening event, for example," she said. "We put together this event to try and make it fun and attract a different kind of audience and get the word out.”

Kim Moore, a volunteer with the league, said the goal was to make the event family-friendly.

“The idea is for people to come, bring the families, the kids can have fun playing some games, and the adults can learn a little bit about what is gerrymandering and what could we as citizens do to fix it,” she said.

Bremer also said the league has organized a coalition called Fair Districts North Carolina, which is made up of other community partners such as the NAACP of North Carolina, the Libertarian Party and Church Women United. She said the group's goal is to promote the use of an independent redistricting commission instead of the state legislature.

"(An independent commission) would also conduct a more open process to reach out to citizens and engage them and ask them, for example, if we are going to have to divide Mecklenburg County — which is too big for a single district," Bremer said. "What is the most logical place? Where do the communities’ interests fit together?” 

Brian Irving, a liaison for the Fair Districts NC coalition from the Libertarian Party, said an end to gerrymandering would give voters more of a voice in congressional elections.

“We’re still going to have districts that are predominately one of the two major parties, but we’re going to have more districts that are more competitive, and that will give independent voters and third parties like the Libertarians and possibly the Greens or the Constitution Party an opportunity to have their voice heard," he said.

Event attendees were also able to sign a petition calling for redistricting reform.

Moore agreed that fairer districts would give voters more of a choice in elections.

“By having fair districts, voters will pick their representatives, instead of the representatives who are drawing the maps picking us,” she said.

@ElizabethEganNC

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