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Fair Districts GA

Fair Districts GA is a nonpartisan organization that works to end electoral map rigging in Georgia. Our focus is to fight gerrymandering, the practice of drawing legislative district lines to favor one group over another. Our ultimate goal is to reform Georgia's process for drawing state and federal electoral maps. Georgia's current redistricting system gives lawmakers broad leeway to draw district maps for Congressional, state senate, and state house seats. Fair Districts GA supports stronger standards and a nonpartisan, transparent, accountable redistricting process. We collaborate with advocacy groups and grassroots organizations to inform Georgians about gerrymandering, advocate for redistricting reform legislation, and engage concerned citizens in our cause.

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www.fairdistrictsga.org

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Redistricting
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Progressives' final indictment of gerrymanders cites voting curbs

Manipulating district lines is just one way politicians stay in power. Another is by making it harder for the electorate to vote them out. A new report by a liberal think tank concludes that partisan gerrymandered legislatures have led to more voting restrictions — "a power grab on top of a power grab."

The Center for American Progress study, released Wednesday, found that Republicans in four states used map-guaranteed statehouse majorities to enact voting restriction (such as photo ID laws) and block easements to the ballot box (like longer early voting periods) — efforts that have proven particularly burdensome for communities of color, which usually vote Democratic.

The report is the fourth and final in a series designed to show why the cause of redistricting reform — turning district map drawing over to independent commissions — should be more of a priority for the left. The first, in December, blamed partisan gerrymandering for an absence of new gun controls this decade. The others cited the system for limiting Medicaid expansions and curtailing government spending on child care and education.

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Redistricting
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Michigan has been the biggest redistricting battleground this decade.

Michigan GOP fails again to stop new redistricting panel

Another Republican attempt to block Michigan's independent redistricting commission was dismissed Monday by a federal judge.

The state Republican Party's lawsuit argued that restrictions on who may serve on the new panel violated the free speech and free association rights of potential GOP commissioners — the same argument a federal appeals court rebuffed just three months ago.

Battleground Michigan has been at the heart of the gerrymandering debate since the start of the decade, when Republicans took control of Lansing and drew some of the most assertively partisan legislative and congressional maps in the country. In response, 61 percent in a grassroots-driven 2018 referendum decided to turn the next decade's line-setting over to a panel outside the control of politicians.

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Big Picture
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Signatures in hand, system-fix measures on track in two states

Bids to get a revamp of redistricting in Arkansas and expanded election reforms in North Dakota on statewide ballots have concluded after a difficult but apparently successful season of signature gathering.

The Covid-19 pandemic's stay-at-home orders and social distancing have made collecting signatures for ballot petitions especially challenging this year. Many groups have sued to relax petitioning rules, but the campaigns in both states were rebuffed in their efforts to get permission to use electronic signatures.

Organizers of both nonetheless got several thousand more handwritten signatures than required. They turned in their piles of paperwork to state officials Monday — confident they had beaten the odds to join other prominent democracy reform initiatives where voters will have the final say in November.

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Redistricting
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Gerrymandering in Pennsylvania

Gerrymandered Pennsylvanians seeking a redress of their grievances

Kuniholm is chairwoman of Fair Districts PA, created four years ago by other good-government groups in Pennsylvania to end partisanship in drawing of the state's legislative and congressional maps.
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