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Gerrymandering

EDITOR:

Our governors are legitimately elected representatives. In times of emergency, it’s essential that the governor has the authority to deal with the emergency. A deadly pandemic is an emergency, an ever-changing war against a virus. If a governor gets it wrong, that governor can be voted out of office. Past legislatures have figured this out. The current legislature has not.

The likely reason our current legislature can’t carry out the will of the majority is that we haven’t had a legitimately elected legislature since 2002, the year gerrymandering, not general elections, determined the outcome of district elections. Nearly all Michigan districts are very effectively gerrymandered, where the will of the hyper-partisans, who in vote in primaries of the party favored by gerrymandering, determine who occupies the district legislative seat, not voters in general elections.

Gerrymandering ends this year, when district boundaries are decided by the Michigan Independent Redistricting Commission, not the majority party in the legislature.

We won’t have a legitimately elected state legislature until after the 2022 election, the first election since 2002, where the general election will again decide who occupies the seats. Until then, we should support legitimately elected officials and oppose and reject radical hyper-partisan legislation, such as legislation negating the authority of a governor during a pandemic, inflicted on us by legislators gerrymandered into office, not elected into office.

Robert Mammel

Rapid Rive

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