Political Persistence

I spent time this past weekend at the state board meeting for the League of Women Voters of

Pennsylvania. One of our goals was to revisit vision and values.

Vision draft:  informed, engaged voters; effective, responsive government. 

Values listed: non-partisan, respectful, fact-based, trusted, persistent.

We will need to be persistent indeed if we hope to realize the vision. Only informed, engaged voters will make possible an effective, responsive government. Only an effective, responsive government will create space and motivation for informed, engaged voters. It’s a chicken and egg sort of construct. And both chicken and egg are in very bad health.

This week was the 100th anniversary of a parade in Chicago asking the Republican party to include a plank supporting women’s right to vote.

In spite of a heavy storm, over 5,000 women showed up to march in the rain, while inside the convention hall, a group of anti-suffrage women testified that women did NOT want the right to vote. According to a Chicago paper:

As if timed to the instant, through the doors of the hall came the drenched and bedraggled marchers for suffrage. They pushed up to the platform, they massed down below, they scattered out over the hall and still they came pouring through the doors…as the shock of surprise yielded, several of [the delegates] on the platform smiled in understanding amusement, as if the incongruity of that outworn charge had at last been comprehended.

 The Republican Party did adopt a suffrage plank, as did the Democratic Party two weeks later. Four years after that, the 19^th Amendment, extending the right to vote to women, was finally ratified.

That change was the fruit of over a century of work led by a persistent, passionate, very brave band of women.

The gathering in Seneca Falls, New York in 1848 is often listed as the start of the suffrage movement, but read the biography of Lucretia Coffin Mott and it’s clear the work began decades before. 

As a young teacher at a Quaker boarding school in New York, she learned that the fee "for the education of girls was the same as that for boys.” Yet, “when they became teachers, women received but half as much as men for their services.”

“The injustice of this was so apparent," Mott recalled in an autobiographical sketch, "that I early resolved to claim for my sex all that an impartial Creator had bestowed."

Married at 18 in 1811, Mott became a Quaker minister in 1821 and spoke often and passionately about the systemic immorality of slavery. When shut out of the American Anti-Slavery Society by white Christian men, she helped found the Female Anti-Slavery Society in 1833, one of the first racially mixed organizations in the country.

While organizing to end slavery, the group also worked to build literacy and leadership skills in black communities, provided shelter to runaway slaves and raised funds to improve living conditions for impoverished black families.

That work was done under the constant threat of violence from white males attempting to silence them. 

Mott's persistence awes me. Her courage inspires me.

I’ve posted before about my work for redistricting reform in Pennsylvania. We had a setback this week, as the Government Reform Caucus decided not to endorse the bills we’re supporting. Pennsylvania politics as usual.

The next day I had a long conversation with an older man who wanted to make clear change is not legislatively possible: “The Republicans have had that legislature LOCKED DOWN for fifty years.” 

He repeated the phrase “locked down" with gusto multiple times: it’s locked down, it won’t change, and any Republican who votes for reform is committing political suicide.

Maybe so, but at last count the bills we endorse had 13 Republican co-sponsors.

And as I reminded him cheerfully: I’m part of the League of Women Voters. We don’t think change is easy, but we tend to be persistent.

Even so, I find myself marveling at the persistence and sacrifice of Lucretia Mott. She did not like politics, based as it inevitably is on moral compromise.  Yet she saw the connections among the issues that concerned her: freedom, literacy, peace, alleviation of need.

She was 47 when she was forced to sit – in silence - in a separate women’s section at the World’s Anti-Slavery Convention in London. 55 when she and Elizabeth Cady Stanton organized their own women’s rights convention at Seneca Falls in 1848.

She was 71 in 1864 when she helped found Swarthmore College, one of the first coeducational colleges in the country. She was 73 in 1866 when she helped organize and became the first president of the American Equal Rights Association, formed “to secure Equal Rights to all American citizens, especially the right of suffrage, irrespective of race, color or sex."

She was 87 when she died in 1880, three decades before women finally received the right to vote.

Next weekend I’ll be attending the national League of Women Voters Convention in Washington, DC. On Saturday morning I’ll be leading a caucus on building coalitions and finding allies for redistricting reform.

Reading through the history of the work is a little discouraging. Lots of names. Lots of bills. Only a few states where real change has been accomplished.

In his farewell speech in 1989, Ronald Reagan said that “high on his agenda” would be “talking up the need to do something about political gerrymandering. This is the practice of rigging the boundaries of congressional districts. It is the greatest single blot on the integrity of our nation’s electoral system, and it’s high time we did something about it.”

The League of Women Voters, in states across the country, has been working on this since at least 1990. That’s three rounds of redistricting ago.  If the practice was a blot on the integrity of the electoral system back in 1989, it’s now a spreading, smothering stain.  

With the constant improvement of mapping systems, the fine-tuning of data mining and the millions of dollars invested by both parties in capturing state legislatures, gerrymandering has made competitive elections almost impossible and has eliminated real choice at almost every level.

Reform coalitions have come and gone as invisible funding sources co-opt good intentions and inevitable discouragement saps energy and interest. 

Even so, there are redistricting reform coalitions in more than a dozen states. I’m hoping to meet the leaders during my time in DC.

We’ll be voting at the convention on a new redistricting position, created by a national task force that has studied the problem, researched solutions and drafted recommendations.

The position recommends an end to the conflict of interest that allows politicians to draw their own maps. It endorses adoption of independent commissions with strong standards for transparency, public input, fairly drawn lines.

I’m sure it will pass with strong support.

At the same time, I don’t envision anyone marching in the streets. Redistricting reform is a complicated issue and most Americans have trouble focusing past the first bullet point.

Somehow Lucretia Mott was able to make the connections clear: faith in God, confidence in the equality of all, reverence for life, sacrificial hospitality, literacy, voting rights, a longing for peace.

We are fractured, distracted, easily swayed by sound bites and simplistic answers.

Captive to an entrenched system that offers us little choice and pays little attention to the real needs, hopes and dreams of the average citizen.

In Pennsylvania, we have crowded jails, crumbling roads, immigrant families held in substandard detention facilities. We have the two most underfunded school systems and the most inequitable school funding structure in the country, outrageous property taxes, overlapping jurisdictions, a bloated, expensive government that accomplishes little and captures national attention for its incompetence and corruption.

Not long after the convention in Seneca Falls, Mott wrote: "Any great change must expect opposition, because it shakes the very foundation of privilege."

We are in a time of great change, and it’s hard to say where that change will lead.

As I worked on this post, I heard the sad news: fifty dead in Orlando.

The sixteenth time our current President has addressed the press to speak of a mass shooting.

Our electoral systems themselves make it less and less possible to come to agreement on issues like guns, immigration, taxes, war.

Anger feeds anger; hate breeds hate.

Violence encourages greater violence.

Will the foundations of privilege be shaken, as Lucretia Mott prayed, or will the foundations of democracy be fractured instead?

From where I sit today, it’s hard to say.

Primaries, Parties, Power, Please . . .

I won’t be voting in our Pennsylvania primary on Tuesday. I’ve been promoting voter registration for months now, inviting attention to the League of Women Voters’ Vote411, which offers sample ballots and voter information, and posting winning videos from our League of Women Voters 2016 video contest: Your Voice, Your Vote, Be Heard!

But I won’t be voting myself, because I’m registered as unaffiliated, and PA’s primaries are closed to unaffiliated voters.

In January, Gallup reported that forty-two percent of Americans identify as political independents. That percent is much lower in PA, due to our closed primaries, but still more than 1.1 million choose not to identify with one of the two major parties.

I consider our closed primaries a form of taxation without representation.

Yes, I could register with a party to exercise my right to vote in the primary Tuesday.

Except, honestly, I can’t.

There are parts of both parties’ platforms I agree with. (Here are both: Republican, Democrat)

There are major parts in both I think are wrong-headed, counterproductive, unsustainable.

I could compromise on those. Maybe.

But my concern goes past platform and policy to practice and power.

I read an essay recently by Os Guinness (an excerpt from his 2002 book, Time for Truth: Living Free in a World of Lies, Hype and Spin, published in the Veritas Forum's A Place for Truth):

If there's no truth and everything is only power, ours is a world of brutal manipulation in which the strong will win and the weak will always go to the wall – and that's a horrendous world. 

I fear the horrendous world he describes is hurrying toward us.

And I fear our political parties have lost sight of core values like truth, justice, the common good, and instead depend on manipulation to maintain power and justify control.

Not everyone: there are good people in both parties. I've met some. I know of others.

But the parties themselves, the power structures within them, the games they play: I am appalled by much I see and hear.

Listen to the discussion surrounding primaries, delegates, conventions, dark money, donors: anything approaching real democracy died a long time ago.

Yes, I know: anyone attempting to accomplish anything at all faces the challenge of balancing the desire to forward reasonable ends with the need to influence in appropriate ways.

This is true at the most elemental level: caring for my favorite toddler, I want to move us toward hands washed, lunch on the table, food delivered to open mouths.

There’s a point where the end may justify a small application of both force and reward (picking him up and setting him in his seat; withholding more juice until cheese and fruit are eaten). But even in the smallest drama, there’s a dangerous desire to have things go my way just because: because I’m in charge. Because I don’t like aggravation. Because I said so. Because.

On the political level, yes, it makes sense for parties to work toward agreed on goals, applying appropriate influence in reasonable ways.

Unfortunately, the more I see of our two major parties, the clearer it is that desire for power long superseded any interest in reasonable goals or appropriate methods.

 

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been working on redistricting reform. Every ten years, the federal census paves the way for reapportionment of congressional seats: states that grow get more seats in the House of Representatives; those that lose population may have less. That necessitates changes in congressional electoral districts, but most states also adjust state legislative districts at the same time to keep districts relatively even in size.

Most democratic countries do something similar, and in most, the redistricting process is handled by independent redistricting commissions composed of impartial demographers, mapmakers, retired judges or other citizens, with strict rules for how lines are to be drawn and clear standards of evaluation.

In Pennsylvania, as in most American states, the legislators draw and approve the maps that determine their elections, an obvious conflict of interest.

The result has been, since early in our democracy, lines drawn to favor the party in power. Another word for it: gerrymandering.

I described this in much more detail back in 2014.

But here’s what I’ve learned since:

Our two major parties have spent millions trying to capture legislatures in redistricting years in order to control the redistricting process in order to control Congress and state legislatures.

Yes, of course, I get it: parties exist to help their candidates win elections, in hopes of controlling the processes, in hopes of getting their own bills enacted.

What I’m describing goes way beyond that. Essentially, it’s legal voter fraud. Manipulation of processes to guarantee that voters’ voices are discounted.

In North Carolina, that meant corralling minority candidates into two strangely drawn districts to restrict their influence across a wider area.  

In Virginia, a similar move is under Supreme Court review.

In Pennsylvania, partisan redistricting divided post-industrial cities into surrounding suburbs or farmland to ensure the voices of poor, urban communities have little influence in policy or funding.

Both parties play the game, but the Republicans have been more organized and better funded. They’ve already announced plans for the 2020 redistricting process: RedMap 2020. 

Manipulation of maps is a cynical, insidious form of voter fraud. It deprives voters of choice, pushes parties toward extremes, ensures legislative gridlock and undermines voter engagement.

I put together a simple graphic to help explain the dynamic I’m describing. I’ve been using it to promote a petition in support of redistricting reform.

  

I hear people complain about candidates who lie, stretch the truth, manipulate, take dark money, promise things they can’t possibly provide.

It’s always the other candidate: the one they don’t support.

And I hear people explain their vote because any other vote would allow the opposition to win. Or would put party control in jeopardy.

I go back to that quote I’ve been carrying with me: 

If there's no truth and everything is only power, ours is a world of brutal manipulation... 

I posted last week about this time of unraveling we’re living in.

The idea of truth itself is unraveling, has been unraveling, is now as thin as a gossamer strand of spider web, floating on the unsettled air.

 

If truth no longer matters, what we have left is manipulation.

And a brutal game of chess in which we are all, only, pawns. 

I have been praying about my own role in this unfolding story.

For now, I feel called to work on redistricting reform, to look for other ways to strengthen the voice of those shut out of our political process. And I feel called to say, as clearly and often as I can, I believe truth matters. 

This post is my vote for real democracy. The vote I’m not able to cast on Tuesday.

I admire others I know whose callings lead them in other ways: living and working in tough urban neighborhoods. Protesting and praying on capital steps in DC and Harrisburg. Writing, teaching, volunteering. Working the polls. Walking with the poor. Running for office. Writing policy.

Here’s my please:

Please don’t fall for manipulation. Don’t look past the lies. Don’t excuse the game.

Don’t just pray that the best person win.

Pray for your own role in that. Your own vote. Your own voice.

Please don’t watch in silence as the best manipulator wins.

What I'd Give: Living into Love

My goal this Epiphany season is to dig into a topic I’ve been thinking of lately: the important gifts that aren’t ours to give.

“What I’d give you if I could.”

My plan for this week’s topic was “Awareness of Love.” God’s love. So deep and wide and high and long that we need his grace to grasp even a tiny hint of it.

But this week my head has been full of something different, a project that has grabbed and shaken me and is busily filling my calendar, inbox and brain.

If you had asked me when I left youth ministry five years ago if I’d be getting involved in PA politics, I would definitely have laughed.

And if you’d asked me a year ago if redistricting would be my top priority I would most likely have said “no.”

But I’ve learned along the way that love leads in strange directions.

Love for the beauty and brokenness of creation me led me down a path of “shale gas fractivism.”

Concern for loved ones struggling with food led me deep into research on poorly-tested, poorly-regulated, poorly-understood innovations in our daily diet. 

Love for a group of kids I spent time with in Philly during my youth ministry days led to a dive into our dysfunctional criminal justice system, and advocacy on the inexcusable inequities in our school funding system.

http://reimaginerpe.org/18-2/sekala

And all of those trails led me back to our dysfunctional political environment, the broken systems that hold it in place, and the ripples of dysfunction fueled by misplaced anger and misguided decisions.

I was tempted to set aside the topic of love and focus instead on partisan redistricting and our new Fair Districts PA coalition.

But I find myself back at the text I meant to start with: Ephesians 3:  

For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

For years I had that passage posted inside my kitchen cabinet door, where I could pray it, for myself and those I love, at odd moments in my day: waiting for water to boil, or listening for the ding of the microwave oven.

How do we become so rooted and established in Christ’s love that it becomes the controlling reality of each day?

How do we live so deeply in that reality that it becomes visible to all who know us?

Paul’s prayer makes clear: knowledge of God’s love is a gift, one that we can’t give, although we can fervently ask it. God can strengthen us from the inside out, give us power to grasp something far beyond our grasping.

And yet, I wonder if there are ways we can hasten that work, or position ourselves to embrace love more fully.

This morning, turning again to Paul’s prayer in Ephesians, I read the parts of the chapter before it: “For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles . . .  I became a servant of this gospel by the gift of God’s grace given me through the working of his power.”

In a way, Paul’s experience of God’s love seems closely connected to his willingness to serve it, his willingness to set aside his own privilege and priorities to become both prisoner and servant.

St. Paul in Ephesus: earliest known depiction

In 2 Corinthians, he phrased it this way:  “ For the love of Christ compels /guides / rules / controls us.”

Which comes first: ability to grasp God’s love, or willingness to set our own agendas aside and live as servants compelled and ruled by love?

And what is most likely to keep others from seeing and knowing and embracing that love: their lack of interest, or our own unwillingness to serve that love more fully?

I posted before about prayer ministry in our church: the practice of listening to the needs of others, then placing a hand gently on the person’s shoulder or hand, and praying on the other person’s behalf.  That was a formative part of my youth ministry experience, and my husband and I still serve in that way once a month during our worship service.

That simple willingness to intercede for someone else has taught me much about God’s love, deepened my willingness to serve it, but also expanded my grasp of its magnitude.

When we serve, we stand in a front corner of the church, an awkward spot, and wait as people walk to the front to take communion, then pass us on their way back to their seats.

The whole thing feels awkward: standing there, waiting as people walk by. Yet, as someone chooses to walk toward us, I often feel a warm welcome welling up inside me. And then, as we pray, I am often almost overcome by a sense of love pouring through me.

Sometimes it’s so strong I find myself shaking. Often I find myself fighting back tears. Whatever the need, concern, request, the prayer often is surrounded by a shattering experience of love: God’s love flowing through me, God’s peace, joy, forgiveness, mercy, healing enveloping me and the person I pray for. Sometimes it’s clear the person feels it, receives it.  Sometimes it’s clear only hints of it get through. Always I know that love, flowing through me, is far greater than I, or the other person, can grasp.

Often I go back to my pew with a deeper burden for the need of the world, a fuller vision of God’s love, and a sobering sense of gratitude: I have been given far more than I deserve. I am willing to be shaped and directed by that love.

I see the link between love and service most clearly when I pray, but it leaps out at me at other times: when a friend calls and asks “do you have time to help me?” The first thought is always: “Now? Are you kidding?” But love intervenes, and my day and its rearrangement become part of ongoing prayer.

The same is true in other ways: this political involvement I find myself pursuing. It’s costly in time and energy and brain-space. It’s leading me far from any comfort zone, into challenging arenas where I need God’s wisdom for every next step.

I am a servant of love.

That sounds lofty, overly grand.

Maybe a little ridiculous.

Yet, I've learned that my awareness of God's love is intrinsically tied to my willingness to serve, to live into that love.

So I throw my calendar open. Set my ragtag gifts at God’s disposal. 

Acknowledge and marvel at his love for the kids in underfunded schools, the prisoners locked in solitary confinement, the teachers maligned by profit-driven maneuvers, the legislators buffeted by intractable political agendas.

I pray that his love rebuilds broken lives from the inside out, melts through disillusioned hearts, shines so brightly that it silences the voices of condemnation and judgment that dare to speak for God.

I pray that God’s people will live so deeply in this love that churches awaken, oppressive systems change, communities are restored.

And I pray, that you, and I 

being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
 Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

St. Paul Writing His Epistles; att. Valentin de Boulogne, 17th century, France

During this Epiphany season (from the beginning of January until the beginning of Lent on Ash Wednesday, February 10) I’ll be blogging about those things I would give if I could.

January 3: What I'd Give You

Let the People Draw the Lines

I live in one of the most gerrymandered districts in the nation.

That’s a hotly contested honor, but I think I can prove my case.

Pennsylvania's 6th Congressional District has been the subject of lawsuits for years, and was the subject of a case heard by the Supreme Court in 2003. One of the complainants in that case, Susan Furey, argued that the strangely shaped district was  created "solely to effectuate the interests of Republicans," and offered evidence that the General Assembly relied "exclusively on a principle of maximum partisan advantage" when drawing the plan "to the exclusion of all other criteria." She described the district looming “like a dragon descending on Philadelphia from the west, splitting up towns and communities throughout Montgomery and Berks Counties."

While the Supreme Court justices found the complainants’ evidence compelling, they concluded “that political gerrymandering claims are nonjusticiable because no judicially discernible and manageable standards for adjudicating such claims exist.”

To put that in normal English: even though there was clear evidence that the map had been drawn to benefit the party in power,  and even though voters’ rights are infringed by political gamesmanship over district boundaries, the courts can’t/won’t/aren’t likely to intervene unless there’s clear legislative authority to do so.

On the basis of that decision, the most recent district reapportionment resulted in an even more bizarre drawing of the District 6 map: areas of urban poverty were neatly divided to provide an even stronger margin for the party in power.

Green marks District 6 according to lines drawn in 2001. The light blue line
shows District 6 as redrawn in 2011. The red dot is candidate Mannon Trivedi's
home. The pretzel shapes in the middle are lines drawn in and around Reading. 

Yes, I can hear you yawning.

Really?

Maps?

Does this matter?

I promise you, it does.

Southeastern Pennsylvania, where I live, is a wonderfully diverse region, with wealthy Main Line communities just miles from urban blight, conservative white neighborhoods surrounding towns full of immigrants, universities and colleges scattered through towns, cities, suburbs.  

We have a high number of young voters, plenty of moderates, many Independents like me, and lots of passionate, politically savvy voters from every point on the spectrum.

Which makes it hard for the parties to keep control.

In a region like mine, the parties have two choices:

Offer candidates who appeal to both sides of the aisle.

Or carve up districts in ever more creative ways to ensure a wider margin.

For my own district, the 2011 redistricting meant that candidate Manan Trivedi found himself removed from his own constituency, with those who knew him best voting elsewhere in the 2012 election.  

Incumbent Jim Gerlach, in office since 2003, won the 2012 election , but discussed the implications of gerrymandering in an interviewthis year when he announced he would not be returning: 

"When you have 435 seats (in the House of Representatives) but only 50 are competitive, you only have 50 members who need to be flexible, and it gets harder and harder to find common ground,” he said. “And every 10 years when they re-district, more districts get a little bit safer."
 Gerlach said he recognized the irony of that statement coming from someone who has arguably benefitted from the re-drawing of a district that now includes parts of five counties, but not one entire county, but few would say his district has historically been “safe.”
 Democrats at the national level have repeatedly targeted the 6 District as “winnable” since 2002, and Gerlach’s margins of victory often have been ridiculously thin. Some national publications have, at times, called them the slimmest in the nation.
 (Perhaps that’s why Gerlach’s announcement that he will not run again made news across the country, including in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco.)

 We’ll soon find out if the 2011 gerrymander was enough to keep Gerlach’s GOP successor safe.

Yes, gerrymandering has been around as long as there have been elections.

The term was coined in Massachusetts, in 1812, when Governor Gerry signed a redistricting bill in Massachusetts to benefit his own party. One of the districts in Boston was said to look like a salamander, yielding the word-play that lingers: “Gerry-mander.”

But gerrymandering then was a crude science compared to the practice now.

With demographic research and computerized data-mining, politicians can draw district lines with far greater exactness, splitting opposition groups with amazing precision.

Both parties do it, often without apology. I was amazed to find discussions of potential gerrymanders offered on public websites, with detailed rationale and careful explanations of how outcomes could be controlled.

A direct consequence of this practice is congressional gridlock. As Gerlach said, if parties can guarantee control of particular districts, then they can choose the candidates for those districts with little attention to alternative views.

Incumbents benefit, as do party leaders.

Power is retained by those who play the game, while voters lose interest when they realize the outcome is rigged long before the general election.

 

to try the wheel visit All About Redistricting

A simple graphic device devised by Fair Vote demonstrates the reality of the game. A fair line can yield even results. A more deviously placed line can ensure half the voters are totally unrepresented. 

Civic groups in some states have begun to fight back.

In Arizona, the League of Women Voters was part of a successful citizen initiative to amend the state constitution to create the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission, providing for a non-partisan commission to determine election boundaries rather than the state legislature.

The first application of that amendment took place during the redistricting of 2011. At the same time, the state legislators filed suit against the commission and Arizona's Secretary of State (in Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission CV12-01211-PHX-PGR). 

The legislators argued that the commission itself is illegal. The suit was dismissed by the U. S. District Court, so the legislators have appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court reviewed the case on July 7, 2014; their conclusions could be announced sometime in October.

Press discussions of the situation would be funny if they weren’t so sad: citizens using legal remedies in an attempt to select the legislators; legislators suing their own state to maintain control.

That won’t happen here in Pennsylvania. We’re one of 26 states without the right to a citizen-initiated referendum.  

Which means in Pennsylvania the only recourse for citizens is to sue the state, as happened unsuccessfully in 2003, and with mixed results in 2013.

Which also means it’s highly unlikely our state legislature, or house representatives, are the people we would choose if the lines were drawn more fairly.

I know people – far too many – who say democracy in the US is dead.

Some days, I think they may be right. At least here in Pennsylvania.

A line from a Jack Johnson song keeps echoing in my head: 

Well, he tried to live, but he’s done trying
Not dead, but definitely dying. 

I know people - again, too many -  who say it's a waste of time to vote, since the outcomes are rigged and the candidates come to power owing favors to party leaders and corporate sponsors, with no interest in serving the public good. 

I understand their point. 

And when I dig into issues like gerrymandering, I find myself discouraged.

Yet – what’s the alternative?

I spent the weekend with the state board of the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania.

Even as we met, word came in from districts around the state where politicians are playing more games: pulling a candidate who looks unpopular and trying to insert someone voters don’t yet know. Just weeks before the elections.

Pulling out of agreed-on debates just days before the debate was to take place, refusing to answer voters’ questions and effectively silencing opponents who were eager to discuss issues together.

The work of democracy is complicated, costly, endlessly aggravating, often perplexing, too rarely rewarding.

The way forward is as convoluted, as hard to untangle, as my own District 6 boundaries. 

Even so, I'm convinced the alternative is worse.

Ways to engage:

All about Redistricting’s How Can the Public Engage offers a list of ways citizens can engage with the process, questions to ask about how boundaries are drawn, and more information about why this matters..

It’s also worth looking at candidate’s web pages (find them through Smart Voter in PA  or through Vote 411 in most other states), and it's worth spending some time studying incumbent’s voting records, and major contributors. Some candidates demonstrate a strong awareness that our processes are broken and need fixing, Others show a steady disregard for voters’ rights and abuses of process.

Make sure you’re registered (you can check that online) and if you know citizens who might have trouble registering, print out forms and help them fill and file them. The deadline, in Pennsylvania, is October 6.

Vote, and encourage others to vote.

Even if sometimes it feels pointless. 

This is the fifth in a series looking at specific issues of importance in state and local elections, as an extension of my 2012 series "What's Your Platform?" 

Earlier posts:  

What are Workers Worth, September 1, 2014
Back to School Lament, September 7, 2014
Privatization and Elementary Math, September 14,  2014
Who is Allowed to Vote? September 21, 2014 

As always, your thoughts and comments are welcome. Just click on   __comments below to see the comment option.