Things have changed. In 2018 voters went to the polls and approved a constitutional amendment that puts legislative redistricting in the hands of 13 unelected citizens chosen at random from a pool of partisan and allegedly nonpartisan activist applicants.
The goal, left-wing activists told us, was to end gerrymandering. They wanted to take bizarrely shaped legislative districts and make them a thing of the past. Let voters pick their politicians, they said, not the other way around.
Those same liberal politicos are singing a different tune today.
Freedom Fund’s Greg McNeilly writes this week in the Detroit News:
“Commissioners are under withering fire from progressive activists to ignore city, municipal and county boundaries when they draw maps and to instead rely on so-called ‘communities of interest’ built around progressive political goals and identity politics.
“Driving the push to gerrymander the maps are elites at the University of Michigan who published a report (with the assistance of the Democratic secretary of state) that encourages the commission to draw districts based on things like shared support for specific legislation, cultural bonds, and something as ambiguous as ‘a shared vision of the future.’ This is gerrymandering manifest.”
Instead of maps drawn by men and women elected by the people, we may soon see maps drawn by men and women pushing a very specific, very liberal political legislative agenda.
The ball’s in the Commission’s court. The rest of us? We’re left encouraging them to do the right thing and to end gerrymandering – not make it worse.
For Freedom,
Tori Sachs
Executive Director
Michigan Freedom Fund
MLive: Michigan mistake means up to 650,000 could be forced to repay unemployment benefits
Michigan allowed workers to claim federal jobless benefits for unapproved reasons, so the Unemployment Insurance Agency is asking nearly 650,000 people to resubmit paperwork to see if they’re still eligible.
Capitol Confidential: Detroit’s Unemployment 8.1% before Pandemic, Spiked to 40.4% in May 2020
In the midst of the state of Michigan’s first stay-at-home emergency order issued in 2020, the city of Detroit’s unemployment rate rocketed to more than 40%.
Detroit News: Jacques: Finally, scrutiny for nursing home deaths
A Michigan AG has agreed to take a deep dive into the number of nursing home residents who died of COVID-19.It’s about time someone did this, but it’s not the attorney general, Dana Nessel, who’s taking up the case.It’s the auditor general, Doug Ringler.
Iosco County News-Herald: Michigan Supreme Court nixes SOS Benson’s redistricting extension request
The Michigan Supreme Court denied a request from Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and the Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission to grant an extension for redrawing the state’s district map.
