FAIR Maps: AFL-CIO Gerrymander Puts Politics Over Communities

FAIR Maps: AFL-CIO Gerrymander Puts Politics Over Communities

FAIR Maps: AFL-CIO Gerrymander Puts Politics Over Communities

Union, Democratic Activists Attempt to Fool Michigan Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission

LANSING, MI, August 5, 2021 – FAIR Maps Michigan today asked members of Michigan’s Independent Redistricting Commission to reject the AFL-CIO’s laughable “Fair Maps Project,” which transparently cuts communities in pieces to artificially enhance one political party’s chances to win elections.

“The Michigan Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission was created to put an end to gerrymandering, but the AFL-CIO is asking them to cut the state into strange pieces to deliver wins for their political allies,” said Tony Daunt, Executive Director with FAIR Maps.  “Voters created the commission to deliver fair maps, flatly rejecting the creation of oddly shaped districts, which were used to great effect by supporters of the 2018 amendment to Michigan’s Constitution, not to inject gerrymandering with steroids.  Commissioners should flatly reject the AFL-CIO’s partisan gerrymander.”

The proposed maps delivered today by the AFL-CIO take gerrymandering to remarkable new lows, including:

  • The AFL-CIO cuts the campus of the University of Michigan into two pieces.  Students living on the north part of campus are in a totally different district than their fellow students a few residence halls over;
  • The proposed gerrymander breaks Clinton County (just north of Lansing) into three pieces, instead of the single state House district to which it now belongs;
  • The AFL-CIO gerrymander cuts the city of Kalamazoo and even Livingston County’s small Genoa Township into three parts to dilute one party’s vote and to enhance the partisan vote of another;
  • The union’s requested gerrymander puts residents in Sault Ste. Marie in the eastern Upper Peninsula in the same state Senate District as Ludington on the western shores of Lake Michigan;
  • The AFL-CIO is demanding commissioners put the city of Lansing in the same district as the city of Battle Creek, while demanding East Lansing residents land in another district altogether; and more.

“Michiganders deserve fair maps, not the AFL-CIO’s partisan gerrymander,” said Daunt.

FAIR Maps is a watchdog team created to ensure Michigan’s independent redistricting commission serves the interests of all Michigan residents. 

FAIR Maps participates in every aspect of Michigan’s redistricting process to achieve FAIR – Fair and Independent Redistricting – plans that appropriately reflect the diversity of Michigan’s population and the communities where they live.

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