This commentary is by John Freitag of South Strafford, former chair of the Strafford Selectboard; he’s currently secretary of the Strafford Area Lions Club, historian of the Strafford Historical Society, and treasurer for the Universalist Society of Strafford.
Every 10 years after the federal census, legislative districts are reapportioned to make sure they comply with the need for equal representation.
In some states, like Texas, this means an exercise in what is known as “gerrymandering” — creating convoluted districts for political advantage. This year, Republican-dominated legislatures have taken gerrymandering to new levels throughout the country.
While the courts in recent years have been pretty lenient in allowing states to create their own districts, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Dec. 6 it is suing the state of Texas over its new congressional map.
Fortunately, this is not the case in Vermont, where, if anything, we are headed in the direction of greater fairness in our elections. In a rare bit of agreement across the political spectrum, the Vermont Legislative Apportionment Board recommended going to single-member House and Senate districts with a Progressive, a Democrat, and two Republicans voting in the majority.
Among those in favor of single-member districts were the liberal Vermont Public Interest Research Group and the conservative Ethan Allen Institute, which found unusual common ground in making our system more democratic, more competitive and more accountable.
There is of course pushback and, as in the case in Texas, those currently in power tend to loathe change that might possibly lessen their chances at reelection or lessen the power of the dominant party.
The main argument currently being used in Vermont against single legislative districts is, however, a bit of a ruse. It is that single-member districts lessen the ability to represent towns in the Legislature.
In fact, it is hard to see why representatives in single-member districts would not be able to advocate for the interests of the towns they represent any less than now. On the other hand, it is easy to see in the current system why towns that have more than one representative or senator get an unfair advantage of unequal advocacy.
It is also important to note in all this that the issue of whether towns or individuals should be the basis of representation in the Legislature was settled in the 1960s, when our system went from each town having one representative (where our largest city, Burlington, had the exact same representation as our state’s tiniest town) to a system where each citizen would be more equally represented, as required by the U.S. Constitution.
Some states in our nation, by the way they draw districts, are doing all they can to hinder having competitive elections that are fair and engage our citizens. This leads to disaffection and disillusionment with our whole experiment in democracy, which these days seems very much in peril.
To its credit, the Vermont Legislative Apportionment Board in a 4-3 vote, with Democratic, Progressive and Republican support, took a positive step for increasing citizen participation in elections and improving our system of government by recommending single-member House and Senate Districts. They should be commended, and their recommendation for single-member districts adopted.
