GREEN BAY (NBC 26) — If you've never heard of the terms 'redistricting' or 'gerrymandering', you're not alone.
"Most folks don't really understand redistricting, how it happens, or when it happens and most times they've just trusted that it happened in a way that benefited them," said Carlene Bechen, the organizing director of the Wisconsin Fair Maps Coalition.
Redistricting happens once every ten years when states re-draw their congressional districts after the decennial U.S census. The term 'gerrymandering' refers to the way political parties alter the districts in order to manipulate the outcomes of elections.
Bechen says gerrymandering occurs across the country and both parties have taken part.
"Both Democrats and Republicans have gerrymandered maps to sustain their own power in state legislatures and also in the Congress," Bechen said.
The Wisconsin Fair Maps Coalition is a non-profit organization that advocates for a non-partisan redistricting process. Bechen says she's seen voters of both parties who are concerned about gerrymandering in Wisconsin.
"There's a lot of angst among voters of both parties who don't think what's happening now is right and a lot of momentum behind getting maps drawn in a much more responsive way," Bechen said.
While the state was set to re-draw the congressional districts again this year, the Senate is considering a bill that would allow them to delay the redistricting process until 2022 since U.S census data was delayed due to the pandemic. This means the districts would stay the same in the next election cycle.
In the meantime, the People's Map Commission is aimed at gathering public input that the state legislature can refer to when re-drawing the districts. The People's Map Commission is an independent commission that was selected by a non-partisan panel of judges. Although the commission was created through an executive order by Governor Evers, it has no affiliation with any party.
Anyone cansubmit their own district maps to the commission or give their input on the redistricting process. The commission will use this data and U.S census data to submit a non-partisan map for the state legislature to consider.
"What we utilize is a lot of information from people of Wisconsin," said Christopher Ford, the chairman of the People's Maps Commission. "They've submitted their own maps, they've told us where those lines fall, so what we're trying to do is create a conglomerate of all those maps and create a heat map of where those lines should be drawn."
To learn more or give your input, you can visit the People's Map Commission website.
