Michigan Supreme Court says let voters decide gerrymandering proposal
Source: Detroit Free Press
LANSING – A proposal to create a bipartisan commission to draw Michigan's political lines -- intended to stop political gerrymandering -- will appear on the Nov. 6 ballot, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled late Tuesday.
The ruling was a major victory to the Voters Not Politicians group, which had gathered more than 400,000 signatures in an effort to put the proposal on the ballot. The proposal would shift the responsibility for drawing district lines from the party in control of the Legislature to a 13-member bipartisan commission.
"Because VNP’s proposal would leave the form and structure of the government essentially as it was envisioned in the 1963 Constitution, it was not equivalent to a new constitution and was therefore a permissible amendment," the justices ruled in a 4-3 decision.
The highly anticipated ruling came in a lawsuit filed by a group backed by the Michigan Chamber of Commerce against a ballot proposal that would shift how legislative district lines are drawn from the party in control of the Michigan Legislature to a bipartisan commission.
Read more: https://www.freep.com/story/news/politics/2018/07/31/michigan-supreme-court-gerrymandering-ruling/872133002/
Make no mistake. This is a big deal. There is much work still to be done prior to November, but the surge continues unabated!
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