Gerrymandering is the “practice intended to establish a political advantage for a particular party or group by manipulating district boundaries.”
- Read a summary of the general rationale for why redistricting is urgently needed from All IN for Democracy.
- Follow the work of the Indiana Coalition for Independent Redistricting, of which HEC is a proud member.
- Save these dates
- September 18th: Coalition rally for redistricting reform + House Elections Committee on the new state legislative & Congressional maps
- September 27th: Senate Elections Committee on the new state legislative & Congressional maps
The Case for Redistricting Reform from an Environmental Lens
Regardless of your politics, you want to live in a community where there is little to no risk to your drinking water and to your air. But gerrymandering provides at least four barriers to Indiana making foresighted decisions for our environment.
Number 1
When 92% of the seats in the Indiana State Senate are uncompetitive, as was the case in the 2016 Elections, it depresses interest not just in voting but in civic engagement in general. And when large portions of the public are demoralized, the public voice will be necessarily lower than it ought to be, and the special interest voice will necessarily encompass a broader proportion of the messages that lawmakers are hearing.
Number 2
Non-competitive districts lead to situations where lawmakers can afford to ignore a large degree of discontent by a portion of their constituency.
We saw this play out in this year’s deeply controversial anti-solar energy bill, Senate Enrolled Act 309. A legislative aide told HEC that the senator that he works for had received “dozens and dozens of calls opposed to that bill” and zero – zero in favor of it, and yet voted for the bill anyway.
Number 3
With districts that are drawn to be non-competitive in the general election, the fight often moves to the primary campaign – ultimately yielding ideological decision-making in the Statehouse.
As a 2007 Stanford Business School study concluded, “relative to general-election voters, primary voters favor more ideologically extreme candidates.” And what does this mean for the environment? Legislation today is far more ideological in a nature than 10 years ago.
Number 4
Urban environmental interests are often diluted due to gerrymandering.
The influence of urban areas in Indiana has been seriously reduced by the carving out of a single city – Indianapolis — in such a way that rural and suburban areas dwarf urban interests. We see that in Indiana State Senate District 36 (SD 36) as an example. It encompasses not one, not two, but arguably five communities of interest. The more urban parts of this district have more of an interest in recycling, water quality protection, and mass transit. And yet the prior Senator representing this severely gerrymandered district voted to tie the hands of city governments to curtail plastic bag waste and that prior senator in SD 36 emphasized road widening over a robust mass transit plan.
What HEC has been doing
The Hoosier Environmental Council is a proud member of the “Indiana Coalition for Independent Redistricting,” which is a diverse array of organizations and citizens from all over Indiana who are united in their quest for the Indiana General Assembly to enact badly needed redistricting reform.
HEC has participated in Rallies and Committee hearings for reform, taken part in coalition/strategy meetings, facilitated speakers for rallies, livestreamed coalition events, spoken up in press conferences (see 19:40), testified before Committees (see 39:10), met lawmakers as they were beginning the new session, organized an online forum, and more.
Learn More
Watch this video on redistricting solutions.