McMillen Missouians hope to CLEAN up politics/title> </head> <body> <h2>RURAL ROUTES/Margot Ford McMillen</h2> <h1>Missourians Hope to CLEAN Up Politics</h1> <p>The first Wednesday in January is a holiday for some Missourians. We get up early, pack jugs of coffee into the car, stop at the quick shop for boxes of donuts and drive down to Jeff City to greet the lawmakers as they return for the opening of the General Assembly. We check in at the offices of the progressives, which only takes a few minutes because there are only a few. Then we go to the offices of our so-called representatives. Our message is simple: We’ll be watching you! <p > As the day rolls out, the scene can get pretty appalling. The guys are in a festive mood … let the party begin! Food and libations, provided by lobbyists and corporations, are everywhere. After the doors are locked for the supper break, cigar smoke wafts through the hallways. If you’ve never gone to your capitol on the first day of session, you ought to check it out.<p > But back to those progressives — why are they so few? Until the last few elections, Missouri was a bellwether, swinging between R and D governments. <p > Now, however, we are a “trifecta” state, with a state senate that leans Republican 25-9, a House that leans Republican 117-46, and a Republican governor. Our “trifecta” status is shared with a lot of other places — 26 states have R trifectas and 7 have Ds. In only 17 states are the branches of government divided.<p > It would be easy to blame the disparities on rigged voting machines or the new voter ID law, and I’m not saying those bad policies are off the hook, but here’s one that might be easier to fix: the jagged laws of legislative districts, gerrymandering their ways across hills and dales, dividing neighborhoods and natural geographies. The citizen commissions who draw the lines have the edge, and the line-drawers are entrenched interests chosen by the heads of the political parties. The process takes place after each census is finalized.<p > It’s pretty easy to see how to draw lines to favor one party. Let’s say your town is a perfect square, with population evenly distributed throughout. Down the middle of town, north to south, is Main Street and everyone west of Main votes Democrat while everyone east of Main votes Republican. To make two evenly-distributed districts, you’d draw the line from east to west, bisecting town. Each district would have the same number of folks—Ds and Rs—on each side of Main Street.<p > If someone wants to make a heavily D district and a heavily R district, they just draw the line in a different way, maybe from the northwest corner to the south east, making the square into two triangles. Each district, or triangle, would have a big gob from one side of Main and a sliver from the other. <p > The more districts you have, the easier it is to mess with neighborhoods. Take your same square, bisected by Main Street, and play with the neighborhoods to make three districts. You can “crack” them, dividing, say, a large D neighborhood into two insignificant ones clinging on to large R neighborhoods. Or you can “pack” them, combining the large number of Ds together where one D can be elected, but leaving two R neighborhoods to decide two elections. Cracking and packing—it’s a fun exercise, and one you can show your friends.<p > It gets worse, though, because districts that are so very uneven have trouble attracting candidates from sides destined to lose. And if they find a candidate, they’ll have trouble finding funds to run a campaign. Nobody, after all, wants to see their investment go up in smoke. In 2016, 66 R districts and 31 D Missouri districts had only one candidate, meaning that 97 districts (3.2 million Missourians) didn’t have two candidates to vote for. This demoralizing situation is part of the explanation that voter turnout stays around 36%. Only 6 districts were evenly split so it could have gone either direction. <p > Now, however, a coalition of organizations is backing an effort to do away with the old system and create a new way of redistricting. Gathering names for an effort called “CLEAN,” they are hoping to build a movement that will insist on a party-free system with lines drawn by the state demographer. CLEAN has other points: Take money out of elections by lowering and tightening campaign finance limits, limit gifts to lobbyists to $5, and require elected officials to wait two years before becoming lobbyists. The initiative is backed by organizations as diverse as AFSCME, Sierra Club, Missouri Rural Crisis Center, NAACP, Planned Parenthood and many others. If they are successful in gathering 250,000 names and passing the initiative, the system could be voted on and in place in time for the next redistricting, sometime around 2022, after the next census. In the meantime, we’ll have to depend on publicity for CLEAN — or for more coffee and donuts — to wake us up, re-invigorate our unfair system, and move this government in a better direction.</p> <p><em>Margot Ford McMillen farms near Fulton, Mo., and co-hosts “Farm and Fiddle” on sustainable ag issues on KOPN 89.5 FM in Columbia, Mo. Email: margotmcmillen@gmail.com.</em></p> <p align="center"><b>From The Progressive Populist, January 1-15, 2018</b></p> <center> <hr width="98%" /> </center> <p align="center"><a href="index.html">Populist.com</a></p> <center> <p><a href="http://progressivepopulist.blogspot.com/">Blog</a> | <a href="current.html">Current Issue</a> | <a href="back.html">Back Issues</a> | <a href="essays.html">Essays</a> | <a href="links.html">Links</a> </p> <p><a href="about.html"> About the Progressive Populist</a> | <a href="subs.html">How to Subscribe</a> | <a href="contact.html">How to Contact Us</a> </p> <hr /> <b>Copyright © 2017 The Progressive Populist</b> <p> PO Box 819, Manchaca TX 78652</p> </center> <p> </p> </body> </html>