Tomorrow, Jan. 14th at 3 p.m. the VT House of Representatives will meet and they are scheduled to vote on whether or not to subvert the proposal of the Apportionment Board to create a map of single-member Vermont House districts.
A fight over voting legislation has reached a climax in Washington, D.C., where Democratic leadership is making passage of laws to federalize elections their top priority by even threatening to “nuke” the filibuster to make it happen.
“While most of the nation has moved on, the antidemocratic efforts to overturn the 2020 election have left scars in the people’s trust of our public institutions,” said Deputy Secretary of State Chris Winters.
It should be troubling to every Vermonter that the first step is to subvert the majority in favor of the Democratic Party’s map. Why aren’t we using the approved tri-partisan map as a starting point, since it already has the most support?
Last summer, Secretary of State Jim Condos wrote an article on our elections that he circulated around the state. Unfortunately, for readers sincerely concerned with the integrity of our elections, Condos’ letter was long on obfuscation and incendiary rhetoric and short on fact and reason.
New Hampshire’s Republican-controlled House of Representatives has approved a plan redrawing the state’s two congressional districts, brushing aside claims from Democrats that the political maps were gerrymandered. The reconfigured maps could hurt Democrat U.S. Rep. Chris Pappas.
RepresentUs, an activist group with a decidedly progressively flavored website, notes “high-threat states are ripe for rigged maps, but may see minor protections in their current political landscape, basic transparency requirements or simple legal standards for mapmakers.”
On Tuesday, the Government Operations Committee began taking testimony on the multi-member map approved by the Democrat minority of the Apportionment Board, rather than the single-member map approved by the majority of the Board — with the goal to get an initial draft of the map voted out by Thursday. The minority map is beneficial to the Democrats.
House Government Operations Chair Sarah Copeland-Hanzas (D-Bradford) has decided to advance the Democrat-favored map rejected by the Legislative Apportionment Board. She never even asked her committee which map to put forward — she made the decision alone — or behind closed doors.
Schumer brought voting bills to the Senate floor throughout 2021, only to see them fall to Republican filibusters who painted them as nothing more than a federal takeover of elections. He promised to bring them to the floor once again after the Senate returned from its winter recess.
In the freest nation in the world, our system of government and our very liberty depend on free and fair elections. Whether selecting a mayor or the president of the United States, every American must be able to trust the process, or the democratic system itself breaks down.
Vermont has new seats opening at the state, local and federal levels for the 2022 elections, and Republicans hoping to make gains are feeling emboldened by new polling numbers and a series of blunders by the Biden administration.