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What do 89%, 85%, 81%, 80% have in common?

Kirk Bangstad
06/12/20

What do 89%, 85%, 81%, 80% have in common? These are the percentages of people who overwhelmingly voted to end gerrymandering in Rhinelander, Eagle River, Arbor Vitae, and Boulder Junction, respectively.

Gerrymandering is the corrupt practice of drawing electoral lines to make sure your party wins an election, kinda like giving yourself all the aces in a card game. Most other Northwoods towns represented by Rob Swearingen passed the measure buy over 70%.

Slam dunk right? The dude’s entire district overwhelmingly agrees on this, so of course he’d vote with them right? Especially when it involves election fairness. I mean, who doesn’t want fair elections?

Rob Swearingen, that’s who. Rob Swearingen is against fair elections. He says it plainly in the video below.

Read that again, Rob Swearingen is against fair elections.

It’s like I read the sentence i just wrote and my brain exploded. What the hell has happened to my state when people actually admit this and get re-elected?

His reasoning about upholding the constitution is absolute horse fertilizer, given that Iowa has practically the same constitution and they have fair elections. Of course the real reason is that if the map in the 34th assembly district were drawn fairly, and included Lac Du Flambeau, as it should because LDF is included in any other regional map of the Lakeland area, it would be harder for him to win.

Republicans, of which there are so many in the Northwoods, I beg you to watch the video below by our own Channel 12 NBC affiliate, WJFW, not a left wing internet site.

WE voted to end gerrymandering. Republicans and Democrats. WE DID IT, TOGETHER, on ballot initiatives over the last few years. We actually agreed on something and it involves fairness, a concept we all can get on board with. We are not so different after all, although politicians like to divide us.

Republicans, it’s ok to reject Rob Swearingen at the ballot box in November if he doesn’t share your core American value of fairness. I’ll be on the ballot too, and I’ll vote for fairness every damn time.

Please share this video below so we all can see who has damaged our state’s democracy so badly in the last 10 years.

https://www.wjfw.com/storydetails/20200427181053/nonpartisan_redistricting_referendums_pass_overwhelmingly_in_northern_wisconsin_but_local_lawmakers_are_divided

Written by Kirk Bangstad on 06/12/20

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