LETTER: For those who value fairness, skewed voting maps abhorrent

To Ozaukee Press:

Covid has highlighted our interdependence on one another, the fragile systems supporting us, including earth’s ecosystems, and government’s role in our progress or decline as human beings. In my 57 years of voting, I sometimes wondered if I made good choices. Now, in this electronic age, I’ve learned how to access What’s On My Ballot, candidate websites and League of Women Voter sites. I attend Zoom meetings where priorities for fairness and the common good are shared.

Fairness is personal for me as I directly benefitted from Martin Luther King’s non-violent struggle for fairness, which eventually gave us the Civil Rights Act allowing me employment advancement as a woman to earn a living wage that supported my three children and me after my husband died in 1975. This is why the gerrymandered maps from 2010 census data are so abhorrent to me. They were drawn to circumvent voters who might oppose self-serving agendas.

Wisconsin county boards allowed ballot referendums calling for fair maps to be drawn with 2020 census data and a majority of voters asked for a fair process, but a majority of Ozaukee County Board members denied a fair maps ballot referendum.    

It’s also time our education systems tell the truth of the cruel treatment of Native Americans and Blacks in our country’s founding and beyond. We cannot learn from past horrors if they are whitewashed.

Vote informed. Ozaukee Dems, Grassroots North Shore and League of Women Voters have each helped me be a more informed, responsible voter.

Marcia Kaminski
Grafton