001of the League of Women Voters of the Ann Arbor area I welcome you to tonight's debate featuring members of the high school debate team from Dexter high school the students will be presenting for and against arguments on proposal 2 which encompasses in an independent Redistricting Commission initiative proposal 2 as it states will be on voter ballot in the general election on Tuesday November 6th the League of Women Voters is very pleased to sponsor these debates the league is a nonpartisan civic and political organization that encourages informed and active participation of all citizens in government we also work to increase understanding of major public policy issues and work to strengthen and broaden knowledge about our form of government and democracy the league does not support candidates or parties we do take stands however on issues that
002we have studied one of the league's important goals is to assist voters in making informed choices at the polls and thus we bring you tonight's program we are broadcasting from the studio's of CTN of Ann Arbor under the direction of the network's production professionals volunteers from the League of Women Voters are managing tonight's debate our moderator this evening is John Chamberlin John will now introduce the participants and explain the debate format and guidelines John thank you Donna we are pleased to have the debate team from Dexter High School participating in tonight's debate organized by the League of Women Voters tonight for students from Dexter will be debating ballot proposal 18 - - which if approved by voters will amend the Michigan Constitution to establish an independent Citizens Committee to draw new district boundaries for Michigan's
003congressional state Senate and State House districts following every census dextra high school has been involved in competitive debate at both the state and national levels since 1994 at that time the team has won the prestigious most prestigious awards in the debate world including several state championships as well as national recognition it is won the George Segal Miller award for being the best overall debate team in state multiple times and last year it qualified a public forum team to the National Speech and Debate tournament as extra coach English department chair Deb Marsh has been teaching and coaching debate and forensics in the state of Michigan since the 1983-84 school year she has been named debate coach of the year four times she was inducted into the Michigan speech coaches Hall of Fame in 1995 and most
004recently her colleagues honored her legacy with a name trophy the Marche to be awarded annually for the best public forum debaters in Michigan nine members of the Dexter debate team have participated in the preparations for tonight's debate although only four will be seen on camera the four students who were here from tonight are on my right the team arguing in favor of Proposition 2 Rose Reilly and Zane aready and on my left arguing in opposition to proposal to Ethan Dunn and Hannah Jacobson harm the rules for the debate are as follows each side will have six minutes to present their opening arguments beginning with the four side each side will then have four minutes to respond to the other sides our opening arguments beginning again with the four side I will then direct questions to
005the teams beginning with the against side and alternating who responds first to a question each team will have 90 seconds to respond to each question and we will spend about eight minutes on Q&A in closing each team will have two minutes for a closing statement beginning with the against team and timekeepers from the League of Women Voters will keep us on schedule by reminding speakers how much time they have left in each segment so let's begin the ballot wording for proposal two is as follows a proposed constitutional amendment to establish a commission of citizens with exclusive authority to adopt district boundaries for the Michigan Senate Michigan House of Representatives and US Congress every 10 years this proposed constitutional amendment would first create a commission of 13 registered voters randomly selected by the Secretary of State
006for each who self-identify as affiliated with the two major political parties and five who self-identify as unaffiliated with major political parties secondly it will prohibit partisan office holders and candidates their employees certain relatives and lobbyists from serving as commissioners 3 it will establish new districting criteria including geographically compact and contiguous districts of equal population reflecting Michigan's diverse population and communities of interest districts shall not provide distant proportionate advantage to political parties or candidates and finally it will require an appropriation of funds for Commission operations and Commissioner compensation with that we begin to debate with the opening statement of the team that supports passage the proposal - good evening everyone my name is rose Reilly and my partner in saying reading I would like to thank the League of Women Voters and mr. Chamberlain for the
007opportunity for my school to participate in this debate My partner and I are arguing in favor of proposal 2 as mr. Chamberlain said in his introduction this proposal creates a nonpartisan committee to redraw congressional district lines to better represent Michigan voters currently every ten years the state legislature is charged with creating congressional districts the problem is that partisan legislators use their political power to draw districts that disproportionately benefit candidates from their own party this means that disadvantaged populations are grouped into districts that do not adequately represent them taking away the impact of their voting voice according to the Princeton gerrymandering project Michigan is one of the most gerrymandered states in the u.s. a Gallup study done in 2017 reports that 45% of Michigan voters identify as Democrats or as only 38% of Michigan voters identify
008as Republican despite the majority of Michigan voters identifying as Democrats we have an overwhelming Republican majority in our state legislature and federal representatives this disparity is explained by the gerrymandering of congressional districts that gives Republican candidates and advantage over Democrats and elections in the status quo Democrats and gerrymandered districts have very little say in who their representatives will be this has detrimental effects on political representation and therefore undermines the principle of democracy by making the process of voting less impactful on the results of the election in order to remedy this undemocratic and unfair system proposal two's nonpartisan committee will be chosen through a lengthy selection process the applicants would be selected through statistical weighing process that will match the demographics of the committee with the state as closely as possible therefore a committee that best
009represents the population and the interests of the state will be formed we believe that the citizens of Michigan should vote in favor of the proposal because of its transparency a September 25th article from the Center for Michigan revealed how business interests and GOP insiders shaped michigan political boundaries behind closed doors during the 2011 district map drawing state legislators used supposedly nonpartisan organization called the michigan redistricting resource group which under a federal lawsuit has now been exposed as a group of private GOP consultants proposal to will stop this kind of clandestine behavior as it requires that the new commission hold 10 public hearings across the state to solicit information from the general public this in itself is a powerful reason to vote to adopt the proposal our democracy is based on an educated electorate who participates
010fully in the process under proposal to the electorate is finally reintegrated into the process of creating congressional districts in a public and transparent way which allows for the electorate to know and understand the process a second reason the voters in Michigan should adopt the proposal is because when partisan politicians draw the maps minority party voters cannot be according to Michigan Radio Zoe Clarke Democrats won over half the votes for State House in 2016 but Republicans won most of the seats when the Republican legislature drew the map in 2010 they tried to make sure that their voters were in a majority in each district lumping together the Democratic voters so their votes didn't matter the idea that a political party would bias the district map seems unimaginable under a democracy however we are not the only
011state in this situation twelve states have already passed proposals on nonpartisan committees to draw new district maps and there are five ballot proposals in other states this November to change the way that states draw their district lines in order to allow voters to choose their politicians instead of politicians choosing their voters we must adopt proposal to the third reason the voters in Michigan should adopt the proposal is because of the emphasis placed on objective fairness measures for newly drawn districts according to the Center for Michigan the proposal establishes new redistricting criteria including geographically compact and contiguous districts of equal population reflecting Michigan's diverse population and communities of interest and the districts created under proposal to shall not provide disproportionate advantage to political parties or candidates these requirements will act as a mission statement for the
012committee and will guide their decision on which map to select for the state there are guidelines concerning compactness contiguity and fairness of districts under the status quo however these are mere guidelines and not the guiding principle for creating districts as they will be under proposal two in order to make Michigan a state where fair and democratic elections where voters choose their politicians and not the other way around it is imperative that Michigan voters vote to adopt proposal two in November thank you now the opening statement those arguing in opposition good evening everyone My partner and I stand in opposition of proposal 2 which aims to redraw congressional lines through a nonpartisan committee under the current system partisan gerrymandering creates congressional districts that tend to favor a particular partisan group proposal to aims to prevent gerrymandering
013by creating a committee that will redraw congressional districts in a nonpartisan way though we agree that the present system is not perfect the process for redistricting outlined in proposal 2 has a number of flaws within the specifics of the proposal we disagree with the proposal for three reasons one it is expensive the committee is made of unexperienced individuals and it won't solve the problems it claims to address in order to understand why we believe this will begin our argumentation with our first point proposal 2 will be expensive according to the Detroit Free Press the Commission is expected to cost five point five million dollars a year this money will be used to pay Commission salaries the cost of the selection process and the creation and operation of the committee the money to support the commission
014would be appropriated to the Secretary of State's budget although five point five million dollars sounds like a lot of money the reality is that it would likely cost much more both California and Arizona have nonpartisan commissions very similar to proposal two and both states have ended up spending much more than they had predicted according to the citizens Research Foundation of Michigan in California the cost of their first try using a citizen Commission was about thirteen point eight million dollars around four million dollars was used for the state's select extensive selection process and three million dollars was used for developing the redistricting plan the remaining expenditures were for costs that occurred after the plans were adopted particularly legal expenses Michigan's proposal will likely face legal battles if it is adopted this money will come out of
015the general fund which affects other programs like road repair and education taxpayer money is crucial in sustaining many social programs in Michigan so the added cost of fighting legal battles and the selection process for nonpartisan commissions a disadvantageous and be considered by voters before going to the polls secondly the proposal does not require anyone to have experience training education skills or expertise according to the Ballinger report selection as a commissioner is based entirely on an applicant's geographic residence and the demographic characteristics they possess along with a lot of random luck supporters say Commission selection is akin to jury selection proposal 2 does not even require a face-to-face interview this is in sharp contrast with a thorough interview process that applicants for independent redistricting commissions have in both California and Arizona additionally the citizens Research Foundation
016of Michigan explains that the majority of the Commission members are unlikely to have any sort of educational background in policy ethnography or other fields relevant for working on the redistricting process the process of redistricting is involved in complex it requires a depth of understanding and all factors that make a fair district and how to apply all those qualifications to an entire state map with little experience in policy for redistricting it is unlikely that the committee will be able to effectively redraw congressional districts without being prone to bias in Arizona they hired a consultant to assist their inexperienced committee in the involved process according to the Detroit Free Press the Arizona's Commission work and maps drawn were affected by partisan politics the Commission hired a Republican leaning consultant that affected how the committee members through the
017congressional districts Andy Minkoff a Scottsdale Democrat who sat on the Arizona's first redistricting commission said the change was a step forward because it made the process transparent and gave citizens a chance to be heard but partisan politics infected the Commission's work and affected the maps it drew in 2001 we were very clearly manipulated by a Republican leading consultant the Commission hired Minkoff said finally it is completely impossible to eliminate gerrymandering under the status quo because the locations in which Democrats live in the state of Michigan will necessitate gerrymandering if our aim is to adequately represent them in congressional bodies according to the Detroit News democratic voters tend to be clustered in urban areas while Republicans are spread out more uniformly across the state since Democrats are not spread out throughout the state in the same
018way that Republicans are it would be difficult to create many contested districts without gerrymandering finally through pass precedent nonpartisan committees have shown to be fairly ineffective at preventing extreme partisan in politics according to Jason Barraza a democratic political consultant in Phoenix the Commission has not reduced extreme partnership partisanship in Arizona politics the committee was affected by partisanship bias and struggle to work effectively past precedent shows that the michigan this michigan committee will probably end up failing to create contested districts and prevent gerrymandering in michigan in review Michigan voters should not vote to adopt proposal 2 because of the unexpected costs the lack of experience of the committee members and the impossibility of ever truly solving for gerrymandering it is also important to take into account the press precedent of other states that have enacted similar
019policies to proposal 2 when voting for or against the current proposal spending a large sum of money on a commission to create a system that is prone to flaws and potential gerrymandering is not beneficial to Michigan voters therefore we stand in opposition to provide proposal to thank you and now the response off the conside makes some good arguments they are certainly not without contention that being said let's look at the first argument about this being an unexpected cost they compare us to states like Arizona in California and how the cost is higher however currently the proposal allocates 5.5 million dollars each year to the cost of the committee this is only 0.1% of Michigan's total budget even if this number would be doubled it would still be a miniscule PI's price to pay for a
020more fair in just democracy in fact I'll reference Winston Churchill's words a democracy is the worst form of government except for all of the other ones we cannot create a government that is perfect and there is no way for us to eliminate bias however having a committee which is less partisan than the current way that we redraw congressional district lines is certainly a step in the right direction and going to help ensure voter representation now moving on to their next point about inexperienced committee members the lack of accountability I have three responses to responses to this first of all just because somebody on the committee has entirely held office doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad thing if anything it's a benefit because it reduces the bias of that individual member if they had held office
021previously that means there are probably more likely to having biases and alternative motives my second response is in accordance with all things considered Michigan Radio they say that there's a lot of resources that will go towards helping the Commission form its final redistricting plan the proposal includes language that will allow members to hire staff and consultants including legal representation to assist with data collection and analysis in addition the public will have plenty of input the proposal requires a minimum of 15 public hearings throughout the planning process the proposal ensures that this committee will have available resources to make the best Congressional Maps possible the committee serves as a way to have the least bias my third response is to address accountability the committee can still be held accountable if they are to collude with lobbyists
022or other special interest groups in such occasion they can be kicked off of the committee off of reprimand Ettore action now moving on to my third point which is that we won't completely solve this problem they give Arizona and as an example of how bias can still affect the process however keep in mind Arizona had two Democrats two Republicans in one ardent partisan member on the committee we have five nonpartisan members on the committee creating the largest represented group so ultimately we feel like there will be less bias they also say that we can't move voters based because they live in certain areas however due to the Voting Rights Act we have to establish minority districts which have been used as Democrat packing areas where we put in a lot of Democratic voters so they
023have less representation if we vote YES on this proposal we can move them out of these districts giving better representation to Democratic voters ultimately if we reject this proposal it's highly likely there will be and there will be no other solution to this burden to our democracy we agree with Nancy Wang and an armored attorney it's certainly not going to be a panacea but it's a big step forward compared to what we have right now it's night and day it's infinitely better for these reasons we strongly urge you all to vote pro on proposal - thank you okay your response to start my rebuttal I think it is important to address that both sides of this debate agree that gerrymandering is a problem furthermore it is necessary to consider the fact that eliminating some of
024the carefully constructed district lines that our opponents are calling gerrymandering in this is highly unlikely to be solved by voting for proposal two in 1965 the Voting Rights Act included the requirement for majority minority districts to be created in order to prevent the dilution of minorities voting strength for example congressional district 14 is recognized as one of the most gerrymandered districts in Michigan because of the Democratic packing that has occurred in that minority district however the Commission will have to create minority districts under proposal two because the state is still responsible for following federal laws another claim the pro makes is that the committee will be nonpartisan the assumption that the committee will actually be nonpartisan is highly unprovable no one is completely nonpartisan everyone has their own personal biases past experiences and exposure to
025the two major political parties which will inherently influence their ideology thus proposal two is too idealistic moving on to their pros reputations to our case we start with the cost of proposal two firstly the cost being point one percent of the Michigan general fund is still a substantial amount of money that will be taken out of other programs and that is without considering the potential increase in cost due to lawsuits remember this is millions of dollars which should be going to the reconstruction of our roads funding of social programs or funding our education system the pro side brings up the point that the proposal will only cost point one percent of our state budget however if the point one percent cannot prevent gerrymandering consequently not fulfilling the purpose of the proposal then it's a waste
026of taxpayer dollars especially when they were put especially when they can't quantify the effectiveness of the proposal moving on to the problems with citizen-led districting although the committee requires a of experience and policy this can lead to a map that is poorly drawn regardless of bias the Secretary of State can hire congressional mapping experts for the committee that can be biased or favoring one side remember the Arizona example that we read you in case where the state hired a party affiliated committee consultant who was able to influence the way the committee decided to redraw the districts while proposal to maybe a different process remember partisan bias is unavoidable these committee members also don't have any experience in congressional line mapping or in policy we agree that the members of the committee should not have held
027any previous political position however policy education is important in order to draft new congressional lines on their point about committee accountability while collusion is reprimand abble we have no insurance if we are dissatisfied with the committee's draft the only alternative would be lengthy legal battles which will add to the cost of the proposal as I mentioned earlier thank you and I urge you to reconsider proposal - thank you thank you well now I'll pose some questions to the teams beginning with with those of you who opposed proposition 2 and go to the point that you were just talking about of the ability of the committee to be independent and the argument here I think is that that it is important to create a level playing field for electoral politics as level as we can get
028it so that bias isn't built in to the election and subsequently to the legislature enter the law and you may disagree with that in principle but I didn't hear it but if you do tell us and secondly you suggest that it's more or less inevitable that partisanship will creep in the question it what is it about the structure of this commission that leads you to think it's more or less going to happen and to is there any reason to think that the partisanship will be any near as you know important as it would be if one party controlled the process in the legislature so we provide you in our case the example of Arizona where it was very easy for another commissioned person to come in and actually explain like how to redraw a mapping
029and they favored it in the Republican side because he was a Republican representative and so what we're saying is that yes although Arizona there was only one person that was nonpartisan it's still a probable thing that could happen under the Michigan proposal that needs to be addressed and that the voters need to take into account when they're voting for or against this proposal and I think when you see that this example of Arizona and how they address this issue and how it actually led to no impact overall for whether or not it was stopping gerrymandering in their state I think that it is something that like Michigan voters do need to take into account as well as you address that nonpartisan like how are we going to know what's going to be infiltrated and as
030my partner read in the rebuttal she stated that no matter what people are going to have a bias whether it's like leaning one side or the other and even if they declare themselves nonpartisan it's hard to say that in the committee filled with for Democrats and for Republicans that there's not going to be some influence there in terms of mapping what do you say so in response to that we'd argue that the Michigan committee is very different from the Arizona Committee for example the Arizona committee has two members of both major political parties and then one one member who is not affiliated with either political party however in the Michigan committee there are four members from each major political party and five members who are not affiliated this means that the largest group in the
031committee are actually people who are not affiliated with any political party and this means that we have a greater assurance that partisanship will not be taking over the committee this means that we have a bigger buffer between those two partisan groups who will help to guide the group towards a more fair and less partisan way of districting the map so you would you like to add anything oh just to comment on how you said it's better than having one party that's completely in control of the process because with this committee no matter what the leading of the nonpartisan members are at least there's equal representation of people who solely identify as a Democrat and Republican so no matter what I definitely think that this will ensure a redrawing of the maps that's more representative of
032a majority of Michigan voters interests okay now a question for you folks this is a fairly complicated proposal its selection mechanism takes a number of paragraphs to explain it it does guarantee a lot of transparency I don't hear anybody complaining about that and then there's the rule for how we how the Commission chooses a plan which is quite complicated so talk a little bit about you know the complexity and why that doesn't stand as an argument against doing this sure well the complex we would argue on the affirmative side here that the complexity of the actual proposal is something that safeguards it from partisan influence and from the influence of other things that would take away from the fairness of those congressional districts the way that we go about selecting a map is a three-step
033process first in the most favorable situation the committee would have a majority vote on a map that they all agree upon if that doesn't happen we go to something called a rank order voting where each member of the proposal submits one particular plan those plans then get ranked and then we go down the list of that ranking so let's say we start on the top ranked map if that map can get two votes from the party that the person who presented it is not from so let's say the person is a Democrat if they can get a vote from a independent and a vote from a Republican or if they can get two votes from a Republican or two votes from an independent then that is the map that we select then once we've gone
034through all of those maps if we still haven't been able to choose one it goes to a random selection of one of those thirteen maps and we argue that this complex an involved system is actually something that is going to help us select the best map through looking at all of the ideas and all of the input from them from the committee so starting on roses evaluation of the three step process right so we have the majority vote which we argue and I argued in my rebuttal is the idea that we could have these five nonpartisan members actually take sides and so instead of having five like legitimate non partisan members we could have an unequal balance there so the probability of that is pretty high I'm considering that we know that there it's really
035hard to have an actual non biased voter then we move to the second step which is ranked order voting which we argue is a really bad thing so the the idea of rank order voting is that they rate the different drafts as what we're going to call them in order of like success and like what they what they would like for the districts and then if we get to the random selection then we end up with a gridlock which is what's happening currently in our federal government right we're having issues in our own Senate and in the House of Representatives it's really important to understand if those five nonpartisan members take sides we could write it could happen where we have a gridlock and then the Secretary of State would end up making the decision
036which would then therefore not be a nonpartisan decision so those are things that we have to consider and that the voters should take it into account when voting for this proposal this is in mind that the Secretary of State is like a random selection that is not like selected by the committee members right so one of the one of the proposals could get chosen that could be the least ranked on the list okay thank you okay you've talked a good bit about the Arizona case and they're one of the states that uses commissions what evidence you have you repeat the evidence on Arizona but from California or other states that use commissions about their ability to counter gerrymandering and establish a level playing field for politics and have any of them been successfully the outcomes
037of those those commissions been successfully challenged in court is there evidence that any of them you know would be even more biased than a legislature might have produced who had it controlling the process which is what we're concerned with here in Michigan so what we argue on the con side is that in Arizona specifically we state that according to like Andy Minkoff a Scottsdale a Democrat who sat on Arizona's first redistricting commission that overall they were impacted by gerrymandering through a nonpartisan consultant or throughout actual like partisan Republican reference meaning consultant and this actually had no effect on overall like preventing gerrymandering in the state and we're saying if this is a potential in Michigan and we're going to be wasting millions of dollars that could be going to other plans then overall it shouldn't
038be worth it to like agree to proposal too and that's where we provide the Arizona and California evidence from the Detroit Free Press as well talking about how a lot of the money around like seven million dollars went specifically just to legal fees for the Commissioner and although and I think we need to take into account the extra money that's going to be added on like we're not like I'm sure we're unsure of how much but there's going to probably be more than 5.5 million which is the expected amount for Michigan I think that needs to be taken to account specifically when Arizona itself had absolutely no effect on like the overall gerrymandering in the state and one thing is there any evidence about how citizens feel about Commission's they you know wish they hadn't
039done it it's not worth the trouble is it affecting how citizens feel about their state governments um we didn't find anything like specific on how it affected like the citizen how the citizens felt but again a person that sat on the committee chair and saw that I had no effect because of this gerrymandering situation it I didn't really have an effect Hannity of anything that yeah I think it's also important to consider the lawsuits so just the fact that there were a bunch of lawsuits against the redistricting um draft that in itself provides evidence that if we were to adopt the same sort of policy in Michigan we would have a bunch of lawsuits filed against the theaters Commission and it would be that in itself is kind of the evidence to show that the
040people were displeased with the with the decision so first of all remember it's impossible to create a perfect system there's no solution that's going to completely eliminate jury mentoring however looking at Arizona gerrymandering was still reduced it's unfair to say that there wasn't any effect at all and the citizens even found the whole process was more transparent so ultimately gerrymandering while it'll still be a problem can still be greatly reduced and the main problem that we saw with Arizona also is the gerrymandering that they had doesn't quite work in the same way as Michigan's because the majority of voters in Arizona a Republican or as a majority in Michigan are democratic so currently in Michigan Democratic voters aren't being as represented and in Arizona after the shifts while Republicans took a lot of positions in
041Congress there were Democratic lawsuits however that's to be expected as there were more Republican citizens in Arizona whereas in Michigan we wouldn't see the same lawsuits from the Democrats considering the fact that if we were to change lines it would be highly likely since there's a greater Democratic population we would see more Democratic representation okay let's move now to closing arguments and this time those in opposition get to go first throughout this debate we have established that gerrymandering is an issue faced by our state we recognize that it is a problem needing solving however we urge voters to consider the fact that proposal 2 doesn't actually solve for carefully drawn congressional district lines and instead it gives a false sense of hope we negate on the grounds that proposal 2 will cost far more than
042the projected amount evidenced by the precedent set by Arizona and California due to michigan's unique demographic we must use examples from similar states in order to make an informed decision it is likely that the cost of the proposal will exceed 5.5 million due to the cost of operating the system and the continuous bombardment of lawsuits instead of wasting millions of dollars on an empty promise we should use the money elsewhere such as the reconstruction of our roads bolstering our social programs and funding our education system even if the proposal is enacted the chance that any improvements will be made is highly improbable it is crucial to understand that a nonpartisan decision is unlikely due to the probability that five nine part of nonpartisan members of the committee will be influenced by the two major parties
043this could lead to gridlock or another draft of gerrymander congressional lines that favor one party over the other this means that we will have wasted millions of dollars on a proposal that provided no solution to our problem the basis of our arguments in I rest upon the reality that even with proposal to carefully drawing congressional district Lions will continue due to the federal mandate in 65 that requires minority districts to be carefully drawn this leads to Democratic compacted districts for example minority districts like district 14 will remain the same even though Michigan recognizes this district as the most gerrymandered district in a state do not settle for this proposal for this proposal and it's inadequate provisions recognize that it gives no solvency to gerrymandering and instead distracts our state from an effective solution thank you
044and I urge you to reconsider a proposal to get the last word all right so every voter in Michigan should take into consideration several points as they make their decision on proposal to this November first voters must confront whether the additional cost of the nonpartisan committee is worth the work on redistricting that it will accomplish we argue that the cost of formulation and operation of the committee is far outweighed by the facts that such a committee will have on our democracy as a lure removes a thorough amount of bias from the process they try to respond by saying the committee consists of members who lack experience bur remember they'll have resources available such as consultants and data to help them make the best Maps possible second creating the Commission which represents the voters of the
045state politically and demographically will give us a better chance of having fairer district maps we may not be able to ensure that gerrymandering will be eradicated but as long as we can provide a decent step in the right direction that helps address the problems we have right now we think voters should say yes to this proposal third there will always be a certain level of gerrymandering as I just said due to federal Mynor mandate on minority districts and in districts such as district 14 however remember we can reduce the severity of this problem by reducing Democratic packing in these districts with a less biased many finally consider what happens if we don't do anything at all Republican gerrymandering will continue to prevent Democratic voters from having political representation this is our only unfair to the
046majority of voters in Michigan that are Democrats but continuing to allow gerrymandering undermines the concept of democracy at the end of the day we need to consider the reality of the situation if we don't pass the proposal it's highly unlikely anything will be done to solve the problems to vote a representation in the status quo however if we vote YES on proposal to come this November we'll be strengthening our state's democracy and helping restore faith in Michigan voters thank you thank you so I want to thank our four debaters for their presentations on this proposal to amend the Michigan Constitution I would also like to introduce Deb Marsh their coach who has you know put in probably about as many hours as they have getting this organized thank you well I'd like to just tell
047you a little bit about these kids first of all I'm really proud of them for stepping up and doing such a great job tonight this Zane is a four-year debater he's a senior and he'll be graduating this year he's a full IB Diploma student and I expect pretty amazing things out of this young man Rose is a junior and she is basically our our hope for next year too like we've not only have you seen how great she is right now but she's gonna lead our team in the future and I know that she is also a full IB Diploma student so she will be on her way to I don't know changing the world I can you can already tell can't you Ethan is is probably the most I don't know he is going
048to be the best dad or the best teacher or something he takes all of our little debaters and he turns them into really good speakers and really responsible humans and I am just I can't say enough about him he's a senior and he's graduating this year and he is going to make everybody proud because he's kind of like a his own fan club of all our seventh and seventh graders on up they just they just adore him and this is Hannah and she is a senior this year she's also these three are all four-year debaters so they've been around for a long time and Hannah is a full IP diploma student and she is she's gonna go out there and she's gonna just going to make a difference I know it because she already well
049you saw that like hurt intensity and her passion and it come through and I'm really just so very proud of them and thank you guys so much for inviting us it was a really stressful and challenging because this is a hard topic to get our heads around and we know that the voters are going to have a tough time but we hope that we gave you a balanced approach so that you could really make your own decisions on this and that that we gave you the information that you needed to go and vote in next November six then be there go to the ballots thank you all yes thank you all again to the dexstar High School debaters the students who are present your researchers who did a lot of work behind the scenes and
050obviously your teacher coach who is very proud of you and we appreciate the participation that you've been in we also wish to recognize and thank the moderator John Chamberlain it's been a wonderful job finally thanks to our volunteers and to lead partner CTN for making this live broadcast possible these debates will be rebroadcast on channel 19 a number of times between now and the November 6 election they are also available on ctn's YouTube channel and through CTN video on demand for streaming on your computer or your smartphones you can also go to our website the league website of lwv and arbor org and look for the link to the student debates please urge your friends and fellow residents to watch these debates as well as the many candidate forums that the league is organized for
051the November 6th election for additional non part son and dispassionate information on current proposals and candidates for office please go to vote for one one org the league's voter resource guide covering proposals and local state and federal candidates that will appear on the November ballot and I echo your sentiments please make a plan to get to vote on November 6th thank you and good evening [Music] [Applause] [Music] you