SUNBURY—Redistricting is the occasional practice of redrawing congressional or legislative boundaries. Gerrymandering is the controversial practice of re-drawing boundaries in order to favor a political party. On a recent edition of the On The Mark Program local political leaders met to speak about the redistricting gerrymandering in Pennsylvania.
Nicole Faraguna, a leader of the Susquehanna Valley Progressives says, “The Gerrymandering has really damage our democratic system and we want to reclaim that process and make it more transparent.”
Drew Bingaman, chair of the state Libertarian party says the way the districts are set up now makes it difficult for a third party candidate to compete saying, “ If you are not the favored party in a particular district you are essentially disenfranchised. Many of these districts don’t even have competition.”
Dwayne Heisler of Bloomsburg, a Democratic Party leader, said residents need to take action to fix this broken system saying, “I think it’s obvious to everyone that the system we have right now is broken. Let’s do something about this, let’s make our state a state where politicians don’t decided who vote for them, we should be deciding who politicians are are.”
