9:15 a.m., Nov. 9--In the leadup to this morning's meeting of the Joint Technical Corrections Committee who will hear testimony on most of the delayed bills that advanced from the Delayed Bills Committees, Rep. Sebastian Ertelt (R-Dis. 26, Lisbon) dropped the following bombshell on The Dakotan.
Rep. Ertelt spoke about delayed bill 21.1115.01000. That bill would, among other things, limit the districts that would have to reorganize after the redistricting plan goes into effect. On the face of it, this seems favorable to many of the districts, because of the extra work that has to go into redistricting before next year's election season.
However, Rep. Ertelt explained and confirmed that this actually hurts the districts who are wanting to continue to mobilize citizens who haven't previously been active. "They don't want the same redistricting experience they had last spring," he said. Ertelt was specifically referring to several establishment district chairs being ousted and establishment legislators being censured. He added, "The 25% threshold of change in district population disenfranchises up to 25% of citizens. Those citizens wouldn't be able to vote for or against their legislators for up to 2 years."
Ertelt also said that the bill would allow the state party chair to appoint a temporary district chair in every new district. Ertelt said, "This is again just the establishment appointing their stooges to do their bidding."
