End Gerrymandering in Phoenixville
To the members of the Legislative Reapportionment Commission, My name is Kim Feindt and I am a resident of Phoenixville Borough in Chester County. The power of the Phoenixville community has come from our ability to come together in an effort to solve our town's most vital problems. Like the namesake of our town, we have been able to reinvent ourselves and rise from the ashes as a better and stronger community. Yet the voice of our residents and the voice of our community has been divided and diminished into two legislative districts for the purposes of partisan gerrymandering. Despite the borough having an estimated population of 16,895 people, far fewer than the average 62,500 constituents that compose each house district following the 2010 census, Phoenixville is split into both the 155th and the 157th legislative districts. Not only is the borough split, but one individual precinct, Phoenixville M-1 has been split into both of these districts. This has led to massive confusion among our residents, election officials, and poll workers. At the beginning of election day 2018, poll workers, unaware of the split legislative districts, had given ballots to just one of the house districts to all voters regardless of their house district. This meant many voters had incorrectly voted in the wrong house district. While this issue was quickly resolved and the voters that had cast incorrect ballots were recalled to cast correct ballots, this is an issue that should have never happened if the previous commission had fairly drawn our legislative districts. On behalf of the residents of Phoenixville who deserve a full, representative voice in the legislature I call on this commission to create a fairly drawn legislative map that gives the people of Phoenixville and all the people in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania a representative voice in government. Sincerely, Kim Feindt