President-elect Arnie Biondo welcomed everyone to the Centerville Rotary Club and led the group in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. PDG Harvey Smith provided an update on member Elda Gatos-Gay, who is starting to feel better, and then provided today’s prayer.
Arnie Biondo shared some announcements sent from President Brian Hayes:
- Steve Naas from the Dayton Rotary contacted us about the Tour de Gem which takes place on October 10. The last rest stop is in Centerville, and he asked if our club has 5-6 people to help work the station from noon-5:30 pm. More details to follow.
- Rotary Board meeting is Monday, 5:30 pm zoom. All are welcome.
- Don’t forget your Pledge Cards. They should be returned to Brian. Be sure to indicate which project it is for so that we can allocate the proceeds to the proper Pledge.
Arnie introduced today’s guests - Matt Wahrhaftig with the Kettering Club and Nick Kruz who has decided to join the club!
Happy Bucks this quarter are for Operation Warm - to provide new winter coats to children in need.
Lee Hieronymus served as our Sergeant at Arms today, where he “fleeced the flock.”
Happy Bucks included:
- Arnie Biondo was happy to hear Miami University was listed in the top 50 colleges in the U.S. Arnie also said he was VERY HAPPY for outcome of last week’s OSU football game, as his Oregon Ducks beat the Buckeyes!
- Lee Hieronymus announced our storage cabinet will be moved and we will share a storage area with the Optimists. He asked anyone who sets up for the meeting to stay after the meeting to look at the new space.
- Don Stewart gave happy bucks saying even though OSU didn’t win, he still had a wonderful time with daughter Mallory at OSU and was interesting to see what happens on campus on game day.
- Mike Wier gave just because Lee is a good friend.
- Carol Sue Galloway is convinced OSU will redeem themselves this week.
- Adam Manning was happy.
- Wayne Davis was happy.
- Carol Kennard said the seed collecting service project last week was really fun and she was glad to see Kim Senft-Paras back at a meeting.
- Kim Senft-Paras was happy to be back and excited for Dennis Turner to be our speaker today.
- Dennis Turner announced his book “What Did You Do in the War, Sister?” which was for sale after the meeting.
- Boyd Preston was happy to have collected prairie seed with Lee last week.
- Uriah Anderson was just happy and gave for having to leave early.
- Crissy Allums was happy for our new member, Nick.
- Robert Ford was happy
- Ginger Clark’s son got part in the High School play “Clue”.
- Harvey Smith gave for two sleeves (of a coat.)
- Jim Harris was happy.
- Susan Schnell was happy.
- Dick Hoback missed the meeting last week as he woke up in pain and forgot all about Rotary.
- Nick Kruz was happy since he just booked trip to Disneyland.
- Larry Marchand was happy.
- Ron Hollenbeck was happy to have seen 3 rainbows one morning this week.
- Chuck King was happy
- Matt Wahrhaftig was happy about something!
- Bill Menker welcomed Kim back and had fun collecting prairie seed last week.
- Ger Eastabrooks was happy with the improvements in our community lately.
- Brad Huffman was happy his round of golf ended in time for Rotary.
- Ray Merz enjoyed a trip to Wisconsin to visit his son.
- Dale Berry gave for a coat.
- Don Overly gave for a good Oregon team.
- Bob Fry was happy.
- Tom Broadwell was tired after 2 weeks of travel, home for 24 hrs, and turned around and left for Wisconsin the next day. He’s happy to be home.
- Sofie had a nice weekend in Columbus with her daughters and has raised $400 of her $700 goal for Tour de Gem.
Our speaker today was Dennis Turner.
Kim introduced our speaker Dennis Turner who is a professor emeritus a the University of Dayton School of Law. He recently started a new career as a writer of historical fiction. Kim met Dennis with their work at the Greater Dayton League of Women Voters, as both are fair district advocates.
Dennis started by asking several Rotarians if they voted for State Senator in the last election, and then said, “Your vote didn’t matter because of gerrymandering.” Congressional district lines are formed to assure a predetermined outcome. It doesn’t do anything for the democratic process.
Gerrymandering increases polarization of parties. The candidate in each district is already predetermined - they only threat is in the primaries. If the candidate is a moderate, they risk losing the primary; power is in the wings.
Originally gerrymandering was started in Essex Co Massachusetts to keep Eldridge in Congress. The new district resembled a salamander - gerrymander became gerrymandering.
They looked at precincts and how people voted and it was basically a guessing game. Since 2010, it’s no longer guessing game because of the multitude of voting information and computer capabilities. The goal is to maximize the power of the incumbent in that district to win
Types of gerrymandering include:
Even distribution - independents have more influence.
Packing - Pack most of red voters in one district, dilutes their power in other districts. 3 blues/1red
Cracking - red voters spread thin around, other party is outnumbered
Dennis shared the shape of Ohio districts from the 2010-11 map. It is quite clear they are trying to help one party or another.
Dennis recently taught at the UD Lifelong Learning class. He asked the students to create district boundaries of “new” state. They came up with these solutions
One thing they all agreed on is that the committee deciding the districts should be all non-politicians. The reality is that they are all politicians.
Goal was to look at statewide races and determine percentages of votes based on those. Statewide it was 53% Republican, 47% Democrat. So it makes sense that the maps should represent that split in the districts - proportionality.
The Commission met here in Washington Township - Dennis was speaking to them and wanted to point out this commission had the opportunity to make history by approving a compromised plan for redistricting. However, they did not follow that approach.
The commission's five Republicans all voted for the new maps; the absence of Democratic support means they are only valid for 4 years.
It was asked if it wouldn’t be best to just let computer decide, but someone would still have to decide the parameters entered in the computer such as: Can’t split city/county into smaller pieces, Results to be in a certain range of proportionality. High schoolers were doing it this way in a contest led by the League of Women Voters. Computer can easily show results of changes in parameters.
President-Elect Arnie thanked Dennis for the thought-provoking information, led the group in the 4-Way Test and wished everyone a good week.
Our speaker next week will be Douglas Deutsch providing Identity Theft advice.