Poll worker writes about how redistricting affected her rural neighbors; local news media can help shed light on it

"Through most of the drama surrounding Wisconsin's contentious legislative redistricting process, attention has been focused on urban areas downstate. But redistricting also impacts other units of government – possibly even in your rural community," Donna Kallner writes for The Daily Yonder. 

Kallner, an election official in her community's sole polling site, said many didn't know they had been redistricted until they went to vote in the primaries. She breaks down how redistricting happens every 10 years at the national, state and local levels, and how rushed deadlines and other problems with the 2020 census may have made those counts less accurate (and thereby affected redistricting). 

The local newspaper mentioned that locals might see some changes in their voting district, but it didn't explain the process more fully, Kallner writes, and the minutes of the county board meeting where the new maps were adopted didn't shed much light on the reasoning, and that upset some people. 

Rural journalists elsewhere may consider reporting more on local redistricting, and seek to answer readers' questions about the process.