News / Articles - League of Women Voters of Southwestern Indiana

Candidate forum: 8th District Democrats on ICE, healthcare, Messmer

Published On 4/13/2026

The League of Women Voters of Southwest Indiana and the NAACP Evansville Branch hosted a candidate forum for 8th District primary candidates Saturday afternoon, with only two opting to attend. The forum took place at the CK Newsome Community Center in Evansville and and Democratic candidates Mary Allen and Tabitha Zeigler took part. You can read this entire Courier article at https://tinyurl.com/muer4f4r

Published On 10/8/2025

Authored by Karen Reising, Genny Tenbarge, Wendy Bredhold, Erin Gibson and Mark Rigney, this editorial comments states that Residents of Indiana's Eighth Congressional District may be surprised to learn that our Congressman Mark Messmer recently penned an opinion piece championing redistricting in Indiana “before the end of the year.”...Our organizations are against partisan redistricting no matter which party is in control.

Published On 8/3/2025

Indivisible Evansville and the League of Women Voters of Southwest Indiana have launched a campaign to place signs at businesses and organizations showing support for immigrants. League of Women Voters Co-President Karen Reisinger offered a reminder: "We should all remember that most Americans have their roots in immigration, and that it is in fact one of America's greatest strengths." To read this WNIN article go to https://news.wnin.org/2025-11-03/groups-launch-immigrant-support-campaign

What are Third House Forums?

Published On 3/24/2025

Third house forums are public events where Hoosiers can meet with their representatives. For state lawmakers, those usually take place during the legislative session from January through March or April. Anyone can host one of these — but some of the groups that usually do are the League of Women Voters, public libraries, farm bureaus and chambers of commerce. In Vanderburgh County Meet Your Legislators events take place each legislative session at the EVPL Central Library

8th District US Candidate Forum

Published On 9/20/2024

Our League is holding an 8th District US Congress Candidate Forum on October 3 at EVPL McCollough Library. The forum is 5:30-7 pm. Doors open at 5 pm.

All 8th District candidates have been invited. Each candidate will have an opportunity to introduce themselves. After that, a moderator will ask questions compiled by the League, with additional written questions from the audience encouraged. The moderator will select questions so that as many issues as possible relevant to the work of the House of Representatives can be addressed. This event is open to the public.

Published On 9/6/2024

At 12:15 p.m. Central / 1:15 p.m. Eastern, we'll hop on Zoom together at this link (https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87878474567) to get settled in time for the hearing to begin at 12:30 p.m. Central / 1:30 p.m. Eastern at this link (https://www.in.gov/iurc/watch-the-iurc-live/)

Published On 8/30/2024

The link will be available closer to the time of the hearing at in.gov/iurc/watch-the-iurc-live/.
The Citizens Action Coalition says this: "We’ll be honest - although there may be moments of excitement, you can expect this hearing to be quite dense! Evidentiary hearings are similar to a trial in civil court. Attorneys for intervening parties like CAC, the Office of Utility Consumer Counselor, and others will cross examine technical experts who have filed testimony in the case. As a heads up, rate cases are lengthy legal battles that take up to 300 days to resolve. We’re expecting a final decision in this case sometime this fall."

Published On 2/9/2024

LWVSWIN would like to introduce you to the Evansville NewsLab project. Just use this link: bit.ly/EVVNewsLab
to take a survey to help profile our local community news habits and needs.

FROM NEWSLAB: "Why NewsLab? Evansville, like other communities, suffers from declining news resources. This means local government business is often conducted “in the dark.” One way to shine a light on governance is by local residents capturing information and making it accessible to various communities through distribution methods that meet their news-seeking behaviors.

What is NewsLab? A research project conducted by the University of Evansville ChangeLab and its students, in partnership with Our Times newspaper and Listening Post Collective, a nonprofit organization supporting community-driven journalism."

Published On 10/5/2023

EVANSVILLE, Ind. (WFIE) - With just a month until Election Day, a forum was held Tuesday night at the Evansville Vanderburgh Public Library.

Letter: Pay attention to redistricting

Published On 8/14/2021

The more we talk about the unbalanced system Indiana Republicans have created for Hoosier families, the more we can stop being tired and start taking action. We all deserve an Indiana future with free, fair, and competitive districts and elections so we can create more balance in our government and better laws and outcomes for all Hoosiers.

Published On 7/24/2021

Gerrymandering allows legislators to look at partisan information and create safe districts for individuals representing their party and unfavorable to their opposition. Gerrymandering contributed to a result in the last two Indiana congressional elections where Republicans garnered 57% of the vote, but 78% of the seats, while Democrats received 42% of the vote and only 22% of the seats. These numbers fly in the face of the concept of one person/one vote.

Hoosiers deserve fair elections

Published On 7/21/2021

First identified by that name in the early 19th century, gerrymandering occurs to varying degrees across the nation. In some states, it permits a slight advantage to the party in power; in others, it tilts the scales dramatically in favor of one party. Indiana falls into that latter group, perpetuating what a recent study commissioned by Women4Change Indiana reveals to be one of the most extreme examples of gerrymandering in the U.S. Conducted by nationally recognized democratic-governance expert Professor Christopher Warshaw, the study found that Indiana's electoral maps tilt more in favor of one party than 95% of all electoral maps enacted in the United States over the last 50 years.

Published On 4/8/2021

Meetings are being conducted virtually by the Indiana Citizens Redistricting Commission (ICRC), a project by All In 4 Democracy (a coalition of non-profits) to show how redistricting should work. Voters are invited to share their preferences for what nonpartisan redistricting criteria should guide Indiana’s map-drawing process, identify important communities of interest and how they should be grouped together, or kept separate, when the new congressional and legislative maps are drawn. The maps are drawn by the party in power in the General Assembly.

Want Fair Redistricting?

Published On 2/4/2021

Now is the time to make your voice heard! The 9-member Indiana Citizens Redistricting Commission has been selected from nearly 300 applicants. Its purpose is to demonstrate that redistricting done by a diverse and multi-partisan team of Hoosiers in a transparent process that encourages public participation will yield Congressional and state legislative districts that are fair for all voters.
The ICRC is holding virtual public hearings in all 9 Congressional districts. Hoosiers from all over the state may join these conversations to discuss the criteria for drawing new maps for congress and the Indiana legislature. More...