In no way does that represent an actual group of people.

这绝不代表一个真实的群体。

And why this was particularly important in Michigan is we're a pretty purple state.

这在密歇根州之所以特别重要，是因为我们是一个紫色州。

And what I mean by that is that about half of us vote for Democrats and about half of us vote for Republicans.

我的意思是，我们当中大约有一半人投票支持民主党人，大约一半的人投票给共和党人。

And that should mean that about half of our representatives should be Democrats and about half of them should be Republicans.

这应该意味着我们的代表中大约有一半应该是民主党人，其中大约一半应该是共和党人。

But depending on which political party would be in charge of that redistricting process, they would actually have a majority of the elected representatives, or sometimes even a super majority, even though they might have received less than half of the votes or exactly half.

但是，视哪个政党将负责重新划分过程而定，他们实际上将获得当选代表的多数，有时甚至是绝大多数，尽管他们获得的选票可能不到一半或恰好一半。

And that would then mean that they don't even have to talk to anybody on the other side of the aisle, when passing any kind of laws.

那就意味着，在通过任何类型的法律时，他们甚至不必与另一道的任何人交谈。

And the other important part is that redistricting only happens once every 10 years.

另一个重要部分是，重新划分每10年才进行一次。

So you have half of the state being locked entirely out of the decision-making process for 10 years at a time.

因此，该州有一半的地区每次都被完全排除在决策过程之外，持续10年之久。

It did not seem like a good way to be doing democracy.

这似乎不是实现民主的好方法。

So we went to the politicians and we were like, "You guys should change that."

于是我们去找政客们，然后我们的样子就像说“你们应该改变这种状况。”

And they were like, "No." They were not interested in giving themselves less power.

然后他们的样子就像在说，“不。”他们对减少自己权力的事不感兴趣。

But thankfully, we figured out that in Michigan we had a form of direct democracy, and it was called the ballot initiative process.

但值得庆幸的是，我们发现现在密歇根州有一种直接民主的形式，它被称为投票倡议程序。

And so I turned to my coworker Kelly, we were at our recycling job, and we started getting to work to figure out, OK, what is this ballot initiative process?

于是我求助于我的同事凯丽，我们正在做回收工作，同时我们开始努力弄清楚，嗯，这个投票倡议的流程是什么？

What can this actually do?

这到底能做什么？

And we broke it down into three different steps.

我们将其分解为三个不同的步骤。

One, we had to write constitutional language.

第一，我们必须写宪法语言。

Didn't know how to do that.

不知道该怎么做。

Two, we had to gather a lot of signatures and we didn't know how to do that either.

第二，我们必须收集很多签名，也不知道该怎么做。

Three, we had to get about half of our state to vote "yes" on wanting to amend the constitution to end gerrymandering.

第三，我们必须让大约一半的州人对修改宪法以结束选区划分的提议投赞成票。

And guess what?

你猜怎么着？

We didn't know how to do that either.

我们依旧不知道该怎么做。

But we had this Facebook post that then we turned into a Facebook group, and we started seeing all of these people coming in who were absolutely amazing.

但是我们在Facebook上发布了这篇帖子，然后，我们把它变成了一个Facebook群组，我们开始看到这些人都非常了不起。

A lot of them were just like me, they voted consistently, they cared about the world's problems, but they weren't really interested in volunteering for a political campaign or one party or the other.

他们中的许多人，就比如我，我们始终如一地投票，关心世界问题，但他们对志愿参加政治运动或某个党派并不感兴趣。

But these people are amazing.

但是这些人太神奇了。

I mean, we had veterinarians, doctors, birthing doulas.

我的意思是，我们有兽医、医生、分娩助产士。

We had butchers and veterans and even 16-year-old kids who couldn't vote yet but wanted to be a part of creating a change so that by the time they could vote, it would actually be legit.

我们有屠夫和退伍军人，还有16岁的孩子，他们甚至还无法投票，但他们想参与打造创新，这样当他们可以投票时，投票就会真正合法。

So what we started to do was figure out, OK, what are all these campaign tasks?

所以我们开始做的是弄清楚，好，所有这些需要满足的条件是什么？

And then what are all these skills we have?

我们有哪些技能？

And how do we start bringing them together?

以及我们如何开始将它们聚集在一起呢？

For example, we had a woman who had been in charge of the Renaissance Festival for years in Michigan.

例如，我们有一位女士，多年来一直负责密歇根州的文艺复兴节。

And she actually started creating our first fundraising plan.

她开始制定我们的第一个筹款计划。

And the reason she did that is because she had experience raising money for kind of weird stuff.

她之所以这样做，是因为她有为一些奇怪的事情筹集资金的经验。

And we had another woman who is absolutely amazing, her name was Jamie, she was an engineer and a retired high school math teacher, and she was basically the only person who had actually volunteered for a political campaign before.

还有一位非常了不起的女性，她的名字叫杰米，她是一名工程师，也是一位退休的高中数学老师，她基本上是唯一一个真正自愿参加政治竞选的人。

So she had gathered signatures, she had knocked on doors, and using her skills in engineering and math, she figured out, how could we take thousands of us to actually end up reaching millions of voters.

因此，她收集了签名，她利用工程和数学方面的技能，当敲门砖，她想出了一个办法，一个如何让我们成千上万的人最终真正接触到数以百万计的选民的方法。

And that all was really exciting.

这一切都非常令人兴奋。

And then I had a volunteer, Rebecca, and she came up to me and she's like, "I really want to volunteer. I have time to do it, but I don't think there's any way I can contribute."

然后我有了一个志愿者，丽贝卡，她来找我，她说：“我真的很想当志愿者。我有时间去做，但我认为我无法做出任何贡献。”

I was like, "Alright, well, what do you do?" She was a stay-at-home mom.

我当时想，“好吧，那，你是做什么工作的？”她是个全职妈妈。

And I said, “First of all, that comes with a lot of skills. So we've got a lot to work with. But what are your hobbies?"

然后我说：“首先，这需要很多技能。因此，我们还有很多工作要做。那你的爱好是什么？”

She said, "I'm a Jazzercise instructor and a woodcarver."

她说：“我是一名爵士乐教练和木雕师。”