LANSING – Roberta McCall shifted her weight from foot to foot and slapped her mittens together in the 39-degree weather.

Wednesday, she and Jo Pamment worked a two-hour shift outside the Ingham County Human Services building on South Cedar Street. The pair called out to visitors and county employees on their lunch hour to stop and sign a petition to end gerrymandering.

They are part of a small army of 3,500 trained volunteers with the campaign Voters Not Politicians. The group wants to place a state constitutional amendment on the 2018 ballot.

McCall, who is blind, is one of the campaign’s top signature gatherers. She often teams with Pamment, her friend and next door neighbor in East Lansing.

“She and I have kind of figured out a process. I can do pretty much everything but catch people’s eye and draw them in so we can talk to them,” McCall said.

McCall's guide dog, a standard poodle named Caliber, quietly laid nearby as the volunteers worked.

Pamment called out over and over to passersby a friendly ‘Hello” and “Hi there! Are you a registered voter?”

If they slow or show interest, she passed off to McCall.

“Do you know about gerrymandering? Gerrymandering is a way of drawing the voting districts to manipulate the outcome,” McCall explained.

As McCall talks, Pamment will often hold up an outline of Congressional District 7 to illustrate. The district is crooked and looks like a crazy quilt. “Instead of the politicians drawing it, it would be an independent commission,” McCall explained.

McCall joked that Pamment often halts her civics lesson if the voter has started to sign, telling her not to talk them out of it.

Pamment helps her read the voters' expressions, since she can't see their faces. But that's about all the help offered.

“Roberta’s extremely capable,” she said.

If approved, the constitutional amendment would create an independent commission of citizens to draw political boundaries, instead of Michigan lawmakers who draw the lines to favor the party in control. That’s Republicans in Michigan, though campaign organizers stress the effort is nonpartisan. The lines are redrawn every 10 years.

McCall, Pamment and others will be at polling places around the state Tuesday as the campaign makes a push to reach 400,000 signatures by the year’s end. Signatures have hit 300,000, the group announced Thursday.

“Citizens can do this, and we are,” said Katie Fahey, president and treasurer of Voters Not Politicians. A Caledonia resident who works in Lansing, Fahey launched the effort a year ago, after she grew weary of her family arguments over politics that went nowhere.

Fahey said a fair way of drawing districts is needed, no matter which party is in control. It will restore some faith in the political process, she said.

No organized opposition has surfaced but that is likely to change if the campaign is successful in getting it on the ballot.

McCall, 61, said she hasn’t been politically active since high school in East Lansing when she joined a nationwide boycott of Gallo wine in support of the United Farm Workers.

She was finishing an engineering degree at Michigan State University when she lost her sight from complications of diabetes.

After undergoing training herself, she decided to become an educator for the blind, working for the former Michigan Commission for the Blind for 30 years.

“I went from a potential career in engineering to having a calling,’ McCall said. She retired in 2013.

After the divisive 2016 election of President Trump, McCall said she was struck by a desire to do something positive. Then she heard a news report about the effort to end gerrymandering in Michigan.

“It doesn’t matter what party you’re in, it’s really bad. It makes things more polarized. It’s just not good for a general sense of getting along,” she said.

McCall has gathered nearly 500 signatures, putting her in the top 5% of volunteers, a campaign spokesman said. Since mid-August, she's collected signatures at Wharton Center performances, MSU's homecoming parade, neighborhood gatherings, tailgates and other efforts. Wednesday's efforts snagged a dozen more signatures.

“I just want to look in the mirror and say I did everything I possibly could,” she said, speaking wryly about the mirror. “There are very few people who think it’s good the way it is.”

Judy Putnam is a columnist with the Lansing State Journal. Contact her at (517) 267-1304 or at jputnam@lsj.com. Follow her on twitter @judyputnam.