Ending the Madness of Re-Redistricting

[JohnLocke]

Idea of the Week: Ending the Madness of Re-Redistricting (DLC)

It didn't get much national attention, but it was a very big deal when the U.S. Supreme Court on January 16 refused to hear an appeal of the decision by a three-judge federal panel upholding the constitutionality of an outrageous Texas power grab engineered by House Republican whip Tom DeLay and his friends back home. At issue was a second redistricting of Texas congressional seats by a legislature newly controlled by the GOP, breaking many years of precedent supporting a single, decennial reapportionment and redrawing of Congressional districts. The GOP's move was designed to switch six U.S. House seats from Democratic to Republican control. There's still some chance the High Court will later consider a separate appeal of the lower court's ruling that the new Texas map does not violate the federal Voting Rights Act, but not before the November elections are held.

(...)

Down in Alabama, State Rep. Marcel Black of Tuscumbia, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, noticed the very different outcomes of the Colorado and Texas power grabs, and did exactly the right thing: He's sponsoring an amendment to the Alabama constitution that would clearly limit congressional redistricting to once every decade.

Alabama has a Democratic-controlled legislature and a Republican governor, so Black's proposal may well have legs, since each party would be protected from a future power grab by the other. Such an amendment makes sense in any state where the constitution is silent on this issue. It's a no-brainer on public policy grounds, and probably on public opinion grounds as well. It's hard enough for voters to adjust to new districts once a decade. If districts are subject to more frequent changes whenever one party or the other gains or loses control of legislative branches and the governorship, we could soon see an endless round of re-redistricting actions that could bring chaos to the political life of many states and the country as a whole.

Raising this issue, moreover, could help draw attention to the more general problem with contemporary redistricting practices: the growing tendency to make most congressional districts safe for one party or the other, radically reducing the number of competitive seats, and turning the "people's branch" of Congress into a large mass of hyper-partisans who are insulated from public opinion and fear nothing politically other than a primary challenge from someone claiming even greater fidelity to partisan interests. That phenomenon already has a lot to do with the disconnect between the ideological and partisan warfare in Washington and the moderate views of a majority of the American people Congress supposedly represents.

(...)

http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?kaid=131&subid=192&contentid=252384

[gristy]

1. Here's what I'd like to see in the amendment

"The periphery of a district divided by the square root of its area shall not exceed x miles." Gerrymandering eliminated by math. Gotta love it. Without such a limit, the proposed ammendment just limits power grabs to every 10 years. They are still power grabs.

[Yupster]

2. I would like a computer program

to make the districts the most compact possible and that is the end of it.

A city may get cut in half sometimes, but then ten years later it will be different.

I'd be happy with simple arithmetic without any politics involved.

[GreenPartyVoter]

3. Personally I prefer proportional representation

as the answer to gerrymandering.

[ma4t]

5. technically easy to redistrict sensibly, politically difficult

Computer programs to draw district lines in a rational manner are not that difficult at all. I worked on such in the 1970's when computers were no where near as powerful as today.

My own preference would be for districts to (in order of importance):
a) completely contain, as much as possible, smaller political subdivisions (i.e. don't divide up a small town or county)
b) have lines that are well understood (i.e. east of the Big Muddy river, Interstate-88, etc is one district, west is another)
c) are as compact as possible (compact meaning that the ratio of perimeter to area is as small as possible.

Additionally, I'd like to see a rule that redistricting moves as few people as possible from one district to another because I place some value on stability.

All of these are common-sense ideas although we may quibble about the order. However; so long as politicians of either stripe think they can get some short-term advantage, implementing them will never be done. This is a case where D's are just as bad as R's. The only difference is who's got the power at the time.

[JohnLocke]

4. kick

[Cleita]

6. I will sign any petiton for this.

In the last election I lost a wonderful Congressional Representative through gerrymandering. She was replaced by one of the biggest PNAC whores in Washington.