Recently in Redistricting Category

The Bull Moose rightly endorses redistricting reform, based on the nonpartisan Iowa model.

The House of Representatives in our system of government is supposed to be the chamber that reflects the political passions of the American people. That's why the election for House seats are held every two years.

Instead, thanks to partisan gerrymandering, it reflects little more than the results of each decade's redistricting battles.

It's time to bring back competitive Congressional elections and districts that do not look like abstract art. The Bull Moose correctly makes a note of this need.

Robert Novak writes about GOP fears that Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor may now have the reason she needs to join a 5-4 majority to overturn GOP redistricting schemes in Texas and Pennsylvania.

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's (R-Texas) overtly partisan redistricting effort illuminated the need for national redistricting reform. A Supreme Court ruling striking down partisan redistricting plans (and both Republicans and Democrats are guilty of them) would set into motion a most beneficial reform movement.

U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) has fashioned a major constitutional crisis with his fight to pass another round of Congressional redistricting in his home state. The Washington Post's Edward Walsh reports:

By enacting a new congressional redistricting plan this month that replaced a court-ordered plan used in the 2002 elections, the Republican-controlled Texas Legislature did more than demonstrate a willingness to play political hardball against its Democratic opponents. It waded into uncharted legal and constitutional territory, raising a question to which there is no clear answer.

If the courts do not strike down this dubious Texas action, then one should worry that all redistricting restraint will end. Only about 12 states have provisions explicitly outlawing numerous reapportionments.

The other states could leave themselves open for a free-for-all every time political power changes:

"If this is sustained, what we will have is a form of arms race where there is no restraint on keeping the game going on throughout a decade," [The Brookings Institution's Thomas] Mann said. "You ask, who wins in this process? This is a process designed not for citizens or voters but for politicians. It will lead politicians to say there are no limits. I think it threatens the legitimacy of democracy."

The question now is whether our entire political system follows him into it.

Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) and Rep. Jim Leach (R-Iowa) have cowritten an important commentary about how redistricting problems are harming our political system. They write:

Despite the public perception that the drawing of legislative maps is an insider's game of no particular relevance, the health of American democracy hinges on how state officials approach the issue. If competitive elections matter — and to much of the world they are what America stands for — then redistricting also matters.

...

It is, however, a matter of profound importance to our system of government. A few partisans should not be allowed to manipulate the landscape of state and national politics by legislative line-drawing. But that's exactly what has happened.

Partisan redistricting, or bipartisan incumbent-protection redistricting, effectively disenfranchises millions of Americans by creating Congressional (and state legislative) districts that are uncompetitive. Such actions add to partisan gridlock by making moderates an endangered species in districts where only very conservative or very liberal candidates can win a party primary.

The solution? Rep. Leach's homestate provides the example. He and Blumenauer explain:

It doesn't have to be this way. Iowa, which has about 1 percent of the United States population and only five representatives in the House, saw as many competitive races in the last election as California, New York and Illinois combined. (For the record, those three states account for 101 seats in the House). Iowa is so competitive largely because it has an independent redistricting commission that is prohibited from considering where incumbents live when it draws new legislative maps.

Few political reforms would have as positive an impact on our Democratic Republic as the propagation of nonpartisan redistricting commissions. I think Leach and Blumenauer for making this case.

The Center for Voting and Democracy's Steven Hill and Rob Richie have co-written an important commentary about the increasing perversion of the redistricting process.

The bipartisan incumbent-protection redistricting following the 2000 census was bad enough. It left many people effectively disenfranchised through the creation of uncompetitive Congressional and State Legislative seats. Now some odious people, led by House Majority Leader Tom "I Am The Federal Government" DeLay (R-Texas), want to turn what should be a once-a-decade process into something that can be revisited for partisan advantage at any time.

Hill and Richie explain the result of such shenanigans:

Power grabs and incumbent protection plans occurred in state after state, at both congressional and state legislative levels. The real losers were voters, left with overwhelmingly choiceless elections. The inevitable churning that comes with redistricting usually increases competition, at least for one or two elections. But more than 37 percent of state legislative incumbents were uncontested -- nearly as many as before redistricting. Voters booted out the incumbent party in half of gubernatorial races, but not a single legislative chamber came under new control except in the relatively few states where courts or commissions drew the lines.

The U.S. House of Representatives was no better: Only four challengers defeated incumbents, the fewest in history, while fewer than one in 10 races were won by competitive margins of less than 10 percent. Women and members of racial minority groups made little to no gain in representation, in stark contrast to dramatic increases in the post-redistricting elections of 1992.

Using sophisticated computers, polling and databases to draw the legislative lines with unprecedented precision, party leaders and incumbents essentially did away with elections. For the rest of this decade, the only choice most voters will have in House races is to ratify the nominee -- usually the incumbent -- of the party that was handed their district.

I have long argued for redistricting reform, perhaps along the lines of the nonpartisan commission model successfully used by Iowa.

We should not be surprised to see our electoral system failing as long as the process by which we create the foundation of it -- the drawing of representative districts -- remains broken and easily manipulated.

Some Texas Democrats are actually fighting House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's (R-Texas) attempt to redraw Texas' Congressional Districts just two years after the latest reapportionment plan went into effect.

Noted Constitutional scholar DeLay (hah!) must have forgotten that redistricting plans are generally passed right after the census is completed. Which is what Texas did two years ago.

But DeLay does not like those lines. He wants more Republicans. So he has hatched this plan to carve up the Democratic seats. He wants his allies in the Texas legislature to pass a new redistricting plan this week. A plan that would go into effect four years after the census.

DeLay's goal is simple to understand. He wants to add five to seven GOP seats in Congress. That result would go far toward ensuring DeLay's majority power through the decade.

DeLay, in other words, is again playing hardball. In recent years, Democrats would have simply accepted DeLay's antics with meek opposition.

The Democrats in the Texas State Legislature, however, have opted to fight. The Washington Post's Lee Hockstader reports:

Moving with exceptional stealth and tactical coordination, more than 50 Democratic state lawmakers in Texas packed their bags and quietly slipped out of the state under cover of darkness late Sunday and early today.

Republican Gov. Rick Perry immediately dispatched police to track down the missing legislators, arrest them and bring them back to do the state's business -- even asking neighboring New Mexico if the Texas Rangers were empowered to make arrests there. (New Mexico's attorney general -- a Democrat -- said no.) But all signs were that the legislators were on the lam -- some, perhaps, fleeing to Mexico -- putting them beyond the reach of Lone Star justice and of GOP ambitions.

The walkout deprived the 150-seat Texas House of a quorum and effectively shut down its legislative work just as lawmakers were preparing to vote on a contentious Republican plan orchestrated by U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (Tex.) designed to add five to seven seats to the 15 the GOP controls in the state's 32-member congressional delegation.

Charles Kuffner has a roundup of Texas editorial reaction to the Democrats' walkout. (Be sure to check his posts at the Political State Report as well.) It is mostly positive. Most papers note they were driven to doing it by such a nakedly partisan plan.

So, Tom DeLay may not get his way. What a refreshing change. This episode, moreover, is a prime example showing why redistricting reform is so vital.

Nonpartisan commissions should determine these lines as they do in Iowa. Then electoral competition could happen in the districts and be decided at the polls instead of in Washington, D.C.'s backrooms.

The Washington Post calls on the governors of Maryland and Virginia to lead redistricting process reform efforts in their states.

Redistricting, which follows the census every decade, should be an opportunity to make districts competitive and, thereby, to hold incumbents accountable despite the changing demographics of a state. In most states, however, legislatures seek to protect incumbency and to lock in the advantage of the party in power by drawing as many safe seats for that party as possible. Members accomplish this by crowding voters of the other party into densely packed safe districts -- the result being that districts become either more liberal or more conservative than the population at large, and the center grows weaker. Both Maryland and Virginia last time around experienced ugly redistricting fights: Democrats in Maryland squeezed Rep. Constance A. Morella out of her seat, for example, while Virginia Republicans packed minority voters into noncontiguous districts. Nobody knows in either state which party will be in power to abuse the process next time. But absent reform, it will surely happen again -- and one certain loser will be the public.

The House, which the Framers indended to reflect the passions of the populace, now is less competitive than the Senate.

A few wise legislators could spark a much-needed national reform movement. While the next round of redistricting may be seven years away, in political terms that is a distressingly short time period to make needed changes.

The Los Angeles Times weighs in on partisan-protection redistricting:

This cynical deal may serve the pols well, but it's bad for California. It becomes virtually impossible to hold lawmakers accountable at the next election. The Legislature is increasingly polarized between Republican conservatives and liberal Democrats. In spite of their majorities, Democrats need some GOP votes to pass the budget and any other fiscal bill. That's why this year's budget was deadlocked for two months beyond the deadline.

It's in the public interest to have clear lines of opinion and vigorous debate. But the Legislature is so fractured now, it's virtually impossible to reach a compromise on any major issue, particularly on spending and taxes. The result of Tuesday's election will be even more gridlock.

No, not in Congress. In its state Assembly.

Sacramento Bee Deputy Editorial Page Editor Mark Paul explains that California's Assembly and Senate districts are simply too large. (A California State Senate district, for example, is larger than a Congressional District.)

Paul lays out the numbers:

Here's the kicker: The average lower house member in other states represents 46,600 citizens; California Assembly districts are nine times bigger. And remember, Assembly districts are the small ones. California Senate districts, with around 875,000 residents apiece, are now a third bigger than U.S. House seats and almost seven times larger than the average Senate district in other state legislatures.

The idea of representative government is that the person we elect is supposed to mirror our concerns and those of our neighbors. But how does any single legislator, no matter how talented, adequately represent 437,000 persons, let alone 875,000?

While we are at it, it is time to consider whether 435 federal Representatives are really enough to effectively govern a continental nation of more than 280 million people.

Our previous post explained why party-protection redistricting hurts representation in the House of Representatives. As the San Jose Mercury News's Phil Yost explains, the situation also causes problems in many states. Yost examines the situation in California:

In 68 of the 80 Assembly districts, the winner received at least 60 percent of the vote. Only three races were really close -- two at 2-plus percentage points separating winner and loser, and one a virtual dead heat.

In the Senate, same story. Of 20 races, only three winners suffered the insult of a margin of less than 20, including one Senate cliffhanger.

Huge victory margins don't augur well for keeping members attentive to their districts, or for inclining them to compromise on legislation.

Our legislatures should not be guaranteed job programs. We should not underestimate the damage partisan redistricting is doing to our government.

The Washington Post today makes the novel argument that the once-a-decade redistricting process should not protect those already in power. The editorial instead contends that:

Redistricting, which redraws congressional districts following the census every decade, ought to be designed to make districts more competitive and to make incumbents more accountable. Yet in practice, state legislatures proceed with two aims in mind -- protecting incumbents from challenge and maximizing partisan advantage.

Under our system of government, the House of Representatives is supposed to be the chamber in our legislative branch most responsive to changes in public opinion. Gerrymandering has left most Americans without a real choice come election day. That needs to change.

It is time to start working to spread the Iowa model across the nation so it can be in place before the next redistricting process begins following the 2010 census.

Phil Yost explains the role played by partisan-protection redistricting in California's budget problems:

Redistricting has become a scurrilous collusion between Republicans and Democrats in which each concentrates on creating safe districts for its candidates.

Safe districts theoretically could provide a net that allows legislators to venture out on the high wire of statesmanship. The districts tend, instead, to fill the Legislature with the most ideologically committed candidates, who have no fear voters will punish them for holding out until they get what they want.

USA Today makes a brilliant case for the need for national redistricting reform.

This is an issue requiring attention now so we can ensure that fair redistricting plans are in place for 2010.

This Houston Chronicle editorial examines how incumbancy and redistricting have shaped Houston-area Congressional races, and explains why:

"These forces produce a strong undertow that weakens the traditional expectation that the party out of power will pick up seats during an off-year election."

Slate's William Saletan explains why Rep. John Dingell's Michigan Democratic victory over Rep. Lynn Rivers was not the real story of Tuesday's elections.

The real story, Saletan argues, is how these two incumbents ended up in the same Congressional District in the first place. This is why people should pay attention to redistricting process.