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January 19, 2006

Political Redistricting

I hope people understand that the violation of the public trust that occurs when officials engage in nakedly partisan redistricting is a question more of when and not how they do the partisan redistricting.

What I mean is this: Democrats used partisan redistricting in 2001 to help maintain their hold on the legislature, something they felt would be in peril without drawing the districts the way they did. Republicans have now decided to use partisan redistricting in the state Senate (and who knows maybe the House soon) to maintain their hold on a near super majority -- something they feel would be in peril without redrawing the districts the way they want to.

Cheating is cheating, lying is lying. Ask someone who has been lied to -- there are no small lies. The principle of partisan redistricting is to manipulate the voting process to achieve a bigger electoral result than you otherwise would with an unbiased and fair vote. For the Democrats, it was a Senate map that produced 30 seats when the real number should have been closer to 25. For the Republicans it is a Senate map that could keep them in the 34+ range without worrying about dipping down closer to 30 seats or losing their majority in a good election year for the Democrats.

Good government types should be appaled by mid-cycle redistricting such as this. In a way it worse than gerrymandering after a census. In theory our Democracy should be a feedback loop focused on the individual voters who elect individual members to Congress. Of course those voters and members choose political parties to affiliate with, but we like to think that our voters are smarter than the most base political instincts that they possess.

A crucial part of that equation is a feedback loop -- voters elect a member of Congress, the legislature, mayor, school boardmember etc and then two years later (or whenver) they get to judge that individual on their performance. Even if that person doesn't run for re-election they at least know what to expect and can make electoral decisions within that context.

When you redistrict too often, the voters knowledge of their representatives is diminished, the only thing they have to fall back on in many cases are their partisan allegiances. The problem with this is that our electoral system is based on representative democracy and not on a party parliamentarian system. And even if you prefer a party system like many other countries use, this type of mid-decade redistricting is a poor approximation at best.

This is why I hope the Supreme Court strikes down mid-cylce redistricting when they re-examine the Texas case. Even without a Supreme Court ruling concerned Georgians could push for a bipartisan committee that adopts new maps after the census and could consider petitions for mid-cycle changes.

Here's one area where the committee might do a better job than the current legislative leadership. Ralph Hudgens wants to reunite Madison county into one Senate district. So the Republicans rushed through a bill on literally the first day of the session without considering alternatives, and claimed there was no way to do the Madison county part without messing up Clarke.

That's not true. There are multiple ways to make Madison whole without splitting any other counties -- including Clarke. A nonpartisan commission could consider requests by legislators, citizens, county officials and everyone to "fix" split precincts that don't need to be split and split counties when there is a way to reunite them without splitting further jurisdictions.

Posted by Chris at January 19, 2006 12:58 PM

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