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Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Redistricting will never be politics-free
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Had they been a bit less clever, Democrats might still rule Georgia. But cleverness and greed caused them to overreach in drawing legislative districts, provoking a fair-minded electorate and an equal-protection court to collapse the empire.
Prior to 2002, Democrats had it all. Within two years, they’d lost it all. The system works.
A task force appointed by Gov. Sonny Perdue in April reported back after November’s elections, declaring the current system — by which horse-trading legislators draw political districts — to be faulty. Instead, the group recommended, an independent, seven-member commission appointed by the Legislature should draw congressional and state legislative districts, presumably to take the politics out of politics.
Ho-hum. An idea 10 years too late and 25 years too early. And not a great one, in any event.
As recommended by the task force, the General Assembly and the governor would appoint six of the members. The six would then pick a seventh as chairman. The panel would draw boundaries following a new census and submit its work to the Legislature for an up-or-down vote. If rejected, the commission would start work anew, repeating the process until it comes up with one that’s acceptable.
The reality is, however, that it can’t work as idealists believe. Editorialists, who love the idea, have the impression that academics without a partisan bone in their bodies will start at one corner of the state drawing boxes that, to the extent possible, follow existing city and county lines and preserve communities of interest. But that can’t happen.
One reason it can’t is the Voting Rights Act of 1965, provisions of which were just extended this year for another 25 years. Since Georgia is among the handful of states where redistricting and election law changes are subject to preclearance by the U.S. Justice Department’s civil rights division, an independent commission starts with half the Democratic seats in the General Assembly essentially off the table.
An independent commission, therefore, gets to play with every Republican seat and probably fewer than half the Democratic seats. It is working around protected districts that were created to satisfy incumbent Democrats. So they rearrange a few chairs, shift a precinct, meddle and muddle, but to what different end? None to speak of.
This assumes, of course, that the appointees will be less partisan than the elected officials. The State Elections Board is constituted about the way the proposed redistricting commission would be. It has five members, one appointed by each major political party and one each by the House and Senate. It’s chaired by the Secretary of State. There’s not a nonpartisan in the lot.
The same would be true, of course, of the redistricting commission — except that there’s no elected official to pay the price for overreaching, as was the case with Democrats in the 2002 election and thereafter. If I’m the Legislature, my appointees have demonstrated to me how they can creatively maximize my party’s advantage, while hiding behind the “independent commission” cover.
Do-gooders, bless their hearts, fall in love with concepts, such as campaign finance reform and independent commissions to take the politics out of redistricting. They rarely succeed because, as with campaign finance reform, they simply move the politics and the money to another category.
I have come to believe that the solution to campaign finance reform is full and immediate disclosure of who gives and who gets without limits imposed. As for redistricting, the solution is for the General Assembly to adopt principles to guide redistricting, agreeing, for example, to try to preserve communities of interest and to follow existing city and county lines where possible, but otherwise to be as partisan as they choose.
Voters are perfectly capable of recognizing when a party has gone too far. And the courts are perfectly capable of determining when redistricting has been jiggered so districts are unequal in design, deliberately configured to make voters unequal. In that case, aggrieved voters have an immediate remedy.
The independent commission requires a constitutional amendment, which requires two-thirds of the House and Senate. Don’t bother. It’s an idea whose time has gone — and not yet come again.
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