Kill politicians' self-preservation plan

by Taylor Batten, Charlotte Observer

You might think that who gets elected to Congress and the state legislature is decided mostly by where candidates stand on issues, or how much money they have, or how charismatic they are on the campaign trail.

Those all play a part, but there's another factor bigger than all three combined: how the district maps are drawn. If the boundaries are drawn to make a district heavily Democratic, the second coming of Ronald Reagan couldn't get elected there. In any sport, the rules of the game determine who succeeds. In the sport of politics, no one is as powerful as the referees who draw the maps.

But here's the catch: in this game, the referees are the very players whose future is at stake. It's the politicians in the legislature who draw the lines, and so heavily influence who controls the House and Senate and N.C. delegation to Congress for the next decade.

District lines are drawn every 10 years, after the census. We've been living under the same lines for much of the past decade. We're gearing up for the next census, and shortly after it's completed we'll draw the lines again.

The question is: who should be in charge of that process? The Democrats who control the state House and Senate? Or is there a fairer approach?

An independent panelI'm not naïve – you can't take politics out of politics. But you can make the playing field more level.

Mecklenburg County Republican Ruth Samuleson is a primary sponsor of a bill in the House that would do that. (There's an identical bill from Sen. Peter Brunstetter, R-Forsyth, in the Senate.)

Those bills would throw out the current procedure. Instead of elected politicians having an incentive to protect themselves and their parties, an independent commission would draw the new lines. The 11-member commission would be made up of four Democrats, four Republicans and three independents. None could be a current or recent elected official, a lobbyist, a party official or have intimate ties to the governor, the legislature or Congress. That would help it be truly independent.

This group would by law be ordered to draw legislative and congressional districts that are compact, not snaking in every direction to pick up pockets of a party's voters. It would draw districts without regard to voters' party, previous election results or even where incumbents live.

This flips everything on its head. Political map-drawing has always been the exact opposite of that: based almost entirely on voters' party, results from previous elections and protecting incumbents. Look at Rep. Mel Watt's 12th congressional district, which snakes from Charlotte to Greensboro, little wider than I-85 in some places.

Legislative and congressional districts should be as compact as possible to avoid the nefarious motives of gerrymandering. Otherwise, large chunks of the population have virtually meaningless votes, because their districts are so stacked for one party or the other. Less competition means less debate of ideas and less accountability to the people.

We ought to be considering what's fair to voters, rather than what helps Democrats or Republicans more. The only people opposed to that notion are the sitting politicians who have something to lose.

Not perfect, but goodAn independent commission is no cure-all.

Some areas are so lopsided that even compact districts would be dominated by one party.

Politics could seep into any redistricting process, even an independent commission.

And plenty of factors besides lack of competitive districts make people reluctant to enter politics, including the growing cost of campaigns and the low pay and long hours of legislative work.

Finally, North Carolina is subject to Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which means its districts have to be approved by the Justice Department to ensure fair representation of minorities. In the past that has forced gerrymandering to create majority-minority districts.

But those are all factors regardless of who draws the lines. So let folks without skin in the game draw them, instead of politicians whose natural motivation is to protect themselves and each other.