Gerrymangling districts

lewleadbeater.com

notes from the edge

Home

Email Me

				THE
Column Archive				VIRGINIA GAZETTE
				WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA
Gerrymangling districts				April 9, 2011

Given what’s going on in these parts with the redistricting process, you have to wonder if Plato wasn’t right when he said that democracy, with all its boorish, demagogic politicians, was not one of your better ways to run a government.

Redistricting takes place every ten years to account for population shifts certified by the decennial census. More people in an area mean increased representation in federal and state legislatures. Population loss may well result in less representation or an increase in district sizes.

What redistricting should not involve is a bunch of canoodling Democrats in the state Senate getting together to gerrymander districts so out of geographical whack with common constituencies that their sole purpose is to assure a continued Democratic hold on the Senate.

Nor should it involve Republican robber barons in the House of Delegates constructing similar geographic monstrosities in order to retain power in that body. And it certainly shouldn’t involve a “gentlemen’s agreement” in both bodies to allow whatever convoluted constructs they each dream up to stand without discussion.

Consider the perplexity of Sen. Tommy Norment (R-3^rd), whose initially proposed new district was so masticated and elongated that it started in Poquoson, jumped back and forth across the James River and finally wound up somewhere in Southern New Jersey. In order to find his new constituents, Norment would have had to launch what amounts to a second Lewis and Clark expedition to discover what uncharted lands his new district included.

Back in James City County, Republican supervisors have so stacked the Citizen Redistricting Committee that Democrat John McGlennon may well wind up representing only the fort at Jamestown. And that only if he agrees to move in.

Things got so heavily into partisanship at one point that one member of the committee, a Jim Icenhour appointee, wrote a letter to the committee suggesting that it chuck everything, disband the committee and start over.

The problems with bowdlerizing what should be a reasoned, nonpartisan process are twofold.

First, citizens have every right to expect that those who live in their state or federal districts have some commonly shared concerns, be they cultural, educational or political. Those of us who now live in the wandering, gerrymandered congressional district represented Rob Wittman (R-1^st) may well wonder what common thread links the problems faced by us here in James City with the economic or political needs of those in Fredericksburg or Northern Virginia.

Do the good folks in Fredericksburg really give a hoot whether Interstate 64 is widened between Richmond and Hampton Roads? Or how much federal money flows into the coffers of the Williamsburg-James City school system? Probably not.

Second, constructing districts for the sole purpose of maintaining political power makes a mockery of the voting process. Democrats living in Wittman’s district or Brenda Pogge’s (R-96^th) House district may well wonder why they should trouble themselves with running candidates or taking the time to vote at all. What’s the point? Thanks to the artificially constructed political bent of these districts, their vote means nothing. Similarly, Republicans living in Bobby Scott’s congressional district might as well sit at home and knit a sock on Election Day.

And this is a democracy?

No, it’s time to put a stop to this foolishness. If lawmakers can’t overcome the megalomania that infuses the redistricting process now, they should be relieved of this duty.

While there has been much talk in the past about establishing a nonpartisan group of judges, lawyers and professional demographers, nothing has come of it. And the independent panel set up by Gov. Bob McDonnell to advise him concerning redistricting matters is totally without power.

Yet, such an independent commission is exactly what we need on both the state and federal levels if we’re to preserve what few democratic ideals we have left. Either that or turn the whole process over to the students at William & Mary. Given what they produced in the recent redistricting contest, they seem to have a much better grasp of what needs to be done than our power punchy legislators.