Time to clean up redistricting now

Chronicle-Tribune

November 24, 2009

We will give the benefit of the doubt to the Republican leaders of the Indiana Senate who proposed having a bipartisan panel draft an amendment to the state constitution that would allow the General Assembly to hand off redistricting to an independent commission.

It is recognition that the current ways of drawing our political lines are foul.

But, because of the calendar, it doesn't fix the problems for more than 10 years when, presumably, these issues will not nearly be so relevant to current office holders.

Two years in study and the process of amending the state constitution guarantees that nothing will change in accordance with the 2010 census, after which the current congressional and state legislative districts must be redrawn.

There has been a long history of remaking political boundaries in a way that favors one party over the other or, more personally, a given incumbent over his or her potential challengers. Both parties have participated with much vigor in partisan redistricting for generations. It is time to stop the madness.

The results are jagged lines crossing the state, divided communities and a lack of common sense in determining who will represent whom.

The proposal by Senate GOP leaders also fails to ban the use of voting records of residents as a tool in determining redistricting . If we can do that, then we are saying that we can't do the right thing and stop the partisanship in what should be an objective process.

We agree with members of the Indiana House from both parties who have argued we need to get the redistricting issue sorted out now so we don't, as Indiana Secretary of State Todd Rokita would say, have another decade of elected officials picking voters rather than voters picking elected officials.