Our view: Fed up with state's redistricting farce? Speak up now

The Capital
February 24, 2008

When Maryland's political powers-that-be gathered behind closed doors in 1992 and again in 2002 to draw new political districts, they carved up Anne Arundel County like a Christmas turkey.

Once this agreeable land by the bay was represented in Congress by one loud voice. Now, as we were painfully reminded once again during this month's primary elections, local voters are spread over four congressional districts whose outlines suggest a Rorschach blot.

Some political functionaries argue that this county should be happy to have four congressional representatives instead of one. They should save the fertilizer for their gardens.

No one from this county has been elected to Congress in nearly two decades. And that is unlikely to change after this year's general election on Nov. 4, when residents will help pick representatives from half of the state's congressional districts: the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 5th.

Congressional and state legislative districts must be redrawn every 10 years after the federal census. But unlike state legislative districts (whose formulation is an equally maddening process) congressional districts must represent exactly the same populations.

Armed with computers, consultants and a constitutionally mandated spoils system, Democrats have done everything in their power to protect incumbents, despite the increasing diversity of the state's political landscape. It has been said that Anne Arundel was carved up because it votes too much for Republicans. Maybe so, but if Republicans had been in power, they would have done the same thing to Democrats.

And the status quo is unlikely to change - unless the process is changed in time for the 2010 census. As we have said before, there has to be a way to get a more nonpartisan method of redrawing political district boundaries.

Other states have taken up the issue over the years, trying to find ways to achieve equally populated congressional districts that are compact, geographically contiguous, incorporate existing jurisdictional lines, and aren't drawn exclusively with an eye toward party registration.

Marylanders might want to cast an eye toward the Virginia General Assembly. There, a bill has already cleared the state Senate that would create a joint redistricting panel appointed by both Democratic and Republican leaders. Their recommendations would then go to the full legislature for approval.

We'll see if that gets anywhere, but Maryland has also been down this road before. When he was a delegate, County Executive John R. Leopold was part of a bipartisan effort to create a commission to study changing the redistricting process. But like so many other ideas worthy of real debate, it was swept out with the sine die confetti.

It would be foolish to think that politics could be removed entirely from any redistricting process. But we will remain gerrymandering central until the voters get tired of being treated like numbers in a database that can be manipulated behind closed doors.