Let’s reform redistricting

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January 26, 2010

Anonymous The Kokomo Tribune Tue Jan 26, 2010, 05:27 PM EST

The good news is that a bill aimed at reforming the way Indiana draws its legislative and congressional districts has cleared the Senate Elections Committee.

The bad news is that measures to establish a commission to oversee the process are still stuck in committee.

Some have suggested that with the budget issues facing the state and the limited time legislators have available in this year’s short session, it’s simply the wrong time to take on an issue like redistricting.

We disagree. The fact is that now is the perfect time to address this issue.

Every 10 years, legislators are required by law to draw new districts in line with the new population numbers produced by the census. That process will take place next year.

But the time to reform the process is this year, before lawmakers know which party will be in control of the Indiana House and Senate. If reform doesn’t happen now, it won’t happen this decade, and we’ll be stuck with this same broken process for another 10 years.

For too long, the main objective of the map-making process has been to create districts that will protect the interests of incumbents. Politics, rather than the public interest, has ruled the day.

As a result, we have districts that look more like snakes or dragons and an overwhelming number of legislative and congressional races with no real competition. In many cases, would-be challengers don’t even bother to file.

Senate Bill 80, authored by Republican Sen. Connie Lawson, calls for simple, compact districts that are respectful of neighborhoods, county lines and communities of interest.

The measure would go a long way toward putting the interests of voters ahead of the interests of politicians.

Critics of the reform effort point out that the state constitution expressly grants redistricting authority to the Indiana General Assembly.

That’s true, and it’s also true that the process of amending the constitution takes at least two years.

So, it’s too late to amend the constitution to take legislators completely out of the process, but it’s not too late to pass real reform.

Our hope is that at least Lawson’s bill will pass this session of the General Assembly, but in the long term, we hope lawmakers will push forward a constitutional amendment that would eliminate politics from the process entirely.

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