States See Growing Campaign

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Personally I think districts should be drawn up exclusively along geographic lines, town, city, county and state.

February 7, 2005

States See Growing Campaign to Change Redistricting Laws

By ADAM NAGOURNEY

WASHINGTON, Feb. 3 - The politically charged methods that states use to draw Congressional districts are under attack by citizens groups, state legislators and the governor of California, all of whom are concerned that increasingly sophisticated map-drawing has created a class of entrenched incumbents, stifled electoral competition and caused governmental gridlock.

Largely uncoordinated campaigns stretching from California to Massachusetts are pushing to end, or at least minimize, a time-honored staple of American politics: lawmakers drawing Congressional and legislative district maps in geographically convoluted ways to ensure the re-election of an incumbent or the dominance of a party.

Last month, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, a state that has historically been at the forefront of political reform movements, proposed putting retired judges in charge of redistricting, taking it out of the hands of the Legislature. Common Cause, one of the nonpartisan groups championing changes in the system, said campaigns to overhaul redistricting were under way in at least eight states, including California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island.

The increased attention to the issue is in part due to the effectiveness of efforts in 2003 in Texas, where Republicans, with the backing of the White House, forced through a midterm redistricting that effectively cost four Texas Democrats their seats. The complaints are also spurred by the way computers and the enormous amount of available voting data have turned redistricting into a surgically precise procedure and opened up to anyone with a laptop what was once dominated by legislative tacticians with decades of knowledge.

"You cannot believe the number of people and organizations across the country that are focusing on this redistricting issue," said Bruce E. Cain, an expert on redistricting and director of the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. "It seems like it's poised to become, for the reform community, the equivalent of McCain-Feingold," the bill that overhauled the campaign finance system.

In Arizona, a nonpartisan commission approved by voters in 2000 has completed its first redistricting, which is viewed by advocates as the most impartial since Iowa created a system 20 years ago to propose maps without taking into account partisan considerations like voter history and incumbents' addresses. The Arizona overhaul was strongly endorsed by Senator John McCain, and his aides said he was considering throwing his support behind Mr. Schwarzenegger's effort and embracing it as a cause in a presidential campaign, should he run in 2008.

"It's a motherhood-and-apple-pie issue," said a Maryland state delegate, John R. Leopold, a Republican who this year found Democrats embracing his redistricting overhaul legislation after it languished for two years. "We have a situation in this state and this nation where the legislatures are creating our own voters. This is dangerous for our country."

Nathaniel Persily, an election law expert at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, said: "Something has changed. Voter preferences are becoming more and more predictable. There is a problem when the turnover in the United States House of Representatives is lower than it was in the Soviet Politburo."

The obstacles to changing reapportionment remain huge, because state legislators, who in most cases have to approve any changes, are understandably loath to adopt a system that could put them out of work. That is why much of the effort to overhaul the system is focusing on states that allow for citizen initiatives that circumvent legislatures.

The proposals have drawn a wary reaction from Republican and Democratic leaders in Washington. One senior Republican Party strategist, who did not want to be identified given the sensitivity of the issue, warned that while Mr. Schwarzenegger's proposal could help Republicans in California, it could have unwanted consequences if states where Republicans now have an edge follow California's lead.

Mr. Bush's chief political adviser, Karl Rove, and the Democratic National Committee chairman, Terry McAuliffe, declined to comment.

Analysts and party officials said the chances of an overhaul of redistricting were better than at any time in recent memory, given what they said was rising concern about a system that seems increasingly prone to political manipulation.

In the 2004 Congressional elections, only 13 seats in the House changed hands, and four incumbents were defeated in the general election. In 2002, 82 percent of the races were decided by a margin of 20 percent or more, Common Cause said.

In California all 53 members of the Congressional delegation were returned to office in 2004. In New York, another state frequently mentioned as a case study of redistricting abuses, the Legislature has managed to carve out a solidly Democratic Assembly and a solidly Republican Senate so efficiently that they seem to represent maps of two separate states.

"The self-dealing quality of legislators drawing districts for themselves or for their partisans has basically collapsed the enterprise," said Samuel Issacharoff, a visiting professor at New York University Law School and an expert on redistricting. "There's an increasing sense of revulsion among people at this self-dealing. It is somewhat scandalous that there are no competitive elections anymore."

The 2002 Texas redistricting effort, during which Democratic lawmakers fled the state to stop the Legislature from getting a quorum, lent some spice to what even proponents acknowledge can be an eye-glazing subject. The next year, Republicans tried to do the same thing in Colorado, but the effort was challenged in a lawsuit filed by the Democratic attorney general.

In Maryland, State Senator Sharon Grossfeld, a Democrat who is sponsoring Mr. Leopold's legislation to create a commission to propose ways to change the system, said, "No matter what side of the aisle one may be on, I do think the public is most interested in fairness in elections."

This has proven to be a volatile and complicated issue, with often competing interests. While a political party might want to redraw lines in a way that expands its control of Congressional and state legislative districts, legislators themselves are more likely to want to draw lines that protect their own careers - and Democrats and Republicans frequently strike deals on maps that are more about protecting incumbents than expanding party control.

In California, Mr. Schwarzenegger's proposal has faced some of its fiercest opposition from Republicans, some of whom suggested that it was hardly clear that, in the long run, it would produce a gain of Republican seats in the Congressional delegation.

"I think taking it away from the legislature goes against the intent of the founders of this country," said Representative John T. Doolittle, a California Republican. "It's a very misplaced effort and I strongly oppose it. Redistricting is inherently political. All you're going to do is submerge the politics."

Jon Goldin-Dubois, director of state program development at Common Cause, said Massachusetts, Colorado and California were the furthest along in getting voter initiatives on the ballot that would create independent redistricting commissions. He said that while there have been sporadic attempts over the years to change the system, "there is an uncharacteristic amount of activity right now."

Analysts say redistricting is one of the causes of two problems that have bedeviled state legislatures and Congress over the past decade. The first problem is the lack of turnover. Aides to both parties say that Republicans have outmaneuvered the Democrats in maintaining an upper hand, particularly in redrawing Congressional district lines.

"You basically have 400 seats in Congress that are decided long before the general election - and Republicans have a 15- to 20-seat advantage," said Matthew Dowd, who was a senior adviser to President Bush's re-election campaign. "That puts them in a position where it's very hard to lose the House of Representatives."

The second problem is the extent to which redistricting contributes to polarization, as map-drawers cluster like-minded voters into the same districts. That makes it less likely that a candidate will work to appeal to swing voters. In those districts, the main worry for incumbents is often not a general election but a primary, because Republicans are more likely to move to the right, and Democrats to the left, to protect themselves.

But even advocates of changing the system say that creating more competition is, if desirable, not easy to do. And many experts say it is hardly clear that drawing straight lines that do not take into account any political factors - a neighborhood's voting history, or where an incumbent lives - will really achieve the desired change.

"The drum beat is a lot louder for reform," said Tim Storey, a senior fellow at the National Conference of State Legislatures. "But my sense is that very few members of Congress are going to be eager to change the rules on this. It's sort of the devil you know over the one you don't."

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