The Houston Chronicle and the Philadelphia Inquirer both recently ran opinion pieces in favor of redistricting reform.
The Inquirer’s editorial focuses on the redistricting reform effort in Pennsylvania:
As you can imagine, the power to guarantee themselves great jobs means it will be hard to pry this power out of lawmakers’ hands.
But they need to let go. And they need to do it fast. Redistricting, which is tied to the census, can only happen every ten years. It also needs a constitutional amendment. If Harrisburg fails to act, the next opportunity won’t be until 2020. That would likely mean ten more years of failed public policy.
The Houston Chronicle piece, by David Broder of the Washington Post, talks about the problems of gerrymandering in general. The article also makes mention of the Democratic Leadership Council report this blog has mentioned previously.
It shifts the competition from the general election to the primary, where candidates of more extreme views can hope to attract support from passionately ideological voters and exploit the low turnouts typical of those primaries.
Gerrymandered, one-party districts tend to send highly partisan representatives to the House or the legislature, contributing to the gridlock in government that is so distasteful to voters.
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