"A Chance for Common Sense”
Washington Post/ Saturday, November 10, 2007
Virginia should reform its rules for drawing election districts.THERE'S a certain beauty to divided government. All sides are kept in check, consultation becomes imperative and extreme proposals have little chance of prevailing. (Gridlock, of course, can be a less appealing side effect.) In Virginia, with Democrats soon to control the Senate and Republicans to remain the majority in the House of Delegates, the division of power offers an opportunity to bring sanity and fairness to the redistricting process -- the once-a-decade endeavor in which state legislative and congressional districts are redrawn. Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) and other state officials should seize the moment to start setting the ground rules for how the reapportionment should be handled. The next redistricting is scheduled for 2011, after the 2010 Census.
For far too long, the party in power has taken advantage of the opportunity to redraw districts to squeeze out opposition incumbents and maximize the prospects of its party's candidates. Such an approach -- and Republicans and Democrats are equally to blame -- has led to political maps that distort the voice and will of the voters for the sake of the parties.
With the redrawing of Virginia's 140 state legislative and 11 congressional districts still a few years off, now is the time to start talking about how that will be done. A good place to start is with consideration of a measure that Del. Brian J. Moran (D-Alexandria) plans to reintroduce in 2008. Mr. Moran's proposal calls for the creation of a bipartisan commission, equally divided between Democrats and Republicans, to handle the redistricting.
Republicans embraced a similar approach in 1992 when their party was in the minority. Democrats welcomed the legislation in the most recent legislative session, when Republicans controlled both chambers of the General Assembly.
Is it a coincidence that the out-of-favor party is usually the one to endorse the bipartisan approach? Obviously not, which is what makes the upcoming power split the perfect moment to dive seriously into the issue. Neither party can be confident it will have the upper hand come 2011. Both should seize their positions of relative strength and the possibility of future weakness to cut a deal now. Mr. Kaine, who has been critical of the gross manipulation of past redistricting efforts, should put his words into action and lead the way to the kind of reforms that will remove the bullying influence of the majority party to shape the political playing field for a decade to come.
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