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Most baseball fans would like to see the Chicago Cubs make it to the World Series, now that a century has passed since they last won it all. One way to facilitate that would be to reorganize the National League divisions periodically, stacking the Cubs' division with bad teams. But Major League Baseball would never consider such an approach, reasoning correctly that it would make a mockery of the game.
Yet for some reason, it's OK for Congress to do that on behalf of its incumbent members to give them an insurmountable advantage over potential challengers by rigging their districts. In the spirit of "Change We Need," would it be too much to ask today's supercharged Democratic Party to restore (or, more accurately, create) competitiveness by removing politics from the redistricting process?
The next census will take place in 2010. Redistricting will follow, taking effect in the 2012 congressional and state legislative elections. If past is prologue, majority Democrats will conspire with minority Republicans to jigger the districts to ensure all but the most disreputable incumbents will win re-election.
Connecticut's Constitution places redistricting very much in the hands of the legislature, which helps to explain why incumbents almost always win re-election and most races are uncompetitive. In a few states, notably California, voters have had enough. Proposition 11, placing redistricting in the hands of a 14-member independent commission, passed last week. Had Connecticut approved Question 1 on Tuesday's ballot, it, too, could have excised the incumbent-protection aspects of the state Constitution.
Ideally, districts would be tailored to comply with all constitutional and voting-rights requirements; promote competitive and partisan fairness; respect political subdivisions and communities of interest; and encourage geographical compactness, according to Americans for Redistricting Reform. That is clearly not the case in Connecticut, where Waterbury and Torrington each is split unnecessarily into two congressional districts. And remember the legislative wheeling-and-dealing that turned Waterbury's 75th House District into a majority-Hispanic enclave, not to give Hispanics a greater voice in government, but in a futile bid to get Americo Santiago, a Democratic political hack from Bridgeport, elected to a sinecure?
Connecticut voters did less than nothing Tuesday to bring ethics and logic to the state's redistricting process. Perhaps enough legislative Democrats were inspired by the "Change We Need" theme to instigate reforms on their own.
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