CARL LEUBSDORF Redistricting mischief is now the rule
Republican redrawing of the Texas congressional district map has opened Pandora's box.
Georgia Republicans are now trying to go one step further by taking advantage of newly won majorities to revise the work of the legislature's prior Democratic majority and increase GOP numbers.
Illinois Democrats looked at a possible countermove before dropping the idea. In New York, there's talk Democrats might try to redraw the district lines if they end GOP control of the state Senate next year.
In California, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has come up with a plan for nonpartisan machinery to redraw the most populous state's lines. That sounds logical on the surface but, in the absence of action in other states, would almost certainly help the Republicans by reducing the current lopsided Democratic margin.
The California move has prompted some Florida Democrats to suggest that their Republican-controlled state also needs a nonpartisan solution. Unsurprisingly, that would help the Democrats cut a large GOP advantage.
The whole thing goes to show both the impact of the mischief Tom DeLay and his colleagues conjured up in Austin, and the degree to which both parties have made a travesty of the constitutional requirement that House districts be apportioned according to population every 10 years.
The use of partisan majorities to produce a partisan result is hardly new. After all, the word "gerrymander" results from the way Massachusetts Gov. Elbridge Gerry redrew legislative lines in 1812 in the shape of a salamander.
More recently, Democrats often did what Republicans are doing now -- when they had the votes. For instance, in Texas, Democrats led by former Rep. Martin Frost of Dallas used the redistricting process in 1991 to minimize losses in the increasingly GOP-dominated state.
Frost and DeLay had a big advantage over Gerry because they could use computers to factor voting patterns into the decisions. That produces oddly shaped districts like the ones in the Dallas and Houston areas that resemble Rorschach test inkblots. But they achieve the intended results.
None of this is surprising or new. But some aspects have changed.
These days, Republicans are doing the redistricting in most big states. It gives them a substantial advantage in a closely divided Congress.
Republican control
Besides Texas and Florida, Republican majorities in Michigan and Pennsylvania passed pro-GOP redistricting plans that resulted in two states that voted Democratic in most recent presidential elections having Republican-controlled House delegations.
And it used to be accepted that, once a state was reapportioned, the districts stood until the next census a decade later. Nowadays, there seems no guarantee that any redistricting will last beyond the next election, if the opposition party gains legislative control.
That's what happened in Texas after the GOP won the state House in 2002. Republican leaders said their action was proper because a prior legislative deadlock forced the federal courts to do the job.
In Georgia, however, the decision to redistrict this year stems solely from the fact that Republicans gained majorities that enabled them to change the Democrats' previous handiwork.
As for solutions, there would appear to be only two, neither of which is very likely.
The best would be for Congress to assert its authority to set redistricting standards. But it's unlikely that lawmakers who have so much difficulty agreeing on anything would agree on standards acceptable to both parties.
An alternative would be for all states to do what Schwarzenegger and the Florida Democrats are trying to do and create nonpartisan redistricting commissions like the one that already exists in Iowa.
But that's like trying to take the politics out of politics. Already, the California Republican has met resistance from incumbents in his own party who like the current system.
One thing is certain: Redistricting has always inspired the rawest politics. What happened in Texas has only made it worse.
X Carl P. Leubsdorf is Washington bureau chief of the Dallas Morning News. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune.