A Better Way to Draw New Political Maps;
Mondale-Carlson proposal belongs on 2008 session agenda

Byline: Redistricting Task Force, National Conference of State Legislatures
Source: Star Tribune
Date: January 17, 2008

Given how much - or rather, how little - bipartisan good feeling and productivity normally prevail at the Minnesota Legislature, imagine the hostilities that are likely to erupt in 2011.

In that year, the state demographer warns, legislators could be faced with deciding how to reduce the number of congressional districts from eight to seven. That's in addition to the usual decennial chore of redrawing their own district lines, to rebalance their populations in keeping with the 2010 U.S. Census.

Get ready for a year or more dominated by incumbent and party protectionism and, if state government stays divided, gridlock. If it doesn't, look for new districts drawn to one party's clear advantage. Those are the likely results unless the Legislature chooses a better way.

Last Friday, six senior statesmen came to the Capitol to deliver a sound recommendation for a better way. It was an impressive lineup - former Democratic Vice President Walter Mondale, former Republican governors Arne Carlson and Al Quie, former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Kathleen Blatz (a former GOP legislator) and former Senate Majority Leader Roger Moe and former Secretary of State Joan Growe, both DFLers. They were just some of the several dozen reform-minded political thinkers assembled last year by the Humphrey Institute's Center for the Study of Politics and Governance to consider political reform possibilities. Mondale and Carlson chaired the effort. (To read the report, go to www.startribune.com/a3888).

That people of such stature would spend long hours developing revisions to redistricting procedures should tell Minnesotans that this is no trivial matter.

The state's existing redistricting method is undesirable, for several reasons. Allowing legislators to draw their own districts - essentially, to choose their own constituents - tends to muffle citizen dissent and maximize partisan polarization at the Capitol. Decisionmaking is made more difficult as a result.

Allowing the courts to draw the lines - as has happened by default in each of the last four redistricting cycles - forces judges to wade into political waters, where they do not belong.

The Mondale-Carlson panel's recommendation: Take the actual drawing of new districts out of legislative hands and give it to an appointed commission of retired appellate court judges. Give that commission statutory guidelines that include safeguarding the political competitiveness of districts, to create fewer safe seats.

Then send the commission's map to the Legislature for an up-or-down vote - and if it's down, give the commission two more chances to satisfy a majority of legislators, before allowing them to amend the map themselves.

This idea requires no constitutional change - and does not guarantee that legislators or judges ultimately would not draw the next political map. But starting the remapping with an independent commission ought to increase chances that the public's interest will outweigh party or self interest in the final product. And bringing the idea to the fore in 2008 - well before the 2012 election that must be governed by a new map - ought to increase its chance of becoming law.

BETTER AVERAGE

In the 1990s, on average, two of every five redistricting plans drawn by state legislatures were overruled by the courts, or were handed to the courts before they were completed. By comparison, nearly all commission-drawn plans became law.