Reading Brian Howey’s weekly publication this morning, the last item in the 20 page PDF caught my eye more than the rest.
A redistricting coalition pushed by Common Cause Indiana and the League of Women Voters is apparently forming.
Their claim is that gerrymandering of Indiana’s congressional districts and legislative districts has led to a lack of competitive races across the Hoosier state.
That’s not completely true. I know of several races in my own backyard that came down to a few hundred votes.
Republican Julie Olthoff unseated Rep. Shelli VanDenburgh by just 300 votes. Same thing between Bill Fine and Rep. Mara Reardon – just 400 votes.
There were other close ones like that all across the state.
But common sense needs to prevail here: Indiana is a Republican state.
Sure, we’ve had Democrat majorities and governors in the past. But that’s the past.
Today, Indiana’s politics lean conservatively – which translates to Republican votes in most cases.
What the left leaning ‘non-partisan’ groups like the League of Women Voter’s and Common Cause Indiana mean is – they want to return to the ridiculous maps the Democrats drew in 2000.
Yeah, the districts that looked like a plate of spaghetti.
The League of Women Voters supported those maps. Didn’t hear a peep from them about an independent commission then.
Sure – Republicans benefit from the currently drawn map. That’s what generally happens within a majority party with the majority of voters sharing the same political ideals.
But to say Indiana is “so gerrymandered,” is simply fiction.
In fact, a recent study published in the Washington Post labels Indiana as the least gerrymandered state in the nation.
Indiana’s congressional and legislative districts are much more squared-off than maps previously drawn by either party, but especially the 2000 Democratic maps.
More whole communities are drawn into the same districts than ever before, bringing continuity in representation.
Changing the law would take a constitutional amendment for the legislative drawing laws. Congressional maps are currently given to the General Assembly by state statutes.
We shouldn’t change what’s working. Doing so will lead us back to the bad maps of 2000.
Those who want an “independent commission” are the supporters of the old maps that purposefully diluted the majority. Let’s not go back there.
