Chicago Sun-Times

Take politics out of redistricting
By Dan Rostenkowski
November 10, 2002

Democrats are properly concerned about this week's election results. But the lack of competitive races for the House of Representatives is part of an ongoing trend that should worry all of us.

Despite the fact that voters were asked to decide 10 times as many House races as Senate or gubernatorial races, the overwhelming majority of tough races were for the statewide offices.

Why?

Basically because they weren't subjected to the partisan slicing and dicing of the electorate known as redistricting, a process that's supposed to reflect population shifts but actually is designed to give one party a lock on nearly every seat.

This is an unhealthy outcome that should be particularly galling to reformers who pushed to enact campaign finance reform. If we can't do something to depoliticize congressional redistricting, their attempts to control political spending may be undermined to the point of irrelevance.

They made a compelling argument that too much money was being directed into political campaigns. But they failed to acknowledge that the declining number of competitive races creates a dynamic where vast amounts of money can pour into these few real contests. The result: a small number of very expensive campaigns contrasted to many irrelevant ones in which a growing majority of the American electorate finds that its vote doesn't count.

That's why people don't vote. Too often it simply doesn't matter. The result is a waste of money on congressional campaigns and elections where the result is inevitable. We need to drastically increase the number of competitive races.

Reformers have argued that elections have often been hijacked by political fund-raisers who have no familiarity with or sensitivity to local problems. But there's another elite, more powerful and less public, who have played a much larger negative role. These are the redistricting pros, who use computers to artfully draw maps carefully calibrated to solidify the power of the party they are working for.

They do their job very well. They work for elements in both major parties that are institutionally conservative--preferring to hold the seats they now have to putting them at risk as part of an effort to win more widely.

That protects incumbents. Trust me. I know. It is a technique I used. But it also creates a take-no-prisoners legislative style that makes compromise very difficult and progress nearly impossible.

The way lines are drawn is not inevitable. There are some basic rules: The districts have to be approximately the same size, must at least genuflect toward being compact and contiguous, and comply with voting rights laws designed to protect minorities. But there are many creative ways to achieve these broad goals.

Some would result in more competitive races. Others would result in fewer. Incumbents prefer the latter outcome. It makes their job easier. If we saw this as an efficient solution, we might want to consider saving a few dollars by canceling these irrelevant elections.

But this is not a voter-friendly solution. It leads to the election of candidates who are dogmatic in reassuring their base, but uninterested in compromise to attract the moderates in the middle. Nor is it an outcome sought by the Founding Fathers, who saw the House as the more responsive body to public concerns and the Senate as a moderating force. Today's situation threatens to reverse those roles.

The lesson of the current Congress is that officials who are dogmatic tend not to work well with others, notwithstanding President Bush's rhetoric about the need to reason together. The president may mean what he says, but he's battling an electoral map that rewards more extreme behavior.

I have a long-standing bias against good government nonpartisan institutions because I believe it is healthy for politicians to fight it out--and ultimately compromise--on the policy choices we face. But I've reluctantly decided that this is one situation where my general rule simply doesn't work. Noncompetitive elections aren't advantageous to anyone but the pre-anointed victors.

Iowa has shown that you can make campaigns more competitive by taking the politics out of redistricting. As a result, the five congressional districts in Iowa hosted several competitive races. The example almost offsets the damage the state has done to the presidential nominating system.

Making the change I suggest will be even more difficult than campaign finance reform, if only because it will have to be fought out individually in each state. There's no simple national solution.

In terms of strategy, such a campaign will echo the less-meritorious effort to impose term limits. And, in each case, the states that act risk a temporary loss of power in a Congress where seniority is still important. Nonetheless, I think it is a fight worth making.

It is no longer possible for those of us who are Democrats to blame the dysfunctionality of the House on a single malevolent genius like Newt Gingrich. Nor can we blame a Republican Party that is unresponsive to the issues we believe are important.

Rather we face an institutional impasse where each party has become very efficient at protecting the ground it now holds. The result is policy paralysis. And there's every reason to believe that the outcomes will get worse--and the number of competitive seats will shrink further--unless something's done to reverse the trend.

Dan Rostenkowski is a former chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.