Diminished voters

Congressional and state legislative elections are essentially rigged. It’s a serious problem.

All of us would like to think that our votes count, that the sacred act of going to the polls makes a difference in our republic, that by casting our ballots we voters choose the politicians who represent us.

The appalling reality of our elections for Congress and the Texas Legislature is quite different. Instead of us voters picking our politicians, our state operates under a cynical system in which politicians preserve their jobs by picking their voters.

That’s the essence of gerrymandering, a longstanding yet dishonorable partisan practice that in the 21st century has metastasized into a computer-driven cancer on our country. The funny business of drawing oddly shaped legislative districts has been happening for more than 200 years, but today it’s evolved into a science so sophisticated it’s rendered most of our November congressional elections meaningless.

Every decade, based upon newly tabulated data from the U.S. census, Texas lawmakers redraw district lines to reflect changes in the population. When the Republicans running the Legislature last redrew the maps in 2012, each district had roughly 700,000 people. Using refined computer programs that can now pinpoint likely voters for both parties with Orwellian efficiency, mapmakers packed Democrats into as few districts as possible then spread the rest around solidly GOP turf.

That’s how gerrymandering diminishes the influence of individual voters. It’s how liberal Democrats in Montrose find themselves in the same congressional district as conservative Republicans in Huffman, shoehorned into a strangelooking map deliberately designed to make sure nobody from their community has a chance of representing their views in the halls of Congress.

So we end up with incumbent politicians who don’t have to worry about winning their elections, don’t have to even listen to their constituents in the opposing party. Instead they focus on winning their party primaries, a process that drives Republicans further to the right and Democrats further to the left. Extreme gerrymandering has cursed us with extremism in government.

And just last month, a federal court found that gerrymandered legislative districts were deliberately drawn to dilute the growing power of Latino voters in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and other parts of the state. In other words, gerrymandering in Texas isn’t just about keeping one party in power, it’s about keeping one race in power.

We need to face the stark truth: Our congressional and state legislative elections are essentially rigged. And that’s a problem that needs to be fixed.

At least 21 states have tackled this problem by assigning the job of redrawing district maps to nonpartisan or bipartisan redistricting commissions. Now legislation proposed by two state lawmakers would create an independent redistricting commission in Texas. These bills — HB 369 from Rep. Donna Howard, D-Austin, and SB 209 from Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas — would take the contentious redistricting system out of the province of state lawmakers and put it in the hands of appointed commissioners.

Of course, no system would remove all partisanship from the process of redistricting. And of course, the party and the people in power in the Texas Legislature won’t exactly jump at the chance to change the system that sent them to Austin. Nonetheless, this legislation makes sense, it should become law and if you agree, we hope you’ll to let your state lawmakers know you support the proposal to create an independent redistricting commission.

Our politicians shouldn’t be picking their voters. We voters should be picking our politicians.

And just last month, a federal court found that gerrymandered legislative districts were deliberately drawn to dilute the growing power of Latino voters in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and other parts of the state.