Could you do a better job of redistricting the state?

There are only 36 state senators in Connecticut. So how is it that big Stamford (population 135,470) and little Darien (population 22,000) will each have three after the next election?

Politicians and pundits compare the process of redistricting to Whack-aMole, a Rubik’s Cube or Jenga.

It’s more like a game of Quidditch. You know, where the witches and wizards try to knock each other off brooms at great heights.

Care to try a round of “Redistricting Connecticut, the Home Game?” Be prepared to swap some brooms, storm some castles and bend some rules.

For now, let’s stick with the state Senate. The math is simple: All you need to do is slice the state into 36 pieces. How hard can that be? Connecticut is essentially a rectangle with a spout stuck in its bottom corner, as though it’s trying to drain sludge into Long Island Sound. Now try to get the image out of your head that our state really looks like the handle of a gas pump.

Here’s where the fun comes in. Each of those 36 pieces has to contain about 100,165 people, and damn Stamford won’t stop packing ’em in. So some districts have to get smaller, and others larger.

A bipartisan committee of four Democrats and four Republicans just finished playing this game. First, some public hearings were held to get some input and pretend the process is transparent. Then the doors were locked and deals were cut. I’m guessing the conversations can be shorthanded to something like this:

“You give us some reliable blue voters, and we’ll swap ya some red ones.”

From afar, the districts look like someone built a LEGO Connecticut set with pieces borrowed from New Hampshire and crammed in random Gummy Worms. Nothing in real life should be shaped like the 26th district. As it was, state Sen. Will Haskell represented Ridgefield, Redding, Wilton and parts of Bethel, Weston, New Canaan and Westport (where he lives).

Connecticut is essentially a rectangle with a spout stuck in its bottom corner, as though it’s trying to drain sludge into Long Island Sound. Now try to get the image out of your head that our state really looks like the handle of a gas pump.

But as the Census documented Harbor Point super-growth in Stamford’s South End, state Sen. Patricia Billie Miller’s 27th district had to be downsized. So now Haskell’s spread will lop off Bethel at its top and extend like Lord Voldemort’s crooked finger through Darien and into the Springdale and Glenbrook neighborhoods of Stamford.

Politically, it should take away Republican voters and add Democrats for Haskell, who falls into the latter persuasion. Thus, his re-election next November should be considerably easier. But he’s going to feel pressure to deliver for Stamford voters, some of whom will be cynical about being represented by someone from Westport.

Meanwhile, the 36th district (representing all of Greenwich, upper Stamford and the rest of New Canaan) ought to tilt in favor of Republicans. The GOP held the seat from 1930 to 2018, when Democratic Alex Kasser leveraged members of her party in Stamford to upset fiveterm incumbent Scott Frantz.

I can only theorize that Republicans traded votes in the 26th in exchange for more turf in New Canaan in the 36th, while losing Hubbard Heights in Stamford, making it harder for Democrats to reclaim that seat.

Frantz told me he has “always believed it’s better to have a Senate or House district that makes sense by keeping it in a more concentric area ...”

Good for Frantz, but I hear “concentric” and my mind pivots to concentric circles of hell in Dante’s “Inferno.” Which is essentially what the task of redistricting must have been like for the eight men (no women were involved) on the Reapportionment Commission.

Members of the General Assembly reliably squawk the same talking point, that the Connecticut method is better than ones in states in which the majority party controls the outcome. Still, we’re left with a system in which people who hold these seats get to decide which people will vote for them.

From a distance, one of the most interesting stories revealed on the new map is that Darien will be represented by three senators after the next election. Darien’s Republican base is shrinking, but GOP voters still outnumber Democrats nearly 2-to-1.

Yet the three senators who would represent Darien if the map took effect immediately are all Democrats. Currently, Darien is represented by Miller and Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff of Norwalk, who is on the Reapportionment Commission.

The map gets even more amusing when it’s blown up to reveal how neighborhoods are have been chiseled. State Rep. Matt Blumenthal’s 147th district changed dramatically in Stamford, losing pieces of Westover and North Stamford neighborhoods and all of its slice of Darien.

But even more intriguing is that the redrawing of the Senate District 27 map looks as though someone burped while tracing a straight line through Glenbrook, snagging a piece of one street — the piece that happens to include Blumenthal’s residence.

The shape that snares Blumenthal’s address is a political Bermuda Triangle that should have landed him in Haskell’s district, and could have moved him to Duff’s. But his safest political bet to claim a Senate seat in the future would be to stay in District 27 (the post Miller now holds).

When I asked about the anomaly, Blumenthal responded, “I can’t really comment on the Senate process, as I wasn’t privy to how it unfolded.”

This was the first year members of the public were offered access to mapping tools, Census and elections data and the opportunity to submit their own redistricting proposal.

To put it another way, “If you think you can do better ...”

Then lawmakers closed the door again.

They have a pretty impossible task. But there is no transparency in how they play this game. “It’s a better system than other states have” doesn’t make it a good system.

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