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Even as candidates for Congress and the Missouri General Assembly begin filing for office late this month, it’s still not entirely clear what federal or state legislative districts will look like. Potential candidates cannot yet be sure where they are running, and voters do not yet know for sure for whom they might be voting.
Three statewide maps – congressional districts, Missouri House districts and Missouri Senate districts – all have to be redrawn every 10 years after the federal census, to reflect movements of the state’s population. Those official figures came back from the Census Bureau about a year ago, and yet two of those three maps remain in court and the third has been kicked by the Missouri Supreme Court all the way back to step one, with a new bipartisan commission appointed just this week to try to haggle out a new map.
Consider another political phenomenon in our state. We’re likely to vote this fall on inititatives to amend the state Constitution regarding everything from the legalization of marijuana to the so-called fair tax. This has become common because it’s easier for special interests to gather signatures and get on the ballot than to get meaningful action in the General Assembly.
Is it too much to hope that either legislators or petitioners would someday put before the voters measures to make fundamental reforms in how our state functions? One that springs to mind is shrinking our 197-member legislature.
Another would be this once-a-decade map mess that too often ends up in court. Our neighbors in Iowa, for example, have come up with a far less partisan approach. It starts with the notion that with today’s software, just about any citizen can sit down with the numbers and the criteria – even populations, contiguous and compact districts, try to keep whole cities and counties together – and crank out a reasonable map. Better yet if you’re not a politician concerned about which office-holder lives where or who might have to run against whom.
That’s essentially what Iowa does, assigning a nonpartisan office to devise the maps that legislators vote up or down. Iowans had their census numbers in early February last year and had their new districts in April. All political parties live with the risks that come with change, instead of angling to lock in the same old results.
It’s not rocket science. It’s just math plus common sense minus partisan politics. Maybe there’s something in that for Missouri to consider.
Even as candidates for Congress and the Missouri General Assembly begin filing for office late this month, it’s still not entirely clear what federal or state legislative districts will look like. Potential candidates cannot yet be sure where they are running, and voters do not yet know for sure for whom they might be voting.
Three statewide maps – congressional districts, Missouri House districts and Missouri Senate districts – all have to be redrawn every 10 years after the federal census, to reflect movements of the state’s population. Those official figures came back from the Census Bureau about a year ago, and yet two of those three maps remain in court and the third has been kicked by the Missouri Supreme Court all the way back to step one, with a new bipartisan commission appointed just this week to try to haggle out a new map.
Consider another political phenomenon in our state. We’re likely to vote this fall on inititatives to amend the state Constitution regarding everything from the legalization of marijuana to the so-called fair tax. This has become common because it’s easier for special interests to gather signatures and get on the ballot than to get meaningful action in the General Assembly.
Is it too much to hope that either legislators or petitioners would someday put before the voters measures to make fundamental reforms in how our state functions? One that springs to mind is shrinking our 197-member legislature.
Another would be this once-a-decade map mess that too often ends up in court. Our neighbors in Iowa, for example, have come up with a far less partisan approach. It starts with the notion that with today’s software, just about any citizen can sit down with the numbers and the criteria – even populations, contiguous and compact districts, try to keep whole cities and counties together – and crank out a reasonable map. Better yet if you’re not a politician concerned about which office-holder lives where or who might have to run against whom.
That’s essentially what Iowa does, assigning a nonpartisan office to devise the maps that legislators vote up or down. Iowans had their census numbers in early February last year and had their new districts in April. All political parties live with the risks that come with change, instead of angling to lock in the same old results.
It’s not rocket science. It’s just math plus common sense minus partisan politics. Maybe there’s something in that for Missouri to consider.
