Fitzsimon File

The polls officially open across the state in two weeks and early voting is already underway, but in exactly half of the races for the General Assembly, the decision is already made.

In most of them, it was made after the May primary. In others, it was made when the filing period for office closed last winter and only one candidate had decided to run.  Sixty-three candidates for the State House face no opposition in November. Twenty-two candidates in the Senate are running unopposed.

There are plenty of reasons that this is the highest number of candidates running unopposed since 1994. Some lawmakers will tell you it’s because they are doing a good job.

Others will say that it is hard to convince people to run for office these days with the need to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars. It’s also hard for many people be able to afford to serve in a job that is now close to full-time with far less than full-time pay. 

There is some truth in those reasons. But it is also true that many candidates have no opponent because the politicians drew legislative districts to ensure that most seats are safe, that incumbents are protected, and that challengers of the opposite party have virtually no chance to win and therefore don’t even try.

Redistricting at first glance seems like a boring topic interesting only to political junkies, budding cartographers and amateur statisticians, but it has as much to do with who represents you in the General Assembly as any other factor.  

That’s why the N.C. Coalition for Lobbying and Government Reform, the folks who brought you lobbying and ethics reform(on which more needs to be done) is now trying to change the way legislative and congressional districts are drawn, to take them out of the hands of the politicians as much as possible.

The Coalition believes that districts should be drawn by an independent commission. The easiest way to explain this idea is that politicians shouldn’t choose their voters, voters should choose their politicians.

It is not as far-fetched as you might think. Several states already have an independent redistricting commission, appointed in various ways. In most instances, the commission’s plans are submitted to the legislature for an up or down vote. Lawmakers can’t amend the plan. If they reject a plan, the commission tries again.

There is no guarantee that the independently-drawn districts won’t be challenged in court. In fact, it is likely that they will be. That is a fact of life now in redistricting disputes. But no state with an independent redistricting commission has had as many lawsuits as North Carolina.

Like the push for lobbying and ethics reform, this will not be an easy battle. Political leaders of both parties are unlikely to easily give up the power to draw their own districts, so the Coalition is expecting a long struggle.

The close partisan split in the General Assembly may actually work in favor of reform, as members of the party in power might be persuaded that they would be better off with independently drawn districts than taking the chance that the minority party might take over and draw them into legislative oblivion.

The most common criticism of independent redistricting commissions is that politics will always be part of the process, that the appointment of the commission members will be made with political considerations. That can be partially addressed by adopting objective criteria for drawing districts to remove some of the shenanigans.

But even if some politics remain, it would be far less than the current system where politicians literally draw their own districts, choose their own voters, and freeze potential credible candidates out of running for office.

We need to give voters more choices, more chances to hear vigorous debates about issues affecting their lives. Democracy at its best is a battle of ideas. The current redistricting system discourages real debates about issues and ideas by deciding many elections before a single vote is cast. That’s not democratic and it’s not in our best interest either.

 

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 24th, 2006 at 6:46 pm and is filed under Fitzsimon File. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.