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By John Krull
TheStatehouseFile.com
INDIANAPOLIS: Some decisions are too important to leave to politicians.
The main decision is how we citizens decide who will represent us. This process is called “redistricting” which is a cure for insomnia.
John Krull, editor, TheStatehouseFile.com
But it is important, perhaps more than any other question.
This is because we will probably not be able to solve any of our problems if we do not solve the redistriction first. The only way to do that is to return power to the people, reminding those who hold public office that they only do so with the consent of the governed.
Indiana state lawmakers have been working on the redistricting process for months.
Predictably, they have made a mess of it, evoking maps of legislative districts only piracy and that the most rabid partisans could tolerate, let alone.
Some of his piracies are blatantly political.
They redrawed the map of the fifth district of the Indiana Congress, which has become competitive because voters have sent dangerous signals that were moderate and independent, to another Republican stronghold. U.S. Rep. Victoria Spartz, R-Indiana, captured the office last fall, but her fellow Republicans feared she might be vulnerable.
Perhaps this is because one of Spartz’s first congressional acts was to look for a photo opportunity with a marginal figure U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Georgia, who turns so far right that she has fallen from the far margin of the ground floor in which she believes.
Some of the drafts of the map makers were personal, even petty.
Republicans drafted the map to make one of their own, Indiana Rep. John Jacob, R-Indianapolis, easier to challenge. Jacob’s politics are more conservative than Genghis Khan’s and he has all the personal charm of a viper. His great regret in life is that he did not live during the Crusades. Nothing would give him more pleasure than to march to reclaim the Holy Land from the infidels.
Before becoming a legislator, he appeared in the Statehouse to harangue lawmakers, even those who were reliable votes in favor of life, as murderers because they did not share their extreme views on abortion.
Surprisingly, some Republicans don’t find a constant diet of screams of fire from Jacob’s hell in the caucus so enjoyable and want him to leave.
But it is not fair to point out either the Indiana Republicans or the Hoosiers for having indulged in the demands of war.
The truth is that it is happening almost everywhere in the country.
Both parties — Democrats in blue states and Republicans in red — are guilty of abusing their power and drawing up maps that allow them to choose their voters, rather than allowing voters to choose their leaders.
This is because, for politicians, exploding is more addictive than crack and nicotine combined.
Without an intervention, they will not give up on it.
This is a problem for the rest of us, as gerrymandering distorts the process of self-government to the point of making it unrecognizable.
There are Hoosier Republican lawmakers who have begun to advance the argument that cutting and chopping maps had nothing to do with the creation of their major legislative majorities. They say it’s better for Republican “ideas” to be better.
This dispute is absurd.
In the 2020 election, then-President Donald Trump and Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb captured about 57 percent of the vote in Indiana. Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita captured 58%.
Still, the Indiana House ended up being 71% Republican and the Indiana Senate 78%.
Does this mean that Republican “ideas” from GOP House candidates were 14% better than those of Trump or Holcomb and 13% stronger than those of Rokita? And that the ideas of Republican Senate candidates were 20% more appealing than those of GOP candidates across the state?
What makes livestock farming a serious problem is that it erodes public confidence in government, the instrument through which we are supposed to resolve our differences.
It’s no coincidence that as gerrymandering went from being a dark art to becoming a dark science, Americans started squealing instead of talking to each other. Because huge bands of the public — left, right, and center — feel that no one in power listens to or speaks for them, we have begun to shout all the time in desperate attempts to be heard.
That will not change if we leave redistriction in the hands of politicians.
Decisions that are important should belong to the citizens — and to us alone.
John Krull is director of the Pulliam School of Journalism at Franklin College and editor of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website run by journalism students at Franklin College.
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Source: http://thestatehousefile.com/commentary-gerrymandering-an-addiction-pols-just-cant-break/
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