But Republicans in Pennsylvania and Texas had the power to draw political blood. The Texas gerrymander, orchestrated by one of the state's top Republicans, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, will produce as many as eight new GOP House members, guaranteeing that Democrats probably won't retake control of the House any time soon.
The easiest way to restore democracy to the House (and state legislatures across the country) is to take redistricting out of the hands of politicians. That's easier said than done, of course. But when he announced his support for the blanket primary initiative, Proposition 62, on the California ballot, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger repeated his call for an independent commission to redraw the state's legislative and congressional district lines. Schwarzenegger's is not a voice easily ignored.
We already know how this would work in California. State Supreme Court masters drew the district lines in 1991 after former Gov. Pete Wilson vetoed a sweetheart deal cooked up in the Legislature. They applied constitutional standards ignored in legislative remappings. The result: Numerous legislative and congressional districts changed parties in the 1990s.
Ted Costa, the driving force behind the recall election, is circulating a proposed measure for the 2006 ballot that would set up an independent commission to remap the state politically. Its advantage is that it would call for mid-decade redistricting, so the gerrymandered districts would go sooner. If the measure qualified in early 2005, Schwarzenegger could call a special election and have new district lines in place by 2006.
There is also a small chance the courts will get more involved. They entered the gerrymander thicket with the landmark Baker vs. Carr decision in 1962, which made redistricting a judicial question as well as a political one. Subsequent rulings declared that districts should at least have equal populations and not discriminate against racial or ethnic minorities. So far so good. But the intervening decades have been notable for a lack of judicial attention to gerrymandering.
In the 1980s, California Republicans, then victims of gerrymandering schemes, begged the courts to weigh in. The then-liberal California Supreme Court, under former Chief Justice Rose Bird, refused. Now Democrats, who once told the courts to keep out, welcome them in.
