Brown: Why do we let legislators draw their own election districts?

Politicians are often criticized for acting more in pursuit of self-interest than of the public interest. One activity that is inarguably a thoroughly self-interested act occurs when state legislative and congressional districts are redrawn after each census.

In redistricting, each lawmaker tries to gain the best advantage for himself while putting any actual or potential rivals at a political disadvantage.

The party in control of the process does everything it can to protect and expand its majority through the manipulation of geography and demographics. In its absence of the public interest as a guiding principle and in its legislator-centered focus, this process represents the worst of politics.

The process leads to a decline in the number of competitive seats in an elective body, since gerrymandering creates as safe a seat as possible for an incumbent, and in ideological polarization, because the districts often reflect the ideology of the incumbents’ most extreme supporters.

But a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in June upholding Arizona’s independent redistricting commission gives some insight into how South Carolina might improve the process.

Although the next redistricting will not be taken until after 2020, now is the time for the General Assembly to begin studying the Arizona method and laying the groundwork to have a better system in place before it is needed again.

The first thing the General Assembly will need to do is amend the S.C. Constitution to give an independent commission the exclusive authority to redraw election districts for state and congressional elections and to prohibit the commission from considering the impact of its actions on election outcomes.

In a brief filed by political scientists Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann in support of the Arizona law, they point out that “the basic problem with legislative control over redistricting is obvious: Legislators’ personal and partisan interests are inherently in conflict with the ideals of electoral fairness and representative parity.”

Representative democracy suffers under the redistricting process now used by the General Assembly, and it is not likely to change unless voters make this a litmus test when they go to the polls.

This story was originally published August 11, 2015 at 7:02 PM.