Every ten years, states redraw the district boundaries of Congress (and other seats, too) to reflect changes in the population under the Constitution. Often the party in power redraws the borders in order to maintain and expand its power in a process called “gerrymandering”.
“Gerrymandering distorts our democracy, and the Democrats will take steps to end partisan gerrymandering in federal elections,” the Democratic National Committee program said.
In California, thanks to a republican former governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, lines are being drawn by an independent citizens’ commission that represents both major parties and voters without party preference on an equal footing in order to take at least some of the politics out of the process.
It’s not a perfect process, but it’s probably fairer than leaving the demarcation to the party in power. And that’s what the Democrats supposedly want – at least until they are confronted with the slightest loss of power.
San Fernando Valley Congressman Brad Sherman complained to the New York Times that the California Independent Commission published draft maps that slightly favored Republicans, while Republicans in other states redrawn the lines in ways that served them greatly .
“If you have a system that says we’re going to have purity in California and defamation in Texas, you end up with an unrepresentative chamber,” the Times said. “We want to live in a system in which no party is fooled. But the worst is a system in which only one party is screwed. “
Sherman did not mention states like Maryland or Illinois where the predominantly Democratic legislature had torn Republicans from existence.
Fortunately for Sherman, his lawsuits and those of many others resulted in new maps being redrawn favoring the Democrats, and the final maps predicting that Republicans would likely lose some California Congressional seats while previous maps showed potential for the GOP to increase their number slightly.
If they were really against Gerrymandering, the Democrats would condemn Sherman’s comments and party cards in blue states. But their silence suggests that the only really dislike gerrymandering is when Republicans do it.
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