When it comes to maps, politicians will be politicians

Dallas Morning News | Carl P. Leubsdorf:

"A leaked memo has proved what was widely suspected: Justice Department political appointees overruled career lawyers to approve a Republican congressional redistricting plan for Texas. So a decision with major political ramifications was made by – politicians. Hardly a surprise."

No surprise. A little disappointment maybe, disappointment that the Republicans refuse to acknowledge the decision was political -- as if they might be embarrassed to say so. When the power to draw district boundaries is put in the hands of politicians, where it's used to maximize the representation of the party in power, it's called gerrymandering. And gerrymandering just seems unfair, a priori. Hence, the understandable embarrassment when you're caught red-handed doing it.

Given the same votes, person-by-person, it's possible to end up with quite different proportions of party representation in the legislature, depending on where the district boundaries are drawn. In fact, any system of drawing boundaries will result in complaints that one party or another has been disadvantaged, simply because another drawing of the boundaries will always exist that would have led to quite different results.

Maybe it's not all bad that politics controls the outcome, that the party in power controls redistricting. A system that requires the party out of power to achieve a significant majority to turn the ruling party out of office creates stability. Stability of government is, in general, a Good Thing™. As long as gerrymandering doesn't put up barriers so high that no change in the will of the voters is enough to result in a change of government, I just can't work up too much indignation about gerrymandering. As long as the party in power remains capable of being embarrassed when secrets of their gerrymandering efforts are made public, the system is probably still working. ... Probably.