Tommy Denton

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Del. Brian J. Moran, D-Alexandria, has proposed to pick up a noble and essential reform initiative where the current Republican leadership in the General Assembly left off in 1992: adoption of a constitutional amendment to provide a just and fair redistricting process.

Current House Speaker William H. Howell, R-Fredericksburg, and Senate Majority Leader Walter Stosch, R-Glen Allen, fairly oozed reformist idealism back in '92 when they sought to reverse the shameless partisan exploitation of their Democratic counterparts who perpetrated gerrymandering excesses in Virginia after the 1990 census.

Those excesses cried out for a system that sought to protect the interests of the voting public, not the entrenched partisan advantage that sought the iron-fisted permanence of political power.

The reform effort failed in 1992, and since. With the gerrymandering that has served Republicans' interests so well in securing their own objectives of muscular majority rule, the incentives seem slight to encourage Howell, Stosch and substantial numbers of their partisan colleagues to embrace change with the same reformist zeal they showed 15 years ago.

But change they should, and Moran's proposal -- essentially the same legislative language as offered in 1992 -- should provide some momentum to a campaign sponsored for the last few years by the League of Women Voters of Virginia.

As the league noted in a statement: "The current system of redistricting in Virginia encourages partisan gerrymandering, which creates seats so politically skewed that the opposition doesn't have a shot at unseating the incumbent. This subverts the democratic system because it allows politicians to choose their voters, rather than vice versa. This turns representative government upside-down."

For instance, in the 2003 election, only four of the 40 state Senate seats were competitive, compared with only nine of 100 in the House; 69 delegates faced no major party challenger. The 2005 election was hardly much better, with 51 delegates running unopposed and nine others facing only minor-party opposition, so that 60 percent lacked a major challenge.

Preferential district-rigging that leaves election outcomes a foregone conclusion has suppressed voter participation, the league contends. In 1997, 49.5 percent voted in the legislative races; in 2001, 46 percent; in 2003, 31 percent. In the 2005 election, which included a hot governor's race, the turnout "rose" to 45 percent.

Even more serious has been the trend of gerrymandering -- in Congress and nationwide, not just in Virginia -- to polarize legislative bodies. In its report "Does Your Vote Really Count?" the league noted: "With little reason to fear voters, representatives increasingly cater to party insiders and donors rather than to the political center. Bipartisan compromise around moderate policies takes a back seat to party loyalty, resulting in historic levels of polarization."

Virginia's deadlock last year on transportation -- and perhaps in 2007 -- is a case study in the triumph of obstructionist extremism.

Rather than allowing legislators to pick their constituents in the existing, self-perpetuating system, the better course is to place redistricting powers in the hands of an independent authority structured to prevent partisan abuse.

Such is the idea proposed by the League of Women Voters, a system used in some form in one-fourth of the states. The concept at least emerged in the 2006 session, with 11 bills introduced. Only one -- merely to create a joint subcommittee to study the feasibility and implications of the current Virginia system and alternatives used in other states -- received a vote, 40-0 by the Senate. A House subcommittee killed the bill without public comment.

Redistricting in Virginia should be accomplished by a nonpartisan commission according to relatively objective criteria -- natural geographic boundaries, jurisdictional boundaries and established communities of interest.

Legislators should not be allowed to indulge in naked conflicts of interest by sequestering certain demographic or otherwise identifiable voting groups within irrationally contorted boundaries to create "safe" districts and enhance their majority leverage.

In 1992, the two current leaders of each house of the Virginia General Assembly were clear-eyed in their quest for better government through the integrity of the redistricting process. That was when each was ostensibly committed to governing from the center of rational debate in the public interest.

All Virginians should insist that they recover that commitment they seem to have misplaced.

Denton's column appears in the Sunday and Tuesday editions of The Roanoke Times.