Legislative Task One for Mumpower & Ramsey

After the election of the constitutional officers, reorganization of committee staff, and appointment of new, reliable, Republican faces to a whole host of statewide boards and commission, of course.

Redistricting.

The Republicans have a 1 seat majority in the house. In a state which went for McCain 57-42 over Obama.

If the state legislative districts were neutrally drawn, the Republicans should control the Senate 19-14 (they’re actually quite close to that now) and the House 56-43 instead of 50-49. Granted, there’s a certain amount of inertia in changing the party id of a house seat, but it is only thanks to the Democrats’ ruthless gerrymandering of 2001 that they have controlled the House for the last 8 years.

The state constitution requires that districts be re-drawn after each Federal Census, but the constitution specifically reserves to the legislature the right to re-district at any time:

The apportionment of Senators and Representatives shall be substantially according to population. After each decennial census made by the Bureau of Census of the United States is available the General Assembly shall establish senatorial and representative districts. Nothing in this Section nor in this Article II shall deny to the General Assembly the right at any time to apportion one House of the General Assembly using geography, political subdivisions, substantially equal population and other criteria as factors; provided such apportionment when effective shall comply with the Constitution of the United States as then amended or authoritatively interpreted. If the Constitution of the United States shall require that Legislative apportionment not based entirely on population be approved by vote of the electorate, the General Assembly shall provide for such vote in the apportionment act.

Mumpower and Ramsey should immediately task a committee with re-drawing the current house district boundaries to insure a more equitable representation.

Incidentally, the current district scheme appears to violate the state constitution which prohibits a multi-county house district if it is carved out of parts of 2 counties. Wherever possible, house districts are supposed to respect county boundaries – a very reasonable prescription intended to check the temptation to gerrymander.

Why redistrict now, when there will almost certainly be a need to redistrict again in two more years?

Because if the House is not redisticted now, the Democrats will make an all-out push to flip one seat back into their column and regain control of the House in order to preserve their gerrymandered scheme (or a worse one) for another ten years.

If the Republicans simply do a neutral, representative re-districting, they stand to pick up six more seats.

Six new Republican seats on the ballot for the 2010 election cycle would solidify the Republican takeover.

The Democrats are going to scream like stuck pigs anyway. Might as well get something useful done.