Gerrymandering

Gerrymandering, as discussed in the op-ed piece by Nicholas Stephanopoulos ("Answer to the gerrymander," Jan. 10), is a significant problem in Maryland as indicated by the new congressional districts approved by the Maryland General Assembly last year. Maryland law should stipulate that districts should be compact as well as equal in population. Districts with unnecessarily peculiar and irregular shapes confuse voters and make it much more difficult for the public to relate effectively to their elected representatives.

This Feb. 14, will mark the 93rd anniversary of the founding of the League of Women Voters, an organization that was built on the efforts to secure for women the right to vote and continues its work by providing information to all voters to ensure that the right is exercised effectively. In Maryland and many other states, the League of Women Voters is addressing a serious threat to the right to vote: gerrymandering. Last year's redistricting process created congressional districts that twist from one county to another, dividing communities and combining little portions of each with parts of counties many miles away, with very different interests.

As a victim of previous gerrymandering schemes in the Washington suburbs, I can only say that politicians and politics are out of control not only in Maryland but nationwide. Are state legislators and the governor completely blind to ethics as they toy with voters' districts, to their detriment? My suggestion to those who have been gerrymandered without consultation is to express their views at the next election and throw out the perpetrators of this political farce. Nelson Marans, Silver Spring

Letter writer Antonio W. Campbell's comments on Maryland's redistricting map were right on target ("Reject the Maryland gerrymander," Nov. 6). What concerns me is the continuing corruption of the voting process through malapportionment and gerrymandering. How can one's vote really count when districts get carved up into such bizarre ways that three members of Congress represent one neighborhood? People need to have equal representation in government, not lopsided districts just because one party wants an advantage.

In the 2000 Congressional redistricting cycle, it was determined by Maryland politicians in power that we should have six Democrats and two Republicans in the House of Representatives, not four from each political party as we did at the time. The lines were carefully redrawn to achieve that purpose and the effort was successful. Those in power manipulated the voters and the public went along with barely a whimper. Apparently, the current Maryland office holders from Gov. Martin O'Malley on down again have such little respect for the voters that they have proposed districts that are way out of line.

That ink blot below is the 12th Congressional District of North Carolina, but it may not be for long. The Supreme Court ruled in a case yesterday that drawing irrational district lines to ensure blacks get seats in Congress is unconstitutional when it unfairly "dilutes or cancels out white voting strength." A trial court must now decide if that has occurred in North Carolina. It probably has.It probably has not occurred in Maryland. Maryland's Fourth Congressional District in southern Prince George's County and eastern Montgomery County has attributes the North Carolina 12th does not. More on that later.

As Maryland's General Assembly considers proposals for new congressional districts this week, plenty of people are upset about how the new lines might affect election outcomes. Few, it seems, have noticed that by gerrymandering voting districts, politicians have also gerrymandered our free press and other forms of political speech. The fact that incumbents use redistricting to make the world safe for incumbency is not surprising. Reporters, who know how the gerrymandering manipulates election results, may scoff at the suggestion that news coverage is also being manipulated.

Organizations like ours are jumping for joy this week as theU.S. Supreme Courthas sided with our criminal justice efforts on two issues - ending both prison gerrymandering and juvenile life without parole rulings ("High court affirms redistricting map," and "Mandatory life terms for youth struck down," June 26). Having worked alongside impacted families and individuals that are affected by these two decisions, it is times like this that remind us our work is not in vain. Our work really does impact people - and reform can happen.

Maryland's new Sixth and Eighth Congressional Districts begin in the state's rugged northwest but then dive southeastward into suburban Montgomery County. The city of Baltimore is split between three new districts: the Second, Third, and Seventh. The new Fourth District joins heavily African-American Prince George's County with heavily white Anne Arundel County. Is there anything wrong with these sorts of districts? Democratically, the answer is yes. Representatives cannot serve their constituents' interests effectively when districts fuse or fragment distinct communities.

AS WE approach the completion of the 1990 census and state officials begin to position themselves to redraw congressional and state legislative districts in 1991, we hear the usual cries of alarm about the evils of gerrymandering. I believe the problem is not nearly as bad as it is portrayed.Gerrymandering can be defined as the drawing of legislative districts to obtain partisan or factional advantage. The term was first used in 1812 when the Jeffersonians in the Massachusetts legislaDavid C.Saffellture split a county to dilute the strength of the Federalists.

Kathleen Dumais' op-ed ("Md. congressional map is fair, legal," Oct. 29) contained several inaccuracies. I am very familiar with the redistricting process since I attended most of the public hearings conducted by the Governor's Redistricting Advisory Committee (GRAC) last year, and Marylanders for Coherent and Fair Representation was the driving force in the federal court case challenging the governor's congressional redistricting plan based primarily on insufficient consideration of communities of interest.

Del. Kathleen Dumais wrongly claims that redistricting reform in Maryland is impossible because "until such time that change occurs at the federal level, redistricting will continue to be a partisan, political process" ("Md. congressional map is far, legal," Oct. 30). The U.S. Constitution establishes how the size of each state's Congressional delegation shall be established but leaves it to each state to decide how its district lines will be drawn. California, for example, now has an independent Citizens Commission composed of five Democrats, five Republicans, and four voters who belong to neither major party.

While I normally would be against the obscene redistricting that is being done for political purposes, resulting in voters being forced into voting for candidates who are not known to them and not in sync with the voters' desires, I still welcome the recent gerrymandering of Maryland's Congressional District 3. Several years ago, my immediate neighborhood was gerrymandered into a district that while adjacent (from District 8 to District 4) did not reflect the views of our area. I was outraged to have to contend with a representative that not only did not represent my needs but also those of most of my neighbors.

Once again, there won't be much national interest in the 2012 federal election results here in Maryland next month. President Barack Obama, who carried the state by 25 percentage points four years ago, is a cinch to capture the state's 10 electoral votes again this November. Rookie Sen. Ben Cardin should easily win re-election, especially with the late entry of a self-funded millionaire whose presence, as polls have indicated, will probably split any anti-incumbent sentiment. Results from seven of the state's eight U.S. House seats are already a foregone conclusion.

The shape of Maryland's 3rd Congressional District has been compared to everything from a Rorschach Test inkblot to a crime-scene blood spatter to a broken-winged pterodactyl, but according to one theory its odd dimensions could have a basis in religion as well as politics. Howard L. Gorrell, a Republican activist who challenged the recently redrawn redistricting map in court, said his analysis supports a theory that the 3rd district's lines were drawn in part to pack as many Jews as possible into the turf of U.S. Rep. John Sarbanes, a Democrat.

Whenever proponents of Maryland's new congressional districts make their pitch, there is something missing: the map itself. The gerrymandered map of Maryland's congressional districts produced by Gov. Martin O'Malley and a majority of the General Assembly is so outrageous that proponents of the new map are embarrassed to show it in public. That's because when most people see the map and its bizarrely shaped districts, they cannot believe that anyone in their right mind would have voted for it. Maryland's new Third Congressional District, represented by Congressman John Sarbanes, a Baltimore County Democrat, is so disjointed it looks like blood spatter from a crime scene (www.planning.maryland.gov/PDF/Redistricting/2010maps/Cong/Dist_3.pdf)

FEW CASES more aptly illustrate the interplay of law, public policy and raw politics than challenges to majority-black voting districts. Two of those challenges, from North Carolina and Texas, were argued before the Supreme Court this week, leaving a divided court to decide what role race should play in devising districts and, in fact, whether its previous decisions leave room for race to be a factor at all.The stakes are high, and not just for the minority...

THE SUPREME COURT has made it clear that race can no longer be the predominant factor in establishing legislative districts. Last week, the court ruled for the fifth time in recent years that "racial gerrymandering" is strictly prohibited.Though civil rights groups denounced the ruling, the court merely restated its position that, under the Constitution, drawing political districts must not be subverted to achieve a racially based purpose, be it to benefit whites or to benefit blacks.When congressional or legislative lines are drawn, the justices said traditional principles must be applied -- such as compact and contiguous districts, due regard for geographical and political boundaries and keeping communities together.

The revelation that Wendy Rosen, the Democratic congressional candidate in Maryland's 1st District, had voted in both Maryland and Florida in 2006 and 2008 is a serious embarrassment to her party. It is also an anomaly, and Republican efforts to pounce on the story as justification for their attempts to enact voter ID laws here and elsewhere are cynical and wrong-headed. Ms. Rosen lives in Maryland and owns property in Florida. She says she registered there so she could vote for a friend who was running for local office, but the fact that she was able to - and did - vote in state and federal elections in Florida and Maryland suggests that she broke the law in one if not both states.

Now that the "Political map is headed for vote" (July 12), The Sun could do the voters of Maryland a big favor by printing a separate map of each individual congressional district. While the overall map merely looks like a crazy quilt of lines and colors, when one looks at the individual map of each district the incredible gerrymandering is obvious. This is especially true of Districts 2, 3, 4, 7 and 8. Let's show the voters exactly what our politicians have been up to! Bob Vaughan, Lutherville