[LWVNM Action] Oped by one of our Fair Districts for New Mexico partners

[Richard Mason]

*NM lawmakers should set new redistricting criteria*

*Guest Column in the ABQ Journal - By *John House in
*Updated: Friday, July 3rd, 2020 at 4:42pm **John House of Santa Fe is
president of RepresentUs New Mexico. - formerly NM for Money Out of
Politics*


At least since 2018, the platform of the Democratic Party of New Mexico has
included the intention to end gerrymandering, the practice of creating or
“drawing” voting districts (boundaries of electoral constituencies) in a
way to favor a political party or incumbent politician(s).

Item 15 of the section of the 2020 platform entitled “Ethics, Elections,
and Politics” states, “We will … end gerrymandering by creating and giving
authority to an independent non-partisan redistricting commission, separate
from the legislative process, that will prevent the drawing of political
boundaries favoring one party over another or favoring incumbents.” The
Republican Party of New Mexico’s issues statement on its website does not
address gerrymandering.

For lovers of democracy, ending gerrymandering is a very important goal,
for gerrymandering subverts the right to vote. For those unfamiliar with
the process, the drawing of voting districts or “redistricting” occurs
every 10 years after the national census. In theory, it is done in order to
keep the districts reflective of the population within them. In practice,
in the majority of states in which the state legislature does it, the party
in power often draws them to its political advantage, in order to retain
and even increase its political control. Put in the simplest of terms, what
that does is allow elected officials to choose who their voters are in
their districts, instead of the voters choosing their elected officials. No
single party is guilty of this manner of “rigging the system;”both
Democratic- and Republican-dominated state legislatures engage in it.

Since 2016, there have been six pieces of New Mexico legislation proposing
either to amend the state Constitution in order to vest the authority and
task of redistricting in an independent commission, or to study how to best
reform the redistricting process. The Democratic Party has had control of
both houses of the Legislature, except in 2015-16, when the Republicans
took control of the House. Sadly, each piece of legislation aimed at ending
or grappling with the undemocratic practice of gerrymandering has failed,
whether introduced in the House or the Senate. The Legislature’s website
designates it as “API,” which means “action postponed indefinitely.”

We must take politics out of the redistricting process. The Brennan Center
for Justice, the National Conference of State Legislatures, independent
scholars and state agencies have proposed fair and purposeful criteria for
drawing voting districts. The various suggestions include several or all
of: 1) equal population; 2) racial fairness; 3) compactness; 4)
geographical contiguity; 5) encourage competition; 6) preservation of
communities of interest; 7) preservation of political subdivisions and
prior districts; and 8) nonpartisan fairness. The 10 states that have
created independent redistricting commissions have adopted redistricting
criteria similar or identical to these.

In 2020, House Memorial 8 proposed that the Legislative Council establish a
task force to study redistricting, and to suggest new rules and guidelines.
Despite the death of HM 8 in the past session, it is my understanding that
the Legislative Council is still considering establishing the task force.

Whether the Legislature does the job itself or leaves it to a task force,
it should not involve a gargantuan effort to develop a good set of
redistricting criteria. Since model criteria have already been developed
and utilized in other states, New Mexico need not reinvent the wheel.

Due to the Legislature’s half-hearted at best past efforts, it is too late
to amend the state Constitution to create and empower an independent
redistricting commission in time to do the redistricting this cycle. But it
is not too late to establish the criteria to be followed in the process.

It’s time for Democratic state legislators to walk the walk to match the
party platform’s talk. Republican state legislators should also get behind
this since they and their constituencies have been the primary victims of
gerrymandering due to decades of mostly Democratic control in the state.
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