Can we commission better redistricting?

RALEIGH -- A push is on for a constitutional amendment to create a North Carolina Independent Redistricting Commission to draw boundaries for state legislative districts. Cited is a lack of competition this year, when 85 of 170 legislative candidates faced no general election opposition.

I sympathize with the philosophy behind the proposal, but it is important to understand the causes for the lack of competition and potential problems with an Independent Redistricting Commission. For example, parties find it difficult to recruit candidates because of:

• A freeze on legislative pay that has lasted 12 years.

• Lengthy legislative sessions. This decade's sessions ran from 220 to 317 calendar days, up from 150 to 190 days in the 1970s.

• Increasing campaign expenses. A study by SouthNow at UNC-Chapel Hill showed average state Senate campaign expenses rising from $47,121 in 1992 to $242,837 in 2002, with three races over $400,000 each. State House races rose from an average of $29,157 in 1992 to $97,242 in 2002, with 18 over $200,000. Bob Hall of Democracy N.C. estimates total 2006 expenditures at $30 million.

• Restrictive ballot access rules, leaving just two parties on the ballot in 2006.

What of the reasons for lack of general election competitiveness in state legislative races? Among others:

• North Carolina is subject to Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act which resulted in a substantial number of majority-minority state legislative districts, 16 in the House and three in the Senate. An Arizona court, in striking down that state's 2002 Independent Redistricting Commission-adopted plan, noted that the requirement of creating minority districts creates a raft of uncompetitive, highly Democratic districts. The population surrounding these districts tends to be heavily uncompetitive Republican.

Dismantling minority districts to increase competitiveness is not an option. Of the 12 states currently with Independent Redistricting Commissions, only two are, like North Carolina, subject to Section 5, which requires federal approval of redistricting plans, a time-consuming process not factored into most timetables. Arizona adopted its Independent Redistricting Commission in 2000, but had its 2001 plans rejected by the U.S. Department of Justice, new plans imposed by a federal court and a revised plan struck down by a state court because the commission failed to adequately consider competitiveness.

• North Carolina has moved completely to single-member legislative districts. In the 1970s, 150 of the 170 members were elected from more competitive heterogeneous multi-member districts.

• A tendency of counties to be one party. Since before 1900, Northampton County has not voted Republican for president. Avery and Mitchell counties have not voted Democratic for president. Orange County has voted for just one Republican candidate for any partisan office since 1928.

Journalist Scott Mooneyham noted recently that "North Carolina's demographics, with Republicans concentrated in the western half of the state and a few beach communities, and Democrats amassed in the East and larger cities, also are a factor."

A 2004 study by the Austin (Texas) American-Statesman showed that the nation is evenly divided between the two major parties, but there is little competition in most counties. In 1976, 26.8 percent of U.S. voters lived in counties with landslide presidential election results, where one party had 60 percent or more of the vote. By 2000, that had increased to 45.3 percent. The newspaper suggested the fastest-growing kind of segregation is between Republicans and Democrats.