A bipartisan group of House lawmakers is pushing changes to the congressional mapmaking process to combat partisan gerrymandering and a repeat of this cycle’s middecade redistricting wars.
The House Problem Solvers Caucus on Wednesday announced four bills it believes would improve the process and the incentives for lawmakers to cater to more than just their party base.
“Of the 435 seats in Congress, roughly 35 seats are swing seats are seats that require anybody who wants to win or wants to govern to be able to talk to the middle,” said New York GOP Rep. Mike Lawler.
He said all House members should be doing that and addressing concerns of their constituents in both parties, but “unfortunately, we are in a system that is not designed for that.”
The Problem Solvers’ bills would ban middecade redistricting; encourage states to adopt independent redistricting commissions; require congressional districts to be compact, contiguous and keep communities of interest together; and give federal courts sole jurisdiction to enforce challenges.
Problem Solvers co-Chair Tom Suozzi, New York Democrat, said it won’t be easy to pass such changes but that the centrists are working with good government groups and other stakeholders to build momentum for the proposals.
“The general public wants exactly what we’re saying. It all makes reasonable sense, but there are systemic forces at play, political forces at play … pulling us to these extremes — people seeking political advantage, people trying to make money, people trying to defeat us,” he said.
His fellow co-chair, Brian Fitzpatrick, Pennsylvania Republican, said the measures are designed to return Congress to a voice of the people, as the Founding Fathers envisioned.
He said George Washington warned in his farewell address of 1796 that party factions would lead to the destruction of America, which is what’s happening in the modern political system.
“We have forces at play that are hurting and pulling and tugging at the threads of our democracy,” Mr. Fitzpatrick said, citing closed primaries, gerrymandering and money in politics as examples that are causing “a divide between the electorate and the institutions that were built to serve them.”
Teams of Problem Solvers Caucus members worked on the various individual bills.
Mr. Lawler and Rep. Salud Carbajal, California Democrat, partnered on the Maps Act, which sets standards for states to follow when drawing congressional districts.
“When mapmakers do not have clear standards to follow, it becomes much easier for politics to take over,” Mr. Carbajal said. “We want the process to start with the basics: equal population, connectedness, compactness and protecting existing political boundaries.”
Reps. Jeff Hurd, Colorado Republican, and Ed Case, Hawaii Democrat, led the Transparent Redistricting Under Stable Timelines (TRUST) Act, which would end the middecade restricting wars with a nationwide rule that lets congressional maps be redrawn only once a decade following census.
“Redistricting should be about representing changes in our populations and our communities, not about finding a political advantage before the next election,” Mr. Hurd said.
Mr. Case and Rep. Ryan Mackenzie, Pennsylvania Republican, partnered on the Nonpartisan Courts Act to give federal courts sole jurisdiction over congressional redistricting challenges and mandate an expedited judicial review.
“This is not about deciding which side is going to win a redistricting case,” Mr. Mackenzie said. “It is about making sure that the same basic rules apply no matter where the case is brought or which political party drew the map.”
He cited the “total chaos” that occurred in Pennsylvania in the 2018 election after a state court unilaterally redrew the congressional map.
“Federal redistricting disputes have become corrosive to state judicial administration,” Mr. Case said. “We have state judges out there who are being put up for office, or who are being nominated in state legislatures based in part on the expectation of how they would rule in a congressional map dispute. That’s wrong.”
The fourth bill encourages states to adopt independent redistricting commissions by withholding federal election assistance funding for those that do not.
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