Gerrymandering

Part of HR 1 the first bill of the new congress has to do with drawing the boundaries for elections. There is need for improvement as boundaries are now determined by state legislators and they are corrupted by a process called gerrymandering. Lines are drawn to give preferential treatment to one political party. The new law proposes to take the responsibility for drawing the lines away from the state legislators and giving it to a select committee. Since republicans control 66 of the 99 districts this is viewed as a way to move the power away from republicans. No explanation is given for how the select committee will be formed but it is assumed it will be federally controlled. One way to get rid of gerrymandering and do so in an apolitical way is to make use of technology. A computer program can select boundaries based solely on population without regard to political parties. This will not pass since each party wants to control the boundaries to their advantage. We will get computer drawn boundaries when we get term limits. To ask the congress to vote for something that will limit their power is asking too much.