COMMENTARY: It's time to say goodbye to gerrymandering through House Bill 1014

Reminded that not everyone in the Indiana Legislature would agree, Holcomb indicated he’d be willing to help in selling the concept. How would he do that?

“With coffee?” he joked. “Maybe chocolate? I don’t give up at the outset.”

Perhaps the governor should warm up the coffee and break out the chocolate. Less than two weeks before the deadline for bills to clear their house of origin, a measure to reform Indiana’s redistricting process seems to be hung up in committee.

If that doesn’t change soon, the bill might well be dead for the current session.

This issue deserves better.

House Bill 1014 has been assigned to the House Committee on Elections and Apportionment. The bill was the product of an interim study committee led by Rep. Jerry Torr, a Republican from Carmel.

That study committee spent hours listening to experts and looking at what has worked in other states before agreeing on the recommendations put forward in the measure Torr introduced in the House.

One of the bill’s co-sponsors is Democrat John Bartlett (Indianapolis), the ranking minority member of the committee considering Torr’s bill. The committee chairman is Milo Smith, a Republican from Columbus.

Smith comes from the sort of district this bill is targeting. He has never had a serious challenge for his seat in the Legislature. His closest election was his first one, in 2006, when he collected more than 60 percent of the vote in defeating Democrat Gary J. Bell by more than 3,000 votes.

To be fair, Bartlett resides in an even more lopsided district. He ran unopposed in 2012 and 2014, and he collected more than 87 percent of the vote in winning a fifth consecutive term last fall.

That’s the issue. Way too many of this state’s lawmakers reside in districts where they’ll never face a serious challenge in a general election.

What happens in these districts is that incumbents become ensconced. As long as they cater to their party’s base, they become virtually unbeatable. Their only threat comes in the primary, and that leaves lawmakers on both sides of the aisle moving in opposite directions. They never need to look for common ground because they never need to reach out to moderate voters.

That’s a recipe for the gridlock we see in Washington today.

There will never be a system that eliminates lopsided districts. Certain districts in the state’s large cities will always tilt Democratic, and those in the suburbs will lean Republican. That won’t change with a nonpartisan commission.

What might change is the number of districts that have been clearly gerrymandered to favor one party or the other.

The term “gerrymander,” by the way, originated in 1812 with a cartoon in the Boston Gazette. Then-Gov. Elbridge Gerry had signed a bill drawing Massachusetts state Senate districts to favor his Democratic-Republican Party. On a map, one of those districts looked a lot like a salamander, thus the term, “Gerry-mander.”

The districts worked, as Gerry’s party won the Senate in the next election. The plan backfired on Gerry, though, as he lost his bid for re-election and his party also lost the Massachusetts House.

The lesson from Gerry’s experience should be clear: Voters can have a voice in the way legislative and congressional districts are drawn.

The first step in that effort is to call your elected leaders to let them know you support House Bill 1014.