Method of redistricting needs to change

Redistricting our federal congressional and state legislative districts has become quite an undertaking and one that involves politics, racism and party preferences. In other words, it’s just not democratic.

Our legislature has been working hard at the job in a special session and as of this past weekend had not agreed on a map of districts for the next 10 years. Some wanted to postpone the job until next year since there are no elections for federal and local senators and representatives until then.

Clancy Dubos, political editor of Gambit, came up with a solution in a WWL-TV editorial that sounds sensible. Do what several other states do now: appoint a committee of qualified people who are not active in politics to take over the job. That would eliminate the self-serving ambitions of our state senators and representatives who do it now.

The redistribution is done every 10 years after the census is completed to restore proper representation in our governmental bodies. So after this one is completed, we will have time to change the method of re-aligning the districts.

By turning over the job to non-politicians who are able to calculate what sort of representation would be fair to all of the public, we will remove the main problems in arriving at a satisfactory solution. It may not suit those who want more than their share of representation but it will restore a good bit of democracy into our form of government.