In a state with a history of non-partisan and bipartisan actions, and a legislature that is supposedly non-partisan, you might think that Nebraska would be more likely to avoid partisan gerrymandering. You might also think, in this non-partisan atmosphere, that questionably legal maneuvers by the political party with the largest majority in the state legislature would never happen.
Unfortunately this year, you'd be wrong.
If you're unfamiliar with the concept of legislative redistricting, the idea is a simple one to understand. After the U.S. Census, every ten years, legislative district lines are supposed to be redrawn, so that each district has a roughly equal population to all the other districts within a state.
The usual political approach for most state legislatures when redistricting comes around is quite simple; keep things almost exactly the same as they were before the census. Their political motives are highly understandable. When political winds shift, as they always eventually do, political payback can be hell. Further, if a political party overreaches during redistricting, they can end up in Federal Court – and appear like they're trying to cheat and stack the deck against their political rivals.
Still, some political parties do attempt to gerrymander, to redraw the boundaries of an electoral district in an obviously corrupt way, to create a specific kind of political advantage.
Surprisingly, this year in Nebraska, the state Republican Party is attempting to do just that - and they are angering constituents from border to border.
To begin, the Nebraska Republican party is attempting to cut out the area near Offutt Air Force base, including Bellevue - which is on the EASTERN edge of Omaha - and move it into the district that includes the capitol city of Lincoln. This makes no logical geographic sense, since most of Omaha lies between the Offutt/Bellevue area and Lincoln. Further, most residents of Bellevue and Offutt know where they live - in the suburbs of Omaha, nearly an hour from Lincoln.
The gerrymandering doesn't stop there.
The Republican's proposed redistricting also includes splitting Alliance, a town that has traditionally had problems with being spilt by irregular legislative lines. Those lines were fixed a decade ago - but now are threatened by the redistricting plan backed by the Nebraska Republican Party. Nebraska City, Hastings, Chadron, Columbus, and all of Custer County face similar unorthodox splits if the Republican-backed plan is crammed down the throats of Nebraskans.
Even an expert in redistricting, UNL Professor Michael Wagner, says the proposal before the Nebraska legislature makes no sense.
We understand that BOTH parties have engaged in this type of political corruption before, and they will likely do so again. Gerrymandering is 200 years old in 2012 and we doubt that term or its corresponding action will disappear anytime soon. That kind of corruption is still so bad, sixteen states with a history of gerrymandering and election violations - including Florida - must have their redistricting plans approved by the Justice Department before they can move forward into the 2012 elections.
Even so, we think the actions of Nebraska Republicans this year are so outrageous, even the most distracted Nebraskan should sit up and take notice.
When even loyal partisan voters are being jerked around by their own party's representatives in the legislature, the question that comes to our mind is simple and direct: If your legislators don't even care enough about you to know where you live, how can they be trusted to make laws to protect you?
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