The Zigzag Art of Politics

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Among those states that have not finished redistricting, New York is the most notable laggard. The state must give up five seats, the largest loss in the nation, and the Democratic assembly surely will shoot down the plan passed last week by the Republican senate. In Pennsylvania, which will lose two seats, the Democrats joined with the Republicans to obliterate the district of Democratic Congressman Eugene Atkinson, who was unpopular in his own party. But then Atkinson switched parties last October, and so the Republicans went back to the drawing boards to protect their prized convert. In Texas, Republican Governor William Clements cajoled the Democratic-controlled state legislature last summer into adopting a plan that turned a pair of mostly white Democratic districts in Dallas into one largely black Democratic district and one overwhelmingly white Republican district. In February, however, a three-judge panel opposed the plan because it concentrated minority voters in one district. The judges redrew the Dallas map two weeks ago, but not before a political free-for-all, in which candidates campaigned in neighborhoods that ended up being out of their districts.

In California, the Republicans have managed to place a referendum on the June primary ballot challenging the Burton plan, but the California Supreme Court, by a vote of 4 to 3, has ruled that the disputed plan may be used this year, no matter what the outcome of the referendum vote. In an unlikely alliance, the state's Republicans have teamed with Common Cause to place an initiative on the November ballot granting redistricting powers to a ten-member commission.

But voters can foil even the most determined attempts at fairness. After the 1970 census, the Iowa Supreme Court carefully created two districts in the east for the Democrats and two districts in the west for the Republicans. Guess what? The Democrats now hold both seats in the west, while the Republicans are safely ensconced in the east.

—By James Kelly.

Reported by Benjamin W. Cate/Los Angeles with other U.S. bureaus