The General Assembly is redrawing State House and Senate Districts and it’s like the circus came back in town: Six years ago, last time they drew districts, Republican legislators used ‘race’ as one criteria and Democrats sued them. This time Republican legislators said they wouldn’t even look at or go near ‘race’ and the Democrats said, That’s wrong too.  

What kind of sense did that make?

This time, Republicans said they were going to draw districts strictly based on ‘politics’ – which means Republicans are going to look at how well Republican candidates like Trump did in each precinct then draw districts that will elect Republicans: Which means Republicans are going to end up, pretty nearly, in the exact same place where they started out, six years ago. Because packing a district full of Hillary Clinton voters means packing the district with Democrats and African-Americans.

Do Democrats object to ‘political’ redistricting? Yes. But only when Republicans do it. Then they complained loud and long.

But did you hear one legislator – in either party – say politicians ought not to be drawing their own districts?

It’s an old story: Both sides said the other’s the villain. But no one had clean hands.