Matthew Verghese, Political Director of the Maryland Democratic Party, and Michael Sriqui of Common Cause, elucidated the complexities of the sometimes controversial redistricting process just completed in Maryland.

Verghese, asserting unabashedly that redistricting is a partisan process, explained that in Maryland, as in many states, the power to decide how to redraw district lines rests largely with the governor. Although there is a trend across the country to institute independent commissions, in 39 states the process is still controlled by legislatures and governors, and in only nine of those are Democrats currently in charge. Republicans naturally are trying to use redistricting to secure their legislative gains from the 2010 midterm elections.

For U.S. Congressional districts, the only requirement in Maryland is equality of the population in every district. For the Maryland House of Delegates, there are several additional legal requirements: districts must be contiguous and compact (although compact is not really defined); districts cannot be drawn so as to dilute minority representation; and due regard must be paid to political and natural boundaries.

The Maryland Democratic Party approached the process wanting to achieve a better political outcome--i.e., electing seven rather than the present six Democrats to the U. S. House of Representatives out of an unchanged total of eight representatives. The Party also wanted to minimize disruption as much as possible, and respect communities of interest (such as the Eastern Shore, agricultural interests, minorities, federal workers, etc.).

Verghese then laid out district by district alterations in the U.S. Congressional districts. District 1 on the Eastern Shore will become about 2% more Republican because they did not want the line to cross the Bay. District 2 around Baltimore will stay about the same. District 4 encompassing the eastern and southern suburbs around D.C., will become about 2% less African American, because of additions around Annapolis and the loss of parts of Montgomery County. District 5, the western shore of the Bay to the south of D.C., will now have a majority of minority voters; District 7 in the northeast remains majority minority.

Montgomery County, which previously was mostly District 8 (with small parts in Districts 4 and 6), sustained major changes in the redistricting. In order to make District 6 in the western part of the state--now held by a Republican--more favorable to a Democrat, a significant portion of the north and western part of our county was added to District 6, counterbalanced by the addition of large areas to the north, including Frederick, to District 8. Thus, Representative Van Hollen's district now extends all the way from the D.C. line to the Pennsylvania line. A segment of the eastern part of our county now falls in District 3, which will have no significant racial change. Montgomery County will now be represented by Districts 3, 6 and 8, with a loss of 110,000 minority voters.

The Congressional realignments have been passed by the General Assembly and signed into law by Governor O'Malley; the primary on April 3 will use the new district lines. Six lawsuits were filed against the maps, but all were dismissed or found in favor of the State.

Is this gerrymandering? How well does the current redistricting process serve the public interest? How could it be improved? Michael Sriqui of Common Cause answered these questions in the second part of the presentation.

Sriqui first described the process in Maryland for redrawing the lines for U.S.Congressional representatives. Last July the Governor appointed a Redistricting Advisory Committee, which held the required twelve public hearings for citizen input--but without maps of possible changes. The governor then drew up new maps and submitted them to the General Assembly, which debated them in hearings open to the public. In the process just concluded, this happened with remarkable speed: Governor O'Malley's maps were released on Saturday evening, 15 October 2011, committee hearings were held on the 17th, the bill was passed by the legislature by the 19th, and the Governor signed the maps into law on the 20th.

The result of this process, asserted Sriqui, is oddly shaped districts drawn with sophisticated software primarily to satisfy partisan political goals, sometimes tailor-made for specific individuals. By definition, this is gerrymandering. Moreover, even though there was no change in apportionment, now more than one in three Marylanders lives in a different Congressional district than in the last election, and four out of eight Maryland Congressmen live within roughly twenty miles of each other. The whole process, Sriqui maintained, turns democracy on its head: politicians are choosing their voters instead of the voters choosing their politicians.

To improve things, he said, at a minimum voters should be given more time and opportunity to provide input at all stages of the process, and no public hearings should be held without maps of proposed changes. In addition, Congressional districts should be required to be compact, and unnecessarily dividing localities should be outlawed. Sriqui expressed the wish that Maryland, like some other states, would create a truly independent redistricting commission whose members do not include elected officials or party representatives, and require members of the U.S. House to live in the districts they represent. Several bills to reform redistricting are before the General Assembly this session, but Sriqui is not optimistic. "To be honest," he said, they're not headed anywhere."