Gerrymandering Disgrace

The House Privileges and Elections Committee has killed a bill to create a bipartisan redistricting commission. The vote ranks as the most deplorable of the session.

Legislation banning smoking in bars tramples on the property rights of restaurant and bar owners, but at least there is a principled argument to be made for such a ban: It protects the public well-being, in the same way that other health and safety regulations protect customers and employees. (The analogy doesn't fly, but that's a subject for another day.)

What is the principled argument for gerrymandering? There is none.

Four Republicans on the committee killed the bill: John Cosgrove, Chris Jones, Steven Landes, and Jeff Frederick -- who also is chairman of the state GOP. They killed the measure either to deny its Democratic sponsor, Creigh Deeds, a bullet-point in his gubernatorial brochures, or because they're gambling the Republican Party can draw the lines after the next Census.

Either way, for the sake of petty partisan gain they stuck a knife in representative democracy's back.