Drawing Lines

Gov. Tim Kaine is admirably dogged in pursuit of his objectives, from bans on public smoking to no-excuse absentee voting. His persistence on behalf of bipartisan redistricting deserves praise from every fair-minded Virginian.

Fair-minded Virginians understand that the longstanding practice of gerrymandering distorts and diminishes democracy. It removes from elections what they must have to mean much of anything: uncertainty. When politicians draw electoral maps to ensure the survival of incumbents and to perpetuate majority-party power, they effectively guarantee the outcome of electoral races before the first vote is ever cast.

The practice differs in degree, but not in kind, from the ballot stuffing and voter suppression so prevalent in tinpot kakistocracies around the globe. Politicians who treat voters like pawns to be used for the protection of their own power deserve no more regard here than do the panjandrums in banana republics.

In Virginia, both parties share equal measures of blame for the cynical practice -- and display equal measures of hypocrisy when denouncing each other for what both of them do. They need to grow up.

The governor correctly points out that Virginia stands at a propitious moment to enact reform. Neither Democrats nor Republicans know which party will control the governor's mansion and the House of Delegates two years hence. For the sake of self-preservation, the prudent course would be to embrace fair, bipartisan redistricting rather than risk having the other party seize the reins of power and gerrymander the other into the political wilderness.

The prudent course also happens to be the right course. The State Senate has voted 39-0 to create a bipartisan redistricting panel. Democrats in the House have signified in favor. If House Republicans do not adopt the idea this year, it might be another decade before the stars align in its favor once again. It is time for Virginia's GOP to rise above itself and embrace the better angels of its nature -- if there are any left.