MUNSTER | Many of the state's most powerful legislators -- in both parties -- rig district maps to prevent competitive elections and keep themselves in power, Indiana Secretary of State Todd Rokita told a local audience Tuesday.
He's on a campaign to revamp the way the state draws legislative districts, starting with the 2011 redistricting.
"Redistricting is a process as a nation we go through every 10 years after the U.S. census is taken," Rokita said in a keynote speech to the Griffith, Highland and Munster chambers of commerce at the Center for Visual and Performing Arts.
The Munster native said the redistricting rules he's pitching are designed to protect the sanctity of "one person, one vote that is critical to maintaining a democracy or republic."
The Indiana Constitution mandates that the General Assembly draw new congressional and state legislative districts based on population after each decennial census. The next census sould be complete in April.
Rokita complained the current process allows mapmaking decisions to be made "in the back room" through a caucus system that he calls "the buddy system."
"Two buddies won't be put into the same district to run against each other," he said. "There are no rules in Indiana about how the legislators do this. Indiana is the Wild West."
Rokita, the state's chief elections officer, said the maps drawn in 2001 thwarted competition, "with candidates in two out of every five legislative races, or 40 percent, running without major party opposition."
"It's not Republican versus Democrat. It's us versus. them," Rokita said of lawmakers, who have largely rejected his proposal.
The alternative Rokita is selling, for which he spent $110,000 in taxpayer money, would force lawmakers to:
* Keep communities of interest together, by abiding city, county and township boundaries where possible.
* Create more compact and geographically uniform districts
* Reduce voter confusion about who represents them
* Forbid the use of political data, including election results and incumbents' addresses.
For more information, go to rethinkingredistricting.com
