• By MARK BALLARD
• Advocate Capitol News Bureau
• Published: Sep 20, 2009 - Page: 7B

• Print
• Email
• Save
• Reprints
• Twitter
• Share

• Del.icio.us
• Digg
• Facebook
• Reddit
• 

Our summer of boorish behavior seemed to peak last week. In sports, tennis star Serena Williams threatened a line judge. In entertainment, singer Kanye West grabbed a microphone from singer Taylor Swift. And in politics, controversy continued over South Carolina Republican U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson’s “You lie” outburst during President Barack Obama’s speech before the U.S. Congress.

Former President Jimmy Carter last week opined that this new ease with personal attacks is rooted in racism — an unwillingness of some political leaders to accept the verdict from the majority of the nation’s voters who elected a black man. This poor sportsmanship example has influenced other areas of the national discourse.

Whether Carter is correct about the cause, the vehicle driving the polarized and poisonous atmosphere, says Les Francis, the former executive director of the Democratic National Committee, is the way state legislatures across the country draw the voting lines of elected officials’ districts. Basically, Francis and others argue, incumbents draw lines to guarantee re-election by filling the district with enough supporters that they can ignore those constituents with differing opinions.

One result of not having to negotiate between disparate voters is that elected officials now have no reason to compromise — on anything. In fact, taking unyielding positions accented with uncouth behavior merely rallies the like-minded. Wilson, for instance, received more than $1 million in campaign contributions since disrespecting the president.

Redistricting is a once-a-decade process that begins this week for the Louisiana Legislature.

In the case of the Louisiana House of Representatives, the 4.2 million or whatever the state’s population is determined to be by the new census is divided by 105 — the number of seats in the lower chamber — to create the number of residents per district. For the past 10 years, that sum came to about 42,500 people, said state Rep. Rick Gallot, D-Ruston. The number likely will drop to about 40,000 per legislative district. District lines will be redrawn to fit the new number.

As chairman of the House and Governmental Affairs committee, Gallot and his state Senate counterpart, Bob Kostelka, R-Monroe, are in charge of the redrawing process for Louisiana: not just for the Legislature, but for congressional districts, the Public Service Commission, the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education and all manner of elected offices.

The new lines must be approved by both legislative chambers and the governor. Then they go to Washington, D.C,. to be vetted by the U.S. Department of Justice because Louisiana is one of a handful of states that has a history of discriminating against minority voters.

The advent of computers and sophisticated mapping software allows politicians to analyze voter-registration records and voting histories to come up with a pretty good surmise of an individual’s political leanings. That’s how politicians are able to so successfully target their invective in mailed flyers and phoned recordings. It’s also how the elected officials can mail directed pleas for support on issues and for campaign donations.

It also allows them to determine which houses, on a block-by-block basis, would be more likely to support them.

Incumbents literally picking their constituents, instead of the other way around, makes them more-beholden to a partisan base rather than to “solution-oriented pragmatism,” U.S. Reps. John Tanner, D-Tenn., and Mike Castle, R-Del., wrote in a June opinion published by Roll Call, the congressional newspaper.

“The outcome is a polarized political atmosphere where few are willing to work together in the political center, where most Americans reside,” they stated.

Gallot blames several factors for the country’s present descent into bad manners. But he does concede that when sleeves are rolled up to draw district lines, that one key theme is identifying sympathies.