Editorial: East Side in the dark on details of redistricting

It looks like the Washington Redistricting Commission is bound for another rush to the Capitol Building, with Eastern Washington the hindmost.

With only nine days remaining to submit new maps to lawmakers, the four commission members have finished reworking legislative boundary lines west of the Cascade Mountains to reflect population shifts over the last 10 years. This week, county auditors have been notifying the commission of mostly technical errors, the inadvertent splitting of tiny Milton in Pierce County the most noteworthy so far.

Thursday, the members – none from Eastern Washington – met in public for less than 30 minutes, asserting they were close on revisions to legislative boundaries for east of the Cascades and, more significantly, a new congressional district map.

But “close” means the hardest issues remain, and the two, two-man teams assigned to the Eastern Washington/congressional district maps will have nothing to show each other before Tuesday, at best. County auditors this side of the Cascades may have very little time to undevil the details, which has not unfazed Spokane County Auditor Vicki Dalton.

Ten years ago, she recalls, the commission managed to create one precinct that contained only an elementary school, and another with just one voter. With updated maps and computers, she does not expect a repeat of the chaos that engulfed the last hours of the 2001 redistricting.

What the auditors want out of the process, Dalton says, are boundaries that make elections as simple as possible to administer. The politics are up to the commissioners, who do their arm-twisting behind closed doors.

The big twist this year is a 10th congressional district that must be carved from the existing nine thanks to Washington population gains over the last decade. One of those districts will have to straddle the Cascades, creating the fearsome possibility a representative will have to satisfy nominally liberal constituents to the west and the reputedly conservative to the east. It certainly means the Fifth District and Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers can expect changes, but how big may not be known until the very last minute.

And that will be that.

Unless the commission fails to complete its work, which will put the matter in the hands of the state Supreme Court, the maps handed to the Legislature will be final. Lawmakers can make only very minor adjustments, which require a two-thirds majority in both houses. They do not vote on the final maps.

This will be the commission’s third go-round. Voters created the body to take as much politics as possible out of redistricting, and the process worked so well in 1991 and 2001 it has become a model for other states.

But the commission, despite praiseworthy citizen outreach, has become something of a black box. Residents of Eastern Washington deserve at least the little peek those on the West Side got this week.