Drawing fair legislative districts is crucial. This Kansas GOP leader once knew that

As the Kansas Legislature reconvenes, it will tackle the once-a-decade task of redrawing the state’s political boundaries — a process known as reapportionment.

It is among lawmakers’ most weighty duties — with wide-reaching and long-lasting effects. It determines the makeup of the Legislature for the next 10 years. It can secure or divide communities, and reapportionment determines who votes for whom in every Kansas election. It’s the one act that should be carried out selflessly, in the spirit of service to our communities. Yet no single duty is more tainted with unadulterated power and self-interest than the task of redistricting.

For decades, there have been calls to take this enormous power from lawmakers and instead give it to an independent commission free of the burden of self-preservation. The arguments for such a commission are both overwhelming and logical — and yet have fallen on deaf ears in Topeka. And efforts toward change have met resistance from people who benefit from the status quo.

Politicians are inherently reluctant to give up any hold on power — and the ability to draw our own districts is the ability to wield enormous power. The states in which legislatures have loosened their grip on redistricting seem satisfied with the process, and their legislative rancor appears to be substantially diminished.

By making the people who craft the new maps a step removed from direct political wranglings and by putting in place protections to ensure that every citizen’s voice counts equally whether he or she is a legislator, a congressman, or an interested resident of an affected community, it is possible to minimize the role that politics plays in the process.

Under our current process, public input is gathered only because legislative leaders choose to seek it — not because it is required. Too often, public hearings on reapportionment are merely “window dressing” to give the appearance that the Legislature is responsive to the public on this issue while the real agenda of political survival for politicians is quietly pursued.

Not all wisdom resides in elected officials. Those of us serving in public office do not have a monopoly on the ability to draw legislative districts that are in the best interests of Kansans. To the contrary, we have an inherent conflict of interest that diminishes our ability to fairly consider all options. The reapportionment process is one of the last smoke-filled room processes in Kansas government. Reapportionment should be about our constituents choosing us, not about us choosing our constituents.

If you’re thinking to yourself, “That’s just another Democrat complaining about Republicans,” this might be a good time to point out that the above four paragraphs aren’t my own thoughts — though I couldn’t agree with them more. They are lifted word for word from 2003 testimony provided by then-Kansas state senator, current attorney general and soon-to-be-crowned GOP contender for governor, Derek Schmidt — who was among 16 state senators sponsoring a bipartisan resolution to take redistricting away from legislators.

In today’s highly partisan environment, it’s easy to retreat to our respective corners and believe that the ends justify the means. Legislators explain why they must retain the power of redistricting, and create barriers to enacting a fair, nonpartisan method for drawing new political boundaries.

But feedback from this summer’s listening tour is clear: Kansans don’t trust legislators to fairly execute redistricting. Even the best among us is not immune to the magnetic pull of self-interest and self-preservation. It’s well past time for us to create a process for redistricting that elevates the interests of Kansans above the interests of politicians and political parties.

The majority in the Legislature has the numbers to do whatever it wants — and it’s not too late for it to cede its authority and power to a fair and independent redistricting commission.

Creating safeguards against the political influence on reapportionment is the right thing to do, and provides an opportunity for the Legislature to get out of its own way on this crucial task. And if you don’t want to believe me, just ask Derek Schmidt. Or at least the former version of him.

Assistant Minority Leader Jason Probst represents District 102 in the Kansas House of Representatives.

This story was originally published September 24, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Drawing fair legislative districts is crucial. This Kansas GOP leader once knew that."