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 Redistricting Rampage
 
    WHEN TEXAS Republicans embarked on their unusual  effort to redraw legislative district lines in the middle of a decennial census cycle, the ugly future of one of the ugliest features of American democracy was not hard to foresee. Redistricting fights and abuses, instead of taking place only every 10 years, would become an ongoing fixture of politics. Whenever one party obtained a momentary dominance in a state, it would rearrange the legislative boundaries both to maintain its electoral advantages within the state and to bolster its representation in the House of Representatives at the expense of incumbents of the other party. Barely a year after the Texas fiasco, that future is now.
 
 Republicans in Georgia, newly in control of the major levers of government for the first time since Reconstruction, are finishing a redistricting bill that would put two Democratic members of the House in jeopardy. Democrats are getting into the act, too. At a news  conference last week, House Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) insisted that while he believes "on principle" that "this ought to be done every 10 years as it has been historically done," Democrats "would be foolish to sit on the sidelines and have our heads beaten in and not . . . see what we can do in response." National Democrats have reportedly been urging their parties in Louisiana, New Mexico and Illinois -- states where Democrats have gained control over government since the last redistricting -- to reconsider the political maps.
 
 Even redistricting reformers are contributing to this problem. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California (R), whose proposal for reform in his own state represents an exciting alternative to corrupt and politicized line-drawing, would have a panel of retired judges draw district lines not after the next census but in 2006. And Florida Democrats, who are pushing reform-oriented ballot initiatives, would likewise not wait to put them into effect until the next census in 2010.
 
 Redistricting is already playing a deeply corrosive role in American politics, allowing politicians to choose the voters who will maintain them in power. American legislative elections are dramatically noncompetitive; the incumbents nearly always win -- except, that is, when a district has been set up specifically to target someone of the other party. The result is an ever more polarized Congress unaccountable to the voters who nominally elect it.
 
 An alternative exists to Republicans' repeating  their mischief and Democrats' mimicking  it. Both sides could agree on a national law that sets standards for legislative line-drawing. Clarifying that redistricting can take place only immediately after  a census would be a good place to start.
 
   

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