A passage in the text of Wisconsin's current redistricting law reads: "the legislature and its members recognize the obligation imposed by their constitutional oath of office to represent the interests of the citizens who elected them and all of the other citizens of the state of Wisconsin."

This language is repealed in the new redistricting legislation Wisconsin lawmakers are expected to pass this summer. Even if the exclusion is just a drafting error, it is amazingly symbolic.

Historically, the state Legislature must wait until counties and municipalities complete their own redistricting before it begins drawing state legislative boundaries. One of the redistricting bills the Legislature is expected to take up rewrites the schedule in the middle of the process, allowing state legislators to finalize their own lines before the municipalities have adjusted their local ward and council lines. Local officials and advocates have told legislators that pushing through this change midstream will wreak havoc with local redistricting processes that are already underway.

Conventional wisdom tells us the decision to push through a redistricting plan this quickly is political. Legislators from the ruling party attempting to capitalize on their control of the Legislature by drawing new district lines before August recall elections have a chance to change the balance of power.

Redistricting is more than a partisan fight based on a constitutional requirement to draw new political boundary lines every 10 years. Lost in this discussion of partisan power and political calculations is the fact that the geographic boundaries that define representative districts need to change to ensure that districts satisfy the constitutional promise of "one person, one vote."

There is no one-size-fits-all redistricting process, but voters have a right to expect fairness, transparency and responsiveness when their district lines are drawn. There are fundamental principles of fairness for any redistricting process:

Transparency: Draft maps, guidelines and other work product should be accessible for public scrutiny. Data sets, software and stated criteria should be made available to voters and communities prior to the drawing of new district lines.

Public input: Decision-makers should hear from voters and community members. On-the-ground information that can come only from soliciting public input flags pitfalls and provides necessary insight for policy-makers. There should be meaningful opportunity for input after plans are proposed to give the redistricting authority a chance to respond to citizen concerns.

Time: The hasty stroke often goes awry, and nowhere is that more true than in government and politics. Time for meaningful feedback and citizen testimony will help ensure that if something is wrong, people will be able to realize it, comment and give decision-makers the opportunity to do something about it.

Rationale: Districts are drawn the way they are for reasons, and citizens are entitled to know what those reasons are. Line-drawers should justify and explain the choices they've made when the plans are made public.

Andrea Kaminski, executive director of the League of Women Voters Wisconsin, is 100% right that "properly noticed public hearings at all levels around the state, open meetings and full transparency are essential" as well as "time to consider alternative maps." But legislators should have known that before she wrote them, roundly condemning the redistricting proposal. Advocates such as Juan Carlos Ruiz of the Latino Redistricting Committee of Wisconsin have begged legislators to slow down, even for just three weeks, so they can gather comments and present their own maps.

For all the criticisms we've heard about Wisconsin's new redistricting plans - that the districts are not competitive enough, that they don't preserve communities of common interests, that they don't respect basic local boundaries such as county lines or that they constitute a partisan power grab - the most egregious is a process lacking transparency, public input or time for deliberation following citizen feedback.

The lack of respect for voters in this process has robbed Wisconsin's citizens of the opportunity to push back and remind their legislators of their legal obligations. Currently, the law recognizes legislators' duty in redistricting "to represent the interests of the citizens who elected them and all of the other citizens of the state of Wisconsin."

Through the proposed redistricting legislation, the Legislature eliminates this language and with it its duty to the citizens of Wisconsin.

Keesha Gaskins is senior counsel with the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan public policy and law institute dedicated to improving the systems that make democracy and justice work.