Lawmakers are once again rushing through a controversial bill during the busy holiday season — this time a proposal to overhaul how New Jersey draws its legislative districts.

Two years ago, legislators hastily tried to pass a package of bills to give raises to their aides and others in exchange for letting former Gov. Chris Christie profit from a book while in office. Last year, Democratic leaders pushed through a measure to pad the pension of the former mayor of Camden, a key ally.

But this year’s attempt touches a core feature of democracy. How the state’s legislative districts are drawn helps determine who represents residents in Trenton and, in turn, how much money each school gets from the state, who pays what in taxes and what New Jersey looks like in the future.

The Democrats who control the Legislature hope to quickly pass the proposed amendment to the state constitution, which they say would improve transparency, ensure competitive elections and guarantee fair representation of the two main political parties.

But the measure has faced fierce opposition from numerous independent and good-government groups that, together with Republicans, see it as a misguided effort by Democrats to entrench their power for decades to come.

“When all other states are moving forward and improving this fundamental component of our democracy, New Jersey is moving backwards with a proposal that’s nothing more than a partisan gerrymandering bill,” Helen Kiouskis, program associate at the League of Women Voters of New Jersey, told lawmakers during a recent hearing.

The proposed amendment, SCR-152, would give legislative leaders more sway in redrawing the maps ahead of the next round of redistricting in 2021 and explicitly require that district boundaries reflect the results of the most recent statewide elections. In recent years, Democrats have outperformed Republicans.

To take effect, the proposal must be approved by voters in a referendum. The current fight is over whether the measure gets put on the November 2019 ballot at all, which would require approval by a three-fifths majority in both houses of the Legislature or a simple majority in two consecutive years.

Education:'Last in, first out' policy protecting NJ teachers with seniority will stay put

NJ news:Top lawmaker introduces bill for $15 minimum wage by 2024

Given opposition by a few Democratic lawmakers and the entire Republican caucus, it appears more likely that Democratic leaders will need votes both this year and next. They have scheduled the first votes for Monday — a few days after mandatory public hearings on Thursday at which lawmakers are likely to face blistering criticism. Representatives from more than 40 statewide organizations have announced their intention to travel to the Statehouse that day to try to block the measure.

Experts, Trenton observers and legislative sources say the proposal is fueled by Democratic fears of losing their legislative majority and an ongoing intra-party feud between Senate President Stephen Sweeney, D-Gloucester, and Gov. Phil Murphy, who opposes the measure.

Currently, under the state constitution, an 11-member “apportionment commission” redraws New Jersey’s legislative districts the year after each decennial census. Five members each are appointed by the heads of the Democratic and Republican state committees, with an 11th tiebreaking member appointed by the chief justice of the state Supreme Court in the likely event the two sides can’t agree on a map.

Other than that, though, the constitution provides little guidance on how the commissioners should go about their work; it does not set standards or priorities the panelists must consider in drawing district boundaries.

The proposed amendment would change both those features. It would expand the commission to 13 members but limit appointments by the state committee heads to two each. The Senate president, Assembly speaker and leaders of the minority party in the Senate and Assembly would each get to appoint two panelists, in addition to the tiebreaking member appointed by the chief justice.

“It offers a broader scope of the people who are making decisions about the committee,” Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin, D-Middlesex, said earlier this month in defending that provision.

But the change is widely seen as an effort to undermine Democratic State Committee Chairman John Currie, who is more closely aligned with Gov. Phil Murphy and North Jersey Democrats in the Legislature than with Sweeney and his South Jersey bloc.

Redistricting has the potential to make certain districts more difficult for incumbents to defend, or can pit incumbents against each other. Who sits on the panel could determine which incumbents are protected and whether the South Jersey faction is able to extend its influence in Trenton.

The other crucial change in the proposed amendment — and the one that has attracted the ire of the independent and good-government groups — would embed a formula in the constitution requiring that at least 10 of 40 legislative districts in New Jersey meet a new “competitiveness” standard. The other districts would be split evenly between the two major parties.

The political makeup of the competitive districts would have to fall within 5 percentage points of the average result of the most recent elections for president, U.S. Senate and governor. That setup would likely give Democrats an advantage, since there are nearly 1 million more registered Democrats than Republicans in the state and voters usually back Democrats more heavily in those elections compared with state legislative races.

So, for example, if Democrats received an average of 55 percent of the vote in those elections, at least 10 districts would have to have a partisan makeup where Democrats are expected to receive between 50 and 60 percent of the vote. Up to 15 more districts would favor Democrats by more than 60 percent, while Republicans would have an advantage in only 15 districts at most.

That’s the type of math that prompted Senate Minority Leader Tom Kean Jr., R-Union, to blast the proposal as a “sham” and “about power” rather than about fairness or competitiveness.

“It’s about Democrats who have controlled the Legislature for nearly two decades trying to cement their power by permanently rigging the election process in their favor,” Kean said.

An analysis by the independent Princeton Gerrymandering Project found that the proposal could actually open the door to gerrymandering by either political party and doesn’t do enough to protect racial minorities. The group concluded that the measure “would not improve quantitative measures of fairness” and has “fatal flaws.”

Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute, said the current system for redistricting in New Jersey has its fair share of shortcomings, including the fact that there are few standards in the constitution to guide commissioners in drawing maps. That can lead to widely divergent results depending on the whims of the tiebreaking member. In 2011, for example, the tiebreaker for the legislative redistricting process prioritized protecting incumbents, while the tiebreaker for the separate but similar congressional redistricting process backed a 50-50 split between Republican and Democratic districts, Murray said.

“The Democrats are worried that they will get another situation where you’ll get someone who will argue for a 50-50 map just arbitrarily, and they want to stop this,” Murray explained.

But while it’s reasonable for Democrats to expect to maintain their legislative majorities in light of their recent electoral performances, Murray said, “there are many other ways that you can ensure that the new maps reflect the diversity of your populations without having to impose a gerrymander.”

Yurij Rudensky, a redistricting counsel at the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice, said real reform would require legislative maps to be drawn using apolitical criteria, such as protecting racial minorities and “communities of interest” that share local concerns, and only after the fact allow the use of a measure of partisan fairness to make sure the maps are likely to reflect the overall party preferences of voters.

“It’s strange to embed a particular formula into a constitution rather than a principle,” Rudensky said. “If partisan fairness is the goal, that is a principle that can be put into the constitution in much more simple terms,” such as language that redistricting should not “unduly favor” one political party or the other, he said.

The current proposal does say new districts must be geographically contiguous and preserve communities of interest, but critics say redistricting would still be driven first and foremost by the new competitiveness formula. Critics have also pointed out that the proposal does not explicitly protect racial and language minorities.

A previous version of the amendment stalled after it was introduced three years ago. Opponents hope the latest attempt to put the measure before voters meets a similar fate, especially as Democrats across the country are speaking out against gerrymandering and voter suppression efforts in other states.

“This is reminiscent of what Democrats often rightfully criticize Republicans for in other states, in terms of gerrymandering and voter ID laws,” David Pringle, an environmentalist with Clean Water Action, told lawmakers at a recent hearing. “So if you’re looking at the problems in other states, and you move forward on this, start looking in the mirror.”

Email: pugliese@northjersey.com