opinion

Highfill: Time to change county redistricting to avoid gerrymandering

Historically, states throughout the nation, have allowed partisan politics to cloud their judgment and have fallen to the temptation of gerrymandering when districts are redrawn for their respective statehouse and senate districts.

In order to prevent gerrymandering from occurring I think it is very important that the Legislative Services Agency (LSA), a non-partisan state agency, continues to handle the drawing Iowa’s voting districts.

The LSA makes redistricting determinations based solely on the objective fact of the population size when drawing our legislative map. Thus, party affiliations or partisan politics are never considered when determining how Iowa’s districts are composed.

This redistricting process has been time-tested and has worked very well for Iowa’s state offices, which is why it should be expanded to counties, and elected county positions to prevent gerrymandering and the creation of unfair boundaries.

After examining the county supervisor districts, especially in my home district of Polk County, it is evident that gerrymandering does occur. County supervisors pick people to make up a temporary board, which in turn draws the maps for the Polk County supervisors.

With this information alone, I believe that this could become a very corrupt process. We should not allow people to pick their friends so that they remain in an elected office for continuous terms.

House File 2372 would change that by placing county redistricting in the hands of the LSA.

In order to provide more fairness to the process and ensure an equal amount of representation across counties, the nonpartisan Legislative Services Agency would solve the current problem of underrepresentation within counties.

We need to have people who are nonpartisan, so that the process is fair and just across the entire state of Iowa.

STATE REP. JAKE HIGHFILL, R-Johnston, represents District 39. The district includes Johnston, Grimes, Webster Township and Jefferson Township. He can be reached at 281-3221 or jake.highfill@legis.iowa.gov.