Oregon Public Broadcasting

Every ten years, Legislative districts are re-mapped based on the ebb and flow of population. It’s a way to make sure that each lawmaker represents roughly the same amount of people.

To political insiders, few issues are as highly charged as redistricting.

This November’s ballot measure on the issue isn’t a hot potato.  Still, there are plenty of reasons why lawmakers want Measure 55 to pass.  Salem correspondent Chris Lehman reports as part of our series: Ballot Measure Backstory.

When you’re moving boundaries around, there’s an inevitable result: Some lawmakers find themselves in new districts.

That’s what happened to State Representative Phil Barnhart in 2002.

Phil Barnhart:  “That was the year when we had five special sessions where we had to cut the budget.”

In the midst of that, the Eugene Democrat found himself representing a large swath of central Oregon.

Phil Barnhart:  “It’s a very rural, Republican district.  Of course at the time, I represented old District 40 which was south Eugene:  very Democratic, very urban, very small, physically.  Needless to say there were a lot of people wondering how this happened.”

Barnhart says he managed somehow, making several trips over the mountains to visit his new constituents.  But through the experience, Barnhart sort of became the poster child for what can go wrong with redistricting. 

Phil Barnhart:  “So here we had a big district, with interests and issues that are different from anybody else in the state, dealing with not only a freshmen representative, but one who didn’t even live there, trying really hard to figure out how to represent them.”

Barnhart is behind Measure 55 this year. If it passes, redistricting won’t take effect until the end of a lawmaker’s term, not the middle.

The measure was referred to the ballot almost unanimously by the 2007 Legislature.  But it’s one of the only things about redistricting that lawmakers have been able to agree on.  In fact, some people want the Legislature to get out of the redistricting business altogether.  

Marge Easley is the President of the Oregon League of Women Voters.  She says changing political boundaries would be better handled by an independent commission.

Marge Easley:  “Sometimes those political biases can creep into the redistricting process and it is very unlikely that the Legislature is going to agree in many instances because each side wants the advantage to fall to them.”

There’s no indication that lawmakers will make any wholesale changes to redistricting in time for the next round, following the 2010 census.

For Representative Barnhart, things worked out in the end.  He now represents the new district that includes his home back in Eugene.  In retrospect he looks back at his temporary central Oregon odyssey as a learning experience.

Phil Barnhart:  “I went over and I visited schools and city governments and ordinary people and learned a little bit about it, which has stood me in good stead since then.  I now have some sense of what central Oregonians need, even though I don’t represent them.  So in that sense it was useful for me.”

But Barnhart still wouldn’t wish it on anyone else.  That’s why he and other lawmakers hope that in the future, they’ll be allowed to serve out the remainder of their terms in the district they were elected to represent.

Online:

Information about Measure 55