Published: September 23, 2009 12:49 am      

MARCUS: Input could keep legislators from building their own webs

The good news is that I will not become Spider Man and then need to conquer my fear of heights. The bad news is that I will not become Spider Man and be able to compel the foolish, thoughtless and greedy to behave differently.

But I get ahead of the story.

All last week, I felt good that Todd Rokita, Indiana’s secretary of state, is pushing for less partisan redistricting of political offices after the 2010 Census. The fact that some in his own Republican party told him to keep his nose out of their affairs only reinforced my good feelings.

This is a clear split between an appropriately ambitious politician — Rokita — and the indolent, selfish, anti-Republican forces in the GOP. That’s the makings of a great political pudding.

Of the Democrats, incumbents with districts to defend are silent. David Orentlicher, former holder of a House seat, now a candidate for Marion County prosecutor, has endorsed liberating redistricting from the grasp of the parties’ machinery. But what does that endorsement mean in the other 91 counties where David O. is unknown? Does his voice carry weight even in Marion County where political savagery normally dominates redistricting?

Who else will step forward to endorse the righteous cause of redistricting seats in Congress, in the General Assembly and in local elections according to population only? State Sen. Mike Delph, R-Carmel, has been effective in getting the Census Data Adversary Committee, or CDAC, to consider the issue. In the past, Sen. Vi Simpson, D-Ellettsville, introduced constitutional amendments to create a redistricting commission that would reduce the highly partisan nature of the present system where each house draws its own lines by its own rules.

When the CDAC meets Tuesday — and its agenda has not been announced as of this writing — it may choose to examine Indiana’s voting history and how other states draw their district lines.

My own research shows that in 2008, the last time we elected representatives to the House, only 11 of 100 seats were competitively contested, with the winner getting less than 55 percent of the vote.

Conversely, 26 of the 100 seats were uncontested; the winners got 100 percent of the vote. Does that mean that voters in more than one-quarter of Hoosier districts were so satisfied with their representatives that no challenger could be found? Or does it mean that the game is so rigged to favor one party or the other that it doesn’t encourage competition?

Without genuine support from BB&D — Bauer, Bosma and Daniels — little will happen. Little, that is, unless citizens fed up with legislative inertia and ineptitude rise up to demand that candidates in the May primaries and November 2010 general elections endorse changes in how we draw the lines in 2011.

However, all this was forgotten when I was bitten six times by one or more spiders. The results were startling. I began to feel more weird than usual. I became especially irritated by inconsistencies initiated by the Indiana Department of Transportation

For example, why does southbound traffic on U.S. 31 in Indianapolis — Meridian Street — have unencumbered access to eastbound Interstate 465 while northbound traffic is halted by a stop light before entering westbound Interstate 465?

Also, I wanted to leap across the state using the network of mobile phone towers and to weave complex patterns among the newly installed windmills in White County.

Fortunately, I have comprehensive health insurance and could use the Urgent Care facilities of the Hammond Clinic, where an ointment was prescribed and my sanity saved. Otherwise, I would be confined now to downtown Indianapolis, because there are not enough tall structures elsewhere in the state to satisfy a novice spider man.



Marcus is an independent economist, speaker and writer formerly with IU’s Kelley School of Business. Reach him at mortonjmarcus@yahoo.com