Let Fort Worth citizens, not elected officials, draw City Council maps in redistricting

Democracy works when voters choose their political representatives at the ballot box. It doesn’t work when politicians pick their voters from a map.

At least one former Fort Worth City Council member, Brian Byrd, disagrees, according to his recent Star-Telegram column. And as the council bucked the suggestion of yet another city-appointed task force, it is safe to assume that other members share the sentiment.

The city’s Race and Culture Task Force recommended an independent citizen’s redistricting commission in 2019. City Council members, not wanting to lose power to choose their own voters, rejected the recommendation and created the dressed-up process we have seen unfolding this year.

The recent council-appointed Redistricting Task Force presented its suggested map, which reflects the best efforts to draw a map that provides fair representation to all citizens. Several City Council members decided that they know better, submitting their own maps and reducing public comment meetings from one to four before a vote on the final map.

What was the point of these task force member’s time and effort if it was not going to be considered? This round of redistricting was supposed to remove the criteria of council members’ addresses in drawing district lines, but is that really possible when they draw their own maps?

We did not elect City Council members to choose their voters. We elected our City Council members to represent the constituents. Multiple city-appointed task forces made up of constituents have spent countless hours trying to express this.

If you are the candidate whom voters prefer, then you will run in your new district and be elected. Why is this not the best way? The only reason for elected officials to demand to choose their own boundaries is to protect their self-interest.

In the bigger picture, the recent Texas Republican and Democratic primaries determined the outcome of the vast majority of our congressional and state legislative seats. This makes the November elections into simple formalities.

In Texas, and across the nation, more candidates are running from the fringe of their respective party because the only thing necessary to win an election is the nomination from the correct party.

Eight states have implemented nonpolitical independent citizen’s redistricting commissions; California and Arizona were the first two to find a nonpartisan solution to this non-partisan issue.

In Texas, we do not have the ability to force issues to the ballot box at the state level through referendum and initiative, as voters in California and Arizona do. But citizens can do so in cities. In Austin, voters opted to create an independent redistricting commission, in direct opposition to what the City Council wanted.

State legislators do not support citizen redistricting because it can put historically safe seats in jeopardy. We need local examples of success to help start the conversation at the Capitol.

Fort Worth is in the enviable position to provide representation that better reflects the population. We can also be a leader in ending gerrymandering, which has resulted in districts where only one party can win an election at the state and federal levels. That results in the most extreme in each party getting elected.

We certainly do not want our City Council to function like Congress. We should not continue to allow politicians to choose their voters.