![Doug Johnson, a political science major at Old Dominion University, is among students participating in the Virginia Redistricting Competition. "I live for this kind of stuff," he said.
<span class='credit'>(Bill Tiernan | The Virginian-Pilot)</span>](http://media.hamptonroads.com/cache/files/images/616011000.jpg "Doug Johnson, a political science major at Old Dominion University, is among students participating in the Virginia Redistricting Competition. "I live for this kind of stuff," he said.
<span class='credit'>(Bill Tiernan | The Virginian-Pilot)</span>")
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Doug Johnson, a political science major at Old Dominion University, is among students participating in the Virginia Redistricting Competition. "I live for this kind of stuff," he said.(Bill Tiernan | The Virginian-Pilot)
VA. COMPETITION
Teams from 12 schools submitted plans based on data from the census. Winners’ ideas will be sent to the commission in charge of designing new districts.NORFOLK
Dozens of bleary-eyed college students - many toiling over spring break - have been squinting at computer screens for weeks, meticulously drawing lines on electronic maps of Virginia.
They've been engaged in what cynics might consider a quixotic task: designing proposed legislative voting districts that are sensible, fair, competitive, and drawn with no intent to protect incumbent lawmakers.
There are cash prizes for the teams that draw the best maps. But the big question is: Will the General Assembly, which will create the new districts, pay any attention?
The students are not holding their breath.
For years, would-be government reformers have fretted that the decennial task of remapping voting districts - required by the Constitution to reflect population changes after every census - is a flawed process that inhibits democratic competition.
The problem has gotten worse in recent years, they say, thanks to increasingly sophisticated mapping software that allows lawmakers to design districts tailor-made to ensure their re-election.
In essence, legislators are choosing their voters - not the other way around.
After the last remapping of Virginia districts in 2001, more than 90 percent of the races for the state Senate and House of Delegates were non-competitive - meaning they were decided by margins of victory exceeding 55 percent, according to an analysis by the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service at the University of Virginia.
Of the 100 House seats, 62 were completely uncontested.
In an effort to boost competition, some states have removed the responsibility for redistricting from the legislature and given it to an independent commission. Proposals for something similar in Virginia have gone nowhere in the Assembly.
Lawmakers are feeling some heat on the subject, however.
At a series of public hearings held last fall by the House and Senate redistricting committees, dozens of citizens begged legislators to turn the job over to an independent panel.
In January, Gov. Bob McDonnell appointed a bipartisan advisory commission to design proposed new districts. Its recommendations are due April 1.
That commission will receive the winning plans produced by the college competition, the first of its kind in the country.
The students had a long list of criteria to meet. They had to draw districts for the House of Delegates, state Senate and U.S. House of Representatives that are fair, competitive, compact, contiguous, nearly equal in population, respectful of city and county lines, and in compliance with the federal Voting Rights Act's requirements for adequate minority representation.
Nowhere on the list was protection of incumbent lawmakers.
"We're going to see a lot of maps that draw a lot of incumbents out of office," said Quentin Kidd, a professor at Christopher Newport University who helped organize the competition. "But they'll be more compact. They'll be respectful of existing political subdivisions. They'll accomplish all the other things that people say they want to accomplish with redistricting."
Kidd said the students are savvy enough to know that the districts finally adopted by the Assembly are likely to bear little resemblance to the college teams' maps.
"But the goal here is as much educational as anything," he said. "For the first time in the history of the commonwealth, the public will be able to see redistricting maps that were produced largely in the open without any sort of back-room dealing going on."
Thursday was the deadline for the student teams to submit their plans to the judges. Fifteen teams from 12 schools submitted entries. The winners will be announced later this month. The prizes could be as high as $2,000.
For many of the teams, including Old Dominion University's, the deadline fell during spring break.
Doug Johnson, ODU's team captain, was in the geographic information system lab in the Mills Godwin Building on Thursday, making final tweaks to the plan before submitting it.
Johnson, a junior from Suffolk, is a political science major who hopes to go to law school. He said he expects the team's plan won't carry much weight with lawmakers, but that's OK.
"I'm a poli sci major. I live for this kind of stuff," he said. "If they take away one good idea from it, then it was well worth doing."
Bill Sizemore, (757) 446-2276, bill.sizemore@pilotonline.com
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