This week, Congress.org responded to a reader’s question regarding redistricting.

The “nonpartisan news and information Web site” addressed the following inquiry:

"When a state's seats are cut after the census, how do they decide which representative is out of a job?"

Congress.org’s Frances Symes responds (emphases added):

After the census, and after the reapportionment has taken place, deciding how many House seats each state will have, the states step in to draw the district lines.

Because the Supreme Court in the 1960s interpreted the Constitution to require that each U.S. House district have equal numbers of people, any state with more than one district is likely to be required to adjust its district lines after each census to limit the variation in population between congressional districts.

Redistricting plans are drawn up and passed by the state legislatures and approved by the governors. In this way, the party that controls the state legislature essentially controls the redistricting.
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While many political experts disagree about the importance of redistricting to the outcome of House elections, it is clear that it can be crucial in determining the make up of a state's delegation in the House, and thus the make up of Congress itself.

Certain areas within each state show a long-term preference for one party over the other.

Because these voting habits are well known to political experts in each state it is possible to create a district that is almost certain to favor candidates of one party of another. There are many ways to adjust districts to make them more or less friendly to members of a certain party.

In case you’re wondering about Republicans’ version of “friendly to members of a certain party,” allow me to refer you to the infamous 2003 Texas “DeLay-mander.” Gaining and maintaining majorities in state legislative chambers gives Democrats a seat at the redistricting table, so to speak. This will help prevent the GOP from gerrymandering itself into artificial majorities on both the state and federal levels for the next decade.

Symes goes on to posit the query,

So, what happens to an incumbent whose district disappears?

He or she has to run in a new district (which may or may not include part of his or her old district), possibly against another incumbent.

As redistricting nears, this issue is gaining some urgency. Some states, such as Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan, are predicted to lose congressional seats to other, more rapidly-growing states, such as Texas and Georgia. Once the congressional district boundaries are redrawn in the states losing seats in 2011, not all of those members of Congress will have a district to represent or a seat to run for in 2012.

With so much of the national pundit focus on the 2010 congressional elections, few are pausing to consider that some of these districts currently of so much concern to the makeup of the 112th Congress soon will simply cease to exist.