Redistricting wrong here and elsewhere

Oh, boo-hoo to Maryland’s Republican lawmakers who are yowling about the unfairness of the Democrats’ effort to redistrict Rep. Andy Harris (R-1st) out of a job in the next election.

Their cries of foul and unfairness echo those bellowed by Democrats in Texas last summer and fall when Republican members of that state’s legislature started this mess by instituting rare mid-decade redistricting to benefit their candidates in the mid-term elections.

Meanwhile, Maryland Democrats’ self-righteous assertions that their actions are justified by Republican transgressions elsewhere should be stockpiled until spring, when they can be applied to the fields, assuming the ground can absorb the excess irony.

Unfortunately, the victims here are not the political parties, but voters of all stripes and affiliations whose voices in the election process are muffled by party leaders who pick the voters for their candidates instead of the other way around.

Maryland, which is something of a Jedi master of Democratic gerrymandering, having gotten away with it for generations, is just one of several states pursuing an advantage going into the mid-term elections.

In addition to Texas (GOP), this unprecedented wave of redrawing districts includes California (Dems), Missouri (GOP) North Carolina (GOP) and Ohio (GOP), while Florida and Virginia are thinking about it.

Regardless of party or political philosophy, the purpose of this exercise is to shortchange opposition voters by employing undemocratic principles. It’s wrong, and no amount of finger-pointing at similar moves in other states by the opposing party will change that.

It makes no difference if it’s Andy Harris or Sheriff Andy Taylor from Mayberry running for Congress from this district, redrawing its boundaries isn’t right and the Maryland’s Democratic legislators should put an end to it.