(AP) ? This year's contentious stalemate over redistricting will likely provide future Kansas lawmakers with a memorable lesson in why it doesn't benefit them to leave redrawing the state's political boundaries to federal judges. After legislators failed to pass any legislation to adjust congressional, legislative or State Board of Education districts to account for population shifts over the past decade, three judges imposed new voting-district lines last week. When legislators handle redistricting, protecting incumbents is a key issue, but it was a low priority for the federal judges. Even if lawmakers had passed plans to adjust the state's four congressional districts, 125 state House districts, 40 Senate districts and 10 Board of Education districts, the courts would have gotten involved. The three judges hearing the lawsuit filed by Robyn Renee Essex, a GOP precinct committee woman from the conservative stronghold of Olathe, felt free, as one of them put it during a hearing, to "write on blank sheets of paper." [...] as the judges wrote in their unsigned, 206-page opinion, "we owe no deference to any proposed plan, as none has successfully navigated the legislative process to the point of enactment." House leaders where especially frustrated because their chamber had approved by wide margins two versions of a bipartisan plan for redrawing representatives' districts.
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