Lauren McFalls/For The Olympian
Local artist Kathy Gore Foss (right) and assistant Daisy Curley put a tongue on a gerrymander that winds around the entrance to an exhibit on redistricting. Inspired by an 1812 political cartoon, the gerrymander represents manipulation of political boundaries to win elections.

Redistricting exhibit beckons

State Capital Museum trying to breathe life into complicated process

PATRICK CONDON, THE OLYMPIAN

Originally published September 29

OLYMPIA -- Most museums entice visitors with dinosaur bones or eye-catching paintings.

You might not think the traditionally dry subject of political redistricting would make for good exhibit fodder.

The folks at the Washington State Capital Museum hope to prove that wrong. But even they admit it hasn't been easy to build an exhibit around the once-a-decade process of redrawing legislative and congressional boundary lines to make up for shifts in population.

"Redistricting is a process," said Melissa Parr, the exhibit curator. "But we don't want to just stick a book on the wall. The problem was, how do you bring to life a government process?"

The fruit of those efforts, "Redrawing the Battle Lines," is on display at the State Capital Museum between now and June of next year.

Students are one major audience for the exhibit.

To make the complicated process easier to understand and entertaining, exhibit planners also commissioned the creation of a board game that mimics the redistricting process.

Frank Hussey, the manager of Danger Room Comics, and his friend Luke Trecice designed "Redistrict," which is similar in layout to Monopoly.

"I'd tell my friends, 'It's the game that teaches kids how fun redistricting is!' " Hussey said with a laugh.

Hussey was surprised when the game turned out to be more fun that he thought it might be, but, "I don't think Milton Bradley is going to be calling."

The museum plans to sponsor several "game nights," where groups will be invited to come view the exhibit and play the game.

A lurid history

The exhibit details the national origins of the redistricting process and its particularly rollicking history in Washington state, where for most of the 20th century it often seemed that state legislators went out of their way to bungle the process.

"For 95 years ... the Legislature was a dismal failure at redistricting," Don Brazier, a state historian, says in a video interview that accompanies the exhibit.

The roots of redistricting go back to pre-Revolutionary War days, when colonists protested their lack of representation in the British Parliament through such now-legendary revolts as the Boston Tea Party.

After winning independence, the framers of the Constitution set out the redistricting process to ensure equal representation for all U.S. citizens.

But those good intentions were rarely honored through much of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Incumbent politicians often manipulated the redistricting process to consolidate their bases of political power. An early example of this was Massachusetts Gov. Elbridge Gerry, who in 1812 created a freakishly misshapen political district to ensure his party a legislative majority.

One observer likened Gerry's district to a "squatting salamander," and a political cartoonist illustrated it as a dragon-like creature with fangs, claws and wings. Thus the term "Gerrymander" was born, and is still used to describe oddly shaped political districts created to favor or exclude certain voting groups.

Local artist Kathy Gore Fuss has created a large plywood dragon, inspired by the Gerrymander, which graces the front door of the exhibit hall.

Lopsided maps

Here in Washington, legislators often refused outright to redistrict, which created some lopsided legislative districts as the state's population increasingly flocked to urban centers.

By 1950, the 31st District in south King County had 151,784 residents, while the 10th District in the southeast part of the state had only 18,942 people.

In 1956, the League of Women Voters spearheaded a successful initiative drive to redistrict the state.

Furious state legislators almost immediately overturned the initiative, with then-state Sen. Bob Grieve comparing the efforts to "a lot of women sitting around cutting paper dolls out of maps of the states."

A new way

It wasn't until 1983 that voters struck back for good, approving another initiative that took the process away from the Legislature and put it into the hands of an independent Redistricting Commission.

Washington is one of only five states to do it that way.

"We just felt these are such important concepts to understand," said Susan Rorher, the museum's education curator, who participated in the exhibit's two-year planning process. "We felt like it was something that needed to be brought to life."

Museum hours

The State Capital Museum is located at 211 W. 21st Ave., Olympia. Museum hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and noon to 4 p.m. on Saturdays.

For more information, call 360-753-2580.

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