Brookhaven should draw fair electoral maps

Redrawing district lines for legislative bodies, from Congress down to the town level, should be based on the principle that voters get to pick their representatives, not the other way around. Now that issue is heating up in the Town of Brookhaven, a decade after it adopted a system of equal-population council districts.

Before next year's town election, the six districts have to be redrawn, based on the 2010 census. The task should not be left to the council members, but given to a commission that removes as much politics as possible from the equation.

That's what Supervisor Mark Lesko proposed last week in his State of the Town speech: a bipartisan redistricting commission, like the one the Suffolk County Legislature created.

There's a big difference between creating a commission for the town and what the county did. The legislature passed the commission legislation years before the next redistricting was due. So legislators didn't even know if they'd still be around, or who'd be in the majority at the time. In the town's case, it's immediate, and all six council members will almost certainly be running next year. So they'll be tempted to try to reshape districts to protect their incumbencies.

Any lines drawn by Lesko's proposed commission would have to win town board approval. But at least council members wouldn't draw them. So the commission is a good-government idea that deserves the members' support.