An egregious gerrymander

Peter V. R. Franchot is the Comptroller of rhe State of Maryland. He is also a very loyal and partisan Democrat. So I was very surprised that he has come out against the weird gerrymander of Maryland's Congressional districts that was proposed by Governor Martin O'Malley, and urges voters to vote against Question 5 on this year's ballot.

The Third District is particularly fantastic, and has been termed the third worst gerrymandered district in the country by a study. But some of the others are still pretty bad, even if not that bad. (My county, Montgomery, is divided among the Sixth and Eighth districts as well as that weird Third. The Sixth District does not look too bad, except that it is a deliberate attempt to end the Congressional career of Republican Rep. Roscoe Bartlett by putting just enough Democrats into the district to make it elect a Democrat. As a result, the Eighth, the district I'm in, runs from the Washington suburbs to the Pennsylvania line, with some narrow threads of land tying it together. The study actually ranked the Sixth as worse than the Eighth, though the Eighth looks a lot worse to my eyes.)

I plan to vote against Question 5. But I'm sure that even if the gerrymander is overturned, Gov. O'Malley will resubmit almost the same plan.