My wife does not like surprises, and after many years of marriage I have come around to her view. She likes to know what we are having for supper by noon. She likes to know who is coming to Thanksgiving before the invitations go out. She says it is not that she is against other people. She is just in favor of a plan.
I thought of her last year when Texas redrew its congressional map in the middle of the decade. A good many people were upset about the timing. They said a map ought to be drawn once and then left alone for a good while. I understand the feeling. But I have never understood why a thing that is working for us should have to wait on a calendar.
Here is what I will admit, because I think it is nothing to be ashamed of. I like knowing how an election is going to come out before it happens. I like it the way I like knowing the truck will start. There is a kind of person who enjoys the suspense of a close race, the late nights, the counties coming in one by one. I have never been that person. Suspense is for ballgames. A state is not a ballgame.
People say the voters should be the ones to decide. And they do decide, in the main. They decide once, when they settle in a neighborhood, and then the folks who draw the lines take that information and put it to good use. That is not taking anything away from the voter. That is listening to him so closely you do not have to ask him again.
When the map came up, a number of Democratic legislators left the state to try to stop it. I did not care for that. You do not leave the table because you do not like how the meal is being served. But I will say this for them: they knew the score too. Everybody in that building knew the score. That is what made it such an honest fight.
A friend from church asked me whether I would feel the same if the other side were holding the pencil. I told him I would not, and I told him that is called having convictions. A man who wants the same rules for his opponents as for himself has not yet decided which side he is on.
So let the critics talk about fairness. I have found that fairness is usually what people ask for once they have already lost count. I prefer a quieter thing. I prefer to go to bed on election night already knowing. That is why I will vote for my party’s man for the Senate this fall, the same as I always have. As I understand it, the other side would like the lines drawn so that a race could be close again, and I have told you how I feel about suspense.
I do not need to find out what my neighbors think. The map already told me.
D. M.