Partisan Committee Appointments (H. 4563)

This bill would require most standing House committees to be composed of members reflecting the partisan makeup of the full State House of Representatives. The only committees exempted from this rule would be the Legislative Ethics Committee and the Committee on Operations and Management.

We oppose this bill because: State lawmakers have openly practiced extreme partisan gerrymandering when drawing their own districts. As a result, just 3 out of the state’s 124 House seats are considered competitive along partisan lines, according to the Princeton Gerrymandering Project. The remaining 121 seats are statistically rigged in favor of one party or the other.

This bill would force legislative committees to reflect the skewed outcomes of this process, where lawmakers have chosen voters rather than the other way around.