Congratulations to Paula DeJoy of Jamestown and Tom DeJoe of Brocton for trying to ensure a broad representation on the panel that will draw up the boundaries for 19 districts from which Chautauqua County legislators will be elected.
These two Democrat county legislators, along with Republican Legislator John Runkle of Stockton, are sponsoring a resolution to have an independent commission undertake the key responsibility for reducing the number of legislative districts from the current 25 to the voter-approved maximum of 19.
The goal, in Runkle's words, it to ''de-politicize'' a situation that is usually fraught with political biases.
Usually, the job would be done by the legislature. However, this nonpartisan committee, if the legislature approves, would include four citizens as well as members from the League of Women Voters, Chamber of Commerce and the legislature.
It sounds fair and square and as American as apple pie.
But here's the thing - we must be careful what we wish for.
A ''de-politicized" reapportionment process that does not at all take into account political affiliations while splitting up the county into 19 new districts could, in fact, inadvertently create a plan that ensures one political party will always be in majority control of the county.
As we have pointed out before, the "partisan" process, if you will, that has reapportioned the county after each census in the past few decades has resulted in fairly balanced legislative districts that did not guarantee either the Democrats or Republicans a lock on majority control.
In a reflection of the real-life political party affiliation of the electorate, the party split in the County Legislature has been close for decades - every two years, voters were apt to elect first one political party and then the other to a slim majority. Sometimes the legislators have even had to rely on the support of third-party legislators to hold a majority.
It has not been a perfect system and sometimes the process is, well, sort of stinky. But the results have generally given voters a fairly equal chance of putting their party of choice into power every two years.
That's a good thing.
As the legislature considers creating a new commission, it seems to us we ought to be cautious about so totally ignoring political considerations when drawing district lines that we accidentally end up creating a one-party dictatorship for the next 10 years.