LINCOLN- During a politically fraught 13-day special session, some members of the Nebraska Legislature questioned aloud whether the once-in-a-decade task of redrawing voting maps would be better left to an independent commission.

Nebraska’s Legislature is unique among states in that lawmakers are elected without regard to party affiliation, and political parties don’t play a role in the body’s structure — but redistricting put a spotlight on party divisions.

Initial proposals from Republicans for congressional and state legislative district maps passed out of the Redistricting Committee on party-line votes, and both were met in the full Legislature by filibusters largely spearheaded by Democrats in staunch opposition to proposed changes.

Neither proposal had the votes to overcome those filibusters, and Speaker of the Legislature Mike Hilgers raised the possibility that lawmakers could end the special session without getting the job done.

But days of negotiations yielded hard-fought compromises, and legislators approved a congressional map on a 35-11 vote and a legislative map on a 37-7 vote.

Creating an independent commission for redistricting is not an original idea. Randall Adkins, a political scientist at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, called the shift by some states to commissions a “movement that has been growing.”

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 15 states give a commission the primary responsibility for drawing state legislative districts and 10 do so for congressional boundaries.

Some other states have commissions that fill an advisory role or serve as a backstop if the state legislature can’t get the job done.

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