How political districts are drawn can make the difference in a race. And this week, Deschutes County Commissioners may make a decision about who will decide where the boundaries will be for the new five-member Commission.

Voters decided in November that the Deschutes County Commission should be expanded from three to five members. But how should that work? Commissioners favor a structure with districts. But how should those districts be drawn? Commissioners directed staff to come up with some options.

Commissioners could hand the task to cities to make appointments with each appointing one or with some sort of weighted formula to account for population. The snag with that is the vast disparity in the size of Bend and Redmond compared to Sisters and La Pine. And there are still some 53,000 people who don’t live in a city in Deschutes County.

Commissioners could each appoint one person to the districting committee or maybe each appoint one and then vote on a fourth and/or fifth.

An alternative way of making appointments would be to have legislators representing part of Deschutes County do it. They could each get one or their appointments could be divided up based on the number of people in the county they represent. That also can create some distortions because, for instance, state Sen. Anthony Broadman represents some 113,000 people in the district and Rep. Mark Owens represents just over 50.

There is also an option to have a hybrid selection, including some or all of the cities, commissioners and legislators.

The last option commissioners asked staff to come up with was some sort of citizen-led process, a civic assembly. The county would select demographically representative residents of the county. They would work together led by a moderator to draw the district lines. A similar process was used successfully to generate recommendations for improving the situation of youth homelessness in the county.

No matter how the appointments are made, the next step will be critical: drawing the maps.

Gerrymandering, purposefully drawing political maps to favor a certain outcome, is an old strategy that even the Founding Fathers employed. It was tried to tilt the U.S. Constitution. Patrick Henry basically controlled the Virginia statehouse. His rival, James Madison, was looking to run for Congress. Henry tried to design Virginia’s first Congressional map so the boundaries meant Madison could not win. Madison did win in 1789 by 336 votes.

With computers and Big Data, the potential to draw maps to get a desired outcome is even more of a threat. It makes it important that all the meetings of the districting committee will be open to the public.

Tell commissioners what you think about how the districting committee should be run. Of course, the structure of the committee probably matters less than the fairness with which the committee approaches its task. You can email commissioners at board@deschutes.org.