So, is that the Democratic map or the Republican map?

Let the guessing game begin.

Phillip Carchman, the chair of the state panel revising New Jersey’s 40 legislative districts, said today that the Apportionment Commission will put two proposed maps on its website on Feb. 7.

But here’s the fun part. The maps will not be identified as being the Republican map or the Democratic map.

Carchman said he wants to eliminate any bias – bias, presumably, in the minds of the observers.

You would think that which party drew which map would be obvious – at least to the political savvy.

If a proposed map seems to help Republicans, it’s the Republican map; likewise for the Democrats.
But this may not be the case. Remember that in the just-drawn congressional redistricting, it was Democrats who essentially threw Rep. Tom Malinowski  “under the bus” by making his CD-7 district less Democratic than it is now.

You can probably expect similar party infighting to play out in the state map drawing.

When the public comments began, speakers reiterated previous points about keeping “connected communities”  in the same district and drawing boundary lines that respect the state’s growing ethnic diversity.

Carchman said the public can comment on the proposed maps and that they may be adjusted before they’re finalized in about a month.

Making the two party-proposed maps public certainly seems like a step in the right direction – even if people have to guess which map belongs to which party.