This is in response to the Sun Journal editorial, March 1, “Hold your seat, the apocalypse now under way.” My local paper here in Texas publishes editorials from around the country every week, so I was fortunate enough to read the Sun Journal’s yawn about the hyperbole around sequestration, disdaining the broken Congress.

That is the heart of the matter — the House is so divided that the foundation of compromise is deeply cracked. The cause is that the views of a greater number of members are more polar than ever.

Improvements in data analysis have enabled the parties to more surgically gerrymander districts so that parties have more safe seats, meaning the real election happens in the primary with the winner getting the most of one end of the political spectrum and less of the middle. Districts no longer represent communities where people work together, shop, worship or play Little League.

Rather, districts represent political homogeneity, at least to the point where the general election is a sure thing.

Incumbents, then, get re-elected by pandering to their party, rather than compromising to do the work of the people.

Until that is fixed, Congress will remain broken.

David Reitz, Montgomery, Texas