In general, the political process can be an ugly thing to witness. We observe it with the same fascination we have watching the Animal Planet and seeing an anaconda swallowing a pig.

But of all the actions of our governing body perhaps the most disgusting and politics riddled activity is reapportionment. This happens once every 10 years and reminds one of the big flower at the Botanical Garden that blooms once every few years and lets off a big stink when it does.

It matters not which party is in power because whichever one is will take advantage of the opportunity and attempt to wangle district lines to favor their side. It is a time honored tradition among thieves, uh, politicians.

Politicians being in charge of creating the districts in which they will serve, especially partisan politics, is not only letting the foxes in the hen house but allowing them to bring a cookbook and grill.

Even with the best of intentions, and when did you ever see one group of politicians have the best intentions when dealing with their opposites, redistricting is a muddled and messy business.

The redrawing of political boundaries is necessary because of new census figures but protecting incumbents, or creating a district where a bothersome opponent can become vulnerable, is never far away from the overall plan.

While there are rules and requirements for redistricting, the bottom line is we need a new system in place which will eliminate politics from the process.

At a minimum we could turn the process over to the Yerkes Primate Center. A couple of monkeys armed with a blank map of the state and a box of crayons could likely do as credible a job as any of our august leaders.

At least we would not have to listen to the party in power blather on about how hard they worked to make the system fair and the other side whining about how unfair it is, unless the monkeys are a lot closer to those in the "Planet of the Apes" than we would like to believe.

Perhaps the time has come for the state to take a bold step forward. With all the technology available today it is not unreasonable to think you could plug the census data into a computer, push a button and come up with fair and equitable districts.

With access to the University of Georgia, Georgia State, Emory and Georgia Tech it does not seem implausible a computer program and reapportionment system could not be developed along appropriate guidelines that would meet all legal requirements while eliminating the partisan squabbling and rancor we see every 10 years.

Even will this there will be times when incumbents will have to face off against each other or someone will find themselves in a district that didn't even exist during the last election. That is just the rub of the green as they say in golf.

It would still not be a perfect system but the innate fairness would lie in the idea that everyone would simply be a victim of the numbers, not who happens to be in power at the moment.

This would, of course, remove politics from the process and the last thing politicians want to do when it comes to a political issue is to remove the politics.

But since this will likely never happen, just get accustomed to enjoying the spectacle under the Gold Dome.

And if you get tired of watching the special session of the General Assembly at work, switch over to the Animal Planet. Sooner or later there will be a program showing one animal eating another.

Ric Latarski is a freelance writer who writes on a variety of topics and can be reached at Rlatarski@aol.com.