Depending on which side of the political aisle North Carolina voters fall, they’ve likely heard some variation of arguments about gerrymandering in the state.

Courts ruled that Republicans racially gerrymandered district lines with surgical precision. Then, after losing racial gerrymandering suits, the GOP-controlled legislature engaged in partisan gerrymandering, a suit now pending before the U.S. Supreme Court alleges.

For Democrats, the rulings speak for themselves, but Republicans have argued that Democrats did it too to gain a political advantage in the state.

In reality, the party that gets caught gerrymandering matters little compared to the fact that swaths of voters, through no fault of their own, live in districts  that are not competitive (that self-sorting has made urban areas shades of blue and rural areas red is another matter).

A reasonable solution comes in the form of a bill introduced by Salisbury’s Rep. Harry Warren. A Republican, Warren has introduced a bill that would create an independent commission to draw congressional and state legislature district lines.

The bipartisan bill would create an 11-member commission, with majority and minority leaders in the House and Senate all having an opportunity to appoint two members. Those eight members would then select the remaining three.

What’s more, three members would have to be listed as unaffiliated voters and as not voting twice consecutively in the same party’s primary over the previous five years.

It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s much better than allowing the district in which voters are grouped to fall victim to partisan whims.

There’s little progress made when crying this or that party failed to take action on gerrymandering. And finally fixing a problem that’s plagued N.C. for too long would be an accomplishment about which Republicans could brag for decades as they currently control the General Assembly.

The good news is that Warren’s bill has bipartisan support, including members of Democratic leadership. Though, at last count, there are more Democrats than Republicans supporting the bill.

We hope naked partisanship is not a reason to relegate the bill to a committee, with no hope of a second or third reading on the House floor. On the contrary, the House should give serious consideration Warren’s bill, make reasonable tweaks as needed and aim for passage this session.