North Carolina's legislature has been driven by rigid ideology this year, as it often has been in the past. What else can explain its agenda against family planning, voter turnout and separation of church and state?

But the General Assembly appears to be making at least one admirable move. The only catch is that it will take 10 years for it kick in. Even so, it's progress.

The House last week passed a proposal that would have legislative staff members, not elected legislators, draw the boundaries of congressional and legislative districts. It would take effect in 2021, the next time district lines are scheduled to be redrawn.

The legislation is modeled after the system in Iowa. Legislative staffers, sequestered from elected officials, draw maps and present them for an up-or-down vote by the House and Senate.

This is a step toward independence in line-drawing, something this editorial board has pushed for many years, including when Democrats controlled the legislature. It won't remove the politics from the process. But it should end the naked partisanship that has plagued redistricting so often in the past. The current system lets lawmakers pick their voters, instead of the other way around. Competitive districts are rare. That's part of the reason politics is so polarized in America these days: Representatives have little incentive to appeal to voters who are in the minority in their district.

North Carolinians got a reminder last week of how political redistricting currently is. A secret Republican move to hide a redistricting strategy in the state budget became public when GOP legislators held a closed meeting but left a mic on, which funneled their words straight into the press room.

House Speaker Thom Tillis accidentally revealed that Republicans plan to submit their new maps directly to a Washington, D.C., court rather than to the (Democratic) U.S. Justice Department. The political motivations are obvious. Still, that's a strange choice for the fiscally conservative Republicans, since it's surely a more expensive route for taxpayers.