THE good news about redistricting the county is that it has been done in a spirit of industrious bipartisanship, and the Democrat-Republican balance on the Metropolitan King County Council has been maintained until changed by the voters.

The not-so-good news is that the lines are gerrymandered to penalize the two remaining members who wanted to shrink the council from 13 seats to 9. They are Bob Ferguson, Democrat, and David Irons, Republican. These two are being punished for giving the public what it wanted. "I knew I was the only Democrat who supported it (nine seats), and I knew there would be a political cost," said Ferguson. "This is it."

When boundaries change, a council member may move anywhere in his old district and run immediately in the new district. That means that whoever annexes a piece of Ferguson's old district in Seattle may have Ferguson as an opponent in the next election.

Consider the map, which is an almost-finished version. Ferguson's northeastern Seattle district is divided between Councilwoman Carolyn Edmonds' 1st District and Councilman Larry Gossett's 2nd. Ferguson's house is in the 1st. But Larry Phillips' 4th District, to Ferguson's west, takes nary a nibble of Ferguson territory. The boundary, which runs down Aurora Avenue North, is a kind of Siegfried Line protecting Phillips from an invasion by Ferguson.

Phillips says Aurora is a natural boundary. "Should we move an existing district boundary for the convenience of an officeholder?" he asks.

It seems more accurate to ask whether a boundary should be left unmoved for the convenience of an officeholder. Such is politics.

On the Eastside, Jane Hague has an expanded Bellevue district. She might have been worrying about a threat from Reagan Dunn, son of former Bellevue Congresswoman Jennifer Dunn. The redistricting shuffles Dunn's neighborhood of Bellevue into Councilman Steve Hammond's 9th District, which stretches all the way to Enumclaw.

It would have been bloodier if Dwight Pelz, Democrat, hadn't left to run for Seattle City Council and Rob McKenna, Republican, had not been elected state attorney general. That reduced the head count from 13 to 11.

Still, said Phillips, "It's musical chairs. With 11 people and nine seats, two people are going to be sore."

That's right. Two had to go. But the lines did not have to be drawn so blatantly to protect the survivors.