New Boss, same as the Old Boss – Redistricting
The Politico has a disappointing report on the realities of redistricting reform in California Redistricting and Blade Running
…U.S. House Democrats from California, led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco. With their majority potentially threatened, the California delegation is prepared to spend $10 million fighting any ballot initiative that would take redistricting out of the hands of sitting politicians…
Both parties fight to retain power by conspiring to keep districts uncompetitive. This is famously known as the politicians picking the voters rather than the voters picking the Representatives. The irony was stunning in Texas in which Tom Delay helped craft districts to elect a majority of Republicans from Texas, only to lose that majority in the mid term elections, thus leaving Texas with no Democratic congressman with the seniority to become committee chairman. The GOP’s vanity handicapped the influence of Texas in Congress.
A more non-partisan redistricting process to promote more competitive elections may actually be the path towards giving each party more equal opportunity to win the hearts and minds of voters.
It would be refreshing for one or both of the parties to be primarily concerned with what is best for the Voters rather than what is best for their party. So far is seems that Obama and McCain are the only prominent politicians who even entertain this kind of thinking with their pledge to use public campaign financing if they are their parties’ nominees.
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Yea, the gerrymandering of district boundaries erodes the electoral process. Unfortunately, to change the rules in any state, it requires voting on an initiative and the public, which elected those in power, is likely to vote to support that power.
If I remember correctly, when the disgruntled minority’s complaints have reached the Supreme Court, it has ruled in favor of the voters (Colorado, Texas), i.e. the ‘in’ crowd.
If ever the party in power institutes a fairer method, like districts drawn by an impartial panel, they would be my heroes.
Republicans do it in order to grab power, why shouldn’t the Democrats so they can actually compete?
/devil’s advocate
Seriously though, I think the past election shows how irrelevant redistricting can be to either party maintaining power. The problem I see is that it gives a temporary boost to the party that can take advantage of it, which is detrimental to our system I think. This also raises the question (when added to the totality of structural problems in our political system) of whether or not part of our political system, if not all of it, needs an overhaul.
I wouldn’t mind seeing a multi-party system in our country … would be more representative.
I’m all for taking redistricting out of the hands of politicians, but the most recent proposal I saw was Arnold Schwartzenegger’s attempt to take it away from the legislature and give it to himself (via a group of judges he would select). That doesn’t depoliticize the process, and the Legislature is right to oppose it.
The problem with redistricting is that both parties know how to play with the boundaries so that all the opposition’s voters are concentrated in a few districts (letting them win with overwhelming majorities in those places). The remaining districts are drawn so that the dominant party wins narrow victories. There is virtually no set of mapping rules you can come up with that could not be subverted in this way, and far from being independent, appointed judges are guaranteed to be selected for their partisan views (bi-partisan is not the same thing as non-partisan).
The closest tamper-free system I can think of would randomly assign voters to districts independent of their residence.
Seems like it ought to be possible to come up with an algorithm that creates districts starting at one corner of a state and working towards the other, creating districts as compact as possible until total number of districts to which the state is entitled is achieved.
Only fair way to do it. Probably could only be done by a Constitutional amendment, if it could even be done that way.
Great catch, Paul. I missed this article.
In my opinion, so-called safe seats undermine our democracy. This type of reform is long overdue, whatever the consequences for a few (or even a lot of) elected officials.