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A Centrist’s POV: Redistricting Round-up

Posted by PAUL SILVER in At TMV.
Jan 26th, 2008 | Comments

California and Arizona
are both preparing to vote on redistricting plans aiming to reduce political distortions.

The California version focuses on trying to keep cities and counties contiguous, rather than broken up into obscure gerrymandered shapes. Perhaps these new districts can be made more competitive for candidates by pairing communities with different political inclinations. In order for Gov Schwarzenegger to get support for this from the Democratic leaders he had to agree to allow the term limit laws to be altered to give those leaders an extended stay in power.

The Arizona version is more precisely aimed at making the districts competitive which may allow for some splitting of cities and counties. With more competitive districts we will have a better chance of electing more moderate and pragmatic representatives who have to appeal to a diverse electorate, rather than ideological extremists who have little inclination or need to compromise.

I am delighted that these states may join Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, New Jersey and Washington that have objective redistricting plans that aim to allow the voters to choose their representatives rather than the representatives choosing their voters.

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GeorgeSorwell

I think this is very encouraging--I'd love to see some follow-up!!

DLS

It's easy and simple to redraw districts. Create them out of contiguous ZIP code areas or Census tracts. Apply other criteria as would be useful such as county boundaries or physical boundaries.

A way to avoid all this where there are states with five or more legislative seats at stake is to make the seats at-large and award them to parties using proportional representation.

DLS

See Congressional district maps for yourselves (and "marvel" at them):

http://nationalatlas.gov/printable/congress.htm...

superdestroyer

There is nothing that can be done to make California districts competitive. I suspect the real reason for the plan is to eliminate the 1/3 of the districts that the Republicans control while doing an end run around term limits. Short of forcing middle class whites to move back to California, there is nothing that will make the district competitive. California will soon be as much a one party state as Mass. The real question is whether there is a way to structure districts to make them more competitive in primaries. I doudt that such a method exists. Once a Democrat candidate is elected in California my guess that the position is theirs until term limited out. Eliminating term limints will lower the number of competitive elections instead of increasing them.

HappySurge

Redistricting, isn't that a fancy word people use for disenfranchising voters?

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