Today I received a PowerPoint presentation from my friend Roman Buhler. Roman and I have known each other for decades, usually on separate sides of primaries or party battles where the
conservative movement is backing a candidate for public or party office, and Roman is working with the Bill Thomas machine to elect people to office who meet one of two criteria: have undying loyalty to Bill Thomas, or are devoid of the passion of conservative beliefs that gets in the way of Thomas’ Jedi Mind Tricks.
Anyways, I often say that like a broken clock shows the right time twice a day, even Bill and Roman can get something right (if by accident). They are 100% right on the need to take redistricting away from the legislators. I guess the idea is that the voters should choose their elected officials, and not the other way around. Roman and I have developed a mutual respect for one another through our mutual passion for politics.
Back to the PowerPoint. Apparently some survey work was done in both California and Ohio after the losses of Prop. 77 and Issue 4, the redistricting reform measures on those two ballots. I’ve attached the PowerPoint presentation (which runs around 60 slides) for you to download and watch because I think that it is instructive. Below are some bullet points I pulled off of two slides, for those who do not want to download and watch the whole show:
- Voters did not see redistricting as a top priority. They do not see a connection to their daily lives.
- Voters do not easily make the connection from their frustrations with government and politics to the solution of redistricting.
- Voters do not tend to see redistricting reform as a solution to corruption. However, they can (and many do) see it as improving fairness and accountability.
To succeed, future reform efforts must:
- Build on shared values, such as the belief that voters should choose their representatives rather than politicians choosing their voters,
- Raise the saliency of reform as the key to making politicians accountable and government responsive to the people,
- Have a well-funded, properly targeted communications plan,
- Test carefully for weaknesses and potential attacks on the specifics of the reform plan, and develop effective responses to those attacks,
- Be perceived as a grassroots, non-partisan reform effort rather than a partisan power-grab,
- Be aimed at goals that voters share, such as accountability, fair elections, and keeping communities together,
- Use independent validators including having the League of Women Voters visibly on board.
PS: Maybe the handful of Republican Congressmen who went south on Prop. 77 last year can use this PowerPoint to plot how to thwart future efforts, and keep their safe seats at the expense of fair districts for all. Shame on them all!