[While this column space is usually devoted to FR Publisher Jon Fleischman’s Daily Commentary, today we are pleased to present commentary by FR’s State Capitol Correspondent Dan Schnur.]
Redistricting Reform Urged by Bi-Partisan Citizen’s Coalition
by Dan Schnur
What do respected conservatives like Bill Leonard, Jon Coupal, and Jim Brulte have in common with Leon Panetta, Fred Keeley, and the head of the League of Women Voters?
Answer: they all agree that letting legislators draw their own districts is like letting third-graders decide how much ice cream they can have for dessert.
To be fair, none of the individuals listed above actually compared the members of the California Legislature to elementary school students, Neither did the eighty-plus of their fellow political, business, labor, academic, and community leaders who signed a letter this week from the Voices of Reform coalition to Governor Schwarzenegger and the four legislative leaders urging them to take the responsibility of drawing legislative and congressional district lines away from the members of the legislature and give that power to members of an independent commission.
So the ice cream analogy is mine and mine alone. But every member of this coalition does agree that there is an inherent conflict of interest that results from legislators directly determining the shape of their own districts. They believe that it contributes to the erosion of public confidence in government, undermines genuine political representation and has the potential to negatively affect the quality of public policy.
So they made it clear to Schwarzenegger and the legislative leaders that this conflict of interest needs to be stopped. They urged the governor and Legislature to put an initiative on this November’s ballot that would create an independent commission to draw district lines in the future. And they suggested that steps like these to create competitive elections in California would not only increase the ability of the state’s lawmakers to deal with California’s most pressing policy challenges, but that it would increase the voters’ regard for their elected representatives and begin to restore the trust of California’s citizens in their state government.
In last year’s special election, leaders of both major political parties promised to fix this conflict of interest. Through his support of Proposition 77, Schwarzenegger vowed to take away the power of state legislators to draw the own districts. But Prop 77’s opponents, including the Democratic leaders of the state legislature, promised to support an alternative solution that would resolve this problem as well. The Voices of Reform Coalition is simply reminding the leaders of both parties of the commitments they made during the heat of last fall’s campaign and urging them to fulfill those commitments.
**There is more – click the link**
June 1st, 2006 at 12:00 am
Great article, Dan. I sure would like to see reform hit our Congressional district lines before 2010, for the same reasons that apply here.
June 1st, 2006 at 12:00 am
Perhaps Mr. Schnurr can go beyond the vague call for a bipartisan commission and give us some specifics as to what the commission might look like.
Reform advocates continue to dodge the point that most bipartisan commissions that have dealt with reapportionment have wound up in major controversies and have generally shown themselves to be more biased than the process was in those states where the state legislature ran things.
It’s nice to say that you want reform, since most people, myself included say things could be better, but it’s a little silly to call for reform without saying what the reform is or even the general direction it might take. JMO!
June 1st, 2006 at 12:00 am
Not very many competitive districts will result from any of the proposed reforms (SCA 3 or the Costa Initiative). It’s still a good idea for marginal districts. But we shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking that more than a few districts can be made competitive when people vote with their feet.
June 2nd, 2006 at 12:00 am
Redistricting is a dirty business, and the People have voted numerous times to keep it with dirty people.
Why don’t Schnur and friends listen to the People?
Because he’s right – the redistricting deal agreed to by Leonard and Brulte (among others)
guaranted a Democratic Legislature for the ’90’s.
Now they want to break that deal to help Republicans – but they do so hypocritially in the name of reform.
June 2nd, 2006 at 12:00 am
So because we didn’t like the districts our elected officials came up with, we’re going to insist that, drum roll please, -their appointees- do the job instead. Wow, what a change. Even though the appointees will draw the exact same maps the elected officials would have, we’ll be so happy that a conflict of interest has been avoided. Yeah, right.
If you really want to reform redistricting, you need to set very specific criteria to be followed. Once you set those, it doesn’t matter who draws the lines because everyone who follows the rules would come up with the same lines. It’s how the lines are drawn that matters, not who draws them.
June 2nd, 2006 at 12:00 am
My first redistricting experience was as a staffer in 1971. It was wrong then for the Legislature to self-draw its own lines and its wrong now. I disagree with Bill Cavala and Tom Delay who share the view that electeds ought to draw the lines to benefit themselves.
June 2nd, 2006 at 12:00 am
Although the comment about how the lines are drawn was very on target, the problem is that most things are open to interpretation and just as with our court system, that can lead to abuse.
What makes it worse in reapportionment (and is the reason every nonpartisan commission in other states has been considered unsuccessful) is that the subject is so arcane that the only people truly interested and willing to spend the large amounts of time it takes to draw legal boundary lines are those with a vested interest in the system.
Reading Senator Leonard’s comment about the present system being wrong reminds me of Winston Churchill saying that Democracy was a terrible system of government, but that it was better than any other system ever created. No one has yet come up with a truly viable alternative.
June 2nd, 2006 at 12:00 am
Yes, most things are open to interpretation, but it’s possible to lay out redistricting criteria that are not. Once you do, the districts basically draw themselves; you could have a computer do it. Maybe John will let me submit a longer piece explaining what the specific, objective, not open to interpretation, criteria could be.
June 2nd, 2006 at 12:00 am
If you look back at the history of reapportionment in California you will find several instances of refinements taking place that would supposedly not be subject to interpretation, but when the final product has come out, it seems like there is always someone unhappy. You may have noticed the number of lawsuits claiming that state law wasn’t being interpreted correctly.
Believe me, there is no way to conduct reapportionment (and I have more than a little familiarity with the subject) without leaving room for interpretation. You are kidding yourself to think otherwise.
June 5th, 2006 at 12:00 am
As far as I know (and I have more than a little familiarity with the subject as well), no criteria as specific as several of those included in Proposition 77 have ever been enacted into law.