Here is an excerpt from an e-mail on redistricting reform that I received from former State Senator Chuck Poochigian:
I have been a strong supporter of redistricting reform. I prefer a judge model as was used in the 1990s and earlier. However, experience tells us that might not fly. But an element which I think is vital is "nesting." By having 2 Assembly seats per each of 40 Senate seats (vs. 5 or more as is the case in many districts now), a number of positive things occur, among them:
- It imposes necessary discipline on whomever is charged with drawing the lines and limits opportunity for gaming to accommodate or give advantage to particular prospective candidates.
- It limits unhealthy behavior that is a natural consequence of poorly designed districts as votes are cast and relationships are forged within the legislative arena. While this may seem esoteric or inconsequential to some, where several current Assembly members may covet a particular Senate seat there are implications that can adversely affect conduct and policy.
- It makes it much easier for members of the public to understand who represents them. Having numerous representatives with overlapping district lines within a region or media market (this may not be quite as relevant a point in densely populated areas) is confusing and another factor that contributes to cynicism about the political system.
April 20th, 2007 at 12:00 am
These are all fair points, however the problem with nesting is that it weakens the influence of many minority groups that in some cases (depending of course on how lines are drawn) could have strong potential for legal action because of prior court rulings. If you want an example of what I mean, use nesting with the current Assembly seats and even though there would be no difference in partisan makeup, there would be some clear ethnic differences in the composition of voters. I realize that to a lot of readers on this site, it would be preferrable to judge people without considering ethnicity (I don’t agree with that, I am just acknowledging it) but as I said before, there are some pretty clear court rulings that could (repeat could, not would) make it hard for such a map to hold up under legal challenge. Remember everyone keeps referring to the last reapportionment done by the courts as an example, but political lawyers on both sides of the aisle agree that plan could have easily been challenged, but major players on both sides of the aisle didn’t want to take a chance on the outcome of a legal battle. This is still a very complicated subject.
April 21st, 2007 at 12:00 am
Tom – Look at the 1990s and 1970s, when California both nested its districts, the Court not only supported the plans but in fact drew the plans itself, and California made unmatched gains in the diversity of people elected. Nesting’s not the problem, incumbent-protection gerrymandering is the problem.
And you’re mistaken regarding your final point: the 1991 plan was indeed challenged in federal court. You may not be aware of it because it was so easily upheld.
April 21st, 2007 at 12:00 am
It is a technical point you are making and I don’t think for those of us that are non lawyers, it is informative, although as I said, you are technically correct about the challenge.
There was a court case based on a complaing by Democrats who were ably represented by Jonathan Steinberg of Irell/Manella that tried to overturn some of the basic rules that were used by the panel in drawing up the lines.
Basically and to keep it very simple, Democrats and (some independent legal experts)believed that the rules governing reapportionment should have been interpreted in a different manner than they had been and if the changes they sought had been implemented Democrats would have made major gains and that was openly stated as the purpose.
I am going by memory, but I believe one of the issues as an example was to argue that California law required that statistical sampling on census figures be used to reapportion legislative seats which given the historic undercount of minorities would have led to a huge jump in their numbers of representatives.
All of the issues in that case were openly believed to increase the number of Democratic seats and although the case was extremely well argued the Republican controlled State Supreme Court rejected the challenge.
However, as a side note, some of the arguments were so new and novel (and antithical to the political beliefs of the court) that judges did something they almost never do which is to argue with attorneys during their questions about issues and it was very clear that some of the arguments and never been considered and could be revisited in future court decisions.
But back to my original point, lawyers on both sides thought they could have gotten the lines drawn by the commission thrown out if they didn’t try to get specific partisan gains for their side in making the argument. There were many mistakes in the basic plan, some of which were legal, some simply basic. For example, if you look at the closeness of the numbers of each district, that difference was greater in more districts than plans before it, even though they had computer technology to back it up. Anyway, Democrats looked at the fact that the same people would be simply drawing the new plan and the Supreme Court (which if I remember correctly was all Republican appointees at the time and considered very political) would wind up having to hear any legal challenges and decided to let it go rather than risk things getting worse. Republicans who had some complaints of their own having to do with the division of towns and cities etc., decided for different reasons to let it go. So you didn’t have anybody trying to simply get the plan thrown out (as you usually do in reapportionment) and so it stayed in effect. But as a nonlawyer, I am amazed, because this is the first time I have ever heard anyone with a legal background claim (and I do talk to a lot of lawyers) that the plan could have been upheld if it had not been for the weird circumstances where “balance of power” politics kept everyone in place.
As for the question about “nesting”. It is a case of simple math and I don’t see how that can be challenged. If you have a straight system of nested districts, there will be a lot of cases where black’s and latino’s will have dramatically smaller numbers after the fact and where they will come into more direct conflict with each other. For example, if you had nesting under the current system the Senate Seat currently held by Alex Padilla would combine the 39th (Fuentes) and 40th (Levine) AD’s. A Latino probably would never win that seat. In the 51st AD (Price) and the 52nd AD (Dymmally) you would have a battle royal between African Americans and Latino’s in an area with rising Latino population, but the voting numbers just starting to catch up. Again if Latino’s won that fight (as the numbers would seem to indicate they would) You would have one fewer African American State Senators and you might have noticed there are not a lot of them now. In the 55th (Richardson) and the 56th (Mendoza) you would have another battle royal for State Senate with a much clearer edge to Latino’s and again, one fewer large group of African American’s with representation by someone from their own ethnic background. Same thing with 61 (Soto) and 62 (Carter). On the Republican side, Van Tran would finally have a seat to run for, but he would lose some of his Asian base and have to run against Jim Silva. Then of course you would have the partisan cases where for example, Solario never gets a Senate seat and with the current makeup of Assembly Districts, Democrats would be shut out of the State Senate in San Diego County even though Latino’s are a huge portion of the population down there.
I realize of course that the lines would be drawn differently from the current plan, but my original point still holds.
Right now, minority districts in many places border next to each other and there are already some pretty serious conflicts. If nesting is in place, these conflicts will increase dramatically. You will also see large groups of minorities in various communities losing representation in the State Senate either because they lose fights to other groups or without the ability to get the lines drawn in a way that helps them gain a seat, they lose to an Anglo when a certain number of their voters goes into a different district.
I realize that for a lot of Republicans, they would believe this is a good thing for these groups and would help them to learn to become more adept at building alliances across racial lines. I am not arguing the point. I am simply saying that in my opinion (and as I keep saying, I am not a lawyer) I find it hard to believe there would be a significant challenge on civil rights grounds to any plan that featured nesting.
As for Mr. Johnson’s comments about Latino gains under the previous plan, it begs the question we will never know, which is that sense that community suddenly got a lot more active after 187 and the state got dramatically more Democratic, would those groups have won even more seats without nesting. I think the answer is yes. JMO!
April 22nd, 2007 at 12:00 am
Actually MALDEF joined the 1991 lawsuit, specifically challenging the nesting of districts. They lost, and then ended up winning all the districts they had registered concerns about anyways.
The problem with the approach to examinging nesting that you suggest is that it combines current districts that were drawn knowing there would be no nesting. With nesting, it is easy to address the issues you raise (for exmaple, where necessary you draw the St Senate seat first).
Note that nesting also greatly reduces the cost of printing ballots and simplifies precinct creation and management for local elections officials.
April 22nd, 2007 at 12:00 am
No, it certainly would not be easy to draw Senate seats that wouldn’t create battles between minority ethnic groups, usually latino’s and African Americans. They live too closely together to avoid major battles and one side or the other losing some of their members with the changes you are talking about.
They already overlap and are in conflict to some degree over elective offices and that is after a strong effort by people doing reapportionment to make sure minority groups receive fair representation.
One reason the new proposals I have read about would make things much worse, is that if there is a serious attempt to include the requirements to keep cities together which some spokesmen for reform keep talking about as a priority, is that it takes needed voters away from minority districts on the border of the big cities such as the city of Los Angeles.
Some cities have areas within the city that are minority dominated and that has been considered in drawing districts in the past, but the reason the city of Los Angeles is the 800 pound gorilla in the room, is that it has so many different ethnic specific communities that it combines in different areas with surrounding cities to provide needed voters for many minority districts. Of course it could not have that effect with the rules that are being talked about.
As an example, take the City of San Fernando which currently has a large number of latino voters and along with voters from the City of Los Angeles have chosen several prominent hispanic elected officials in recent years.
Under the new systems being talked about and with the new requirements, the city of San Fernando would probably be combined with the City of Santa Clarita in a safe Republican Assembly and Senate District.
It would be possible that it could be moved east or north as part of a competitive district, but either way, it wouldn’t wind up being part of a Latino majority district and would be unlikely to elect a latino Democrat to any office that overlapped San Fernando.
More on point, the part of Los Angeles which would be held together without San Fernando would still be safely Democratic and have a lot of Latino voters, but since it would move towards Studio City and Encino, it almost definitely would not have enough Latino voters to beat an Anglo Democrat in a competitive race, ala the Alarcon/Katz election.
That whole area could lose a large number of latino elected representatives even though latinos in that area clearly are large enough to deserve a significant number of elected officals from their own ethnic group.
Common sense tells you that if your goal is to try as much as possible to make districts more competitive between the two major parties, then you probably won’t have anywhere nearly as many safe minority/majority districts for minorities to run in and win.
Too often ethnic groups whose members come from the poorest strata of society are viewed suspiciously by other groups and without some effort to keep them together, they often lose out in terms of overall representation.
I think you would run into legal questions with that result and I would also question the intellectual honesty of implying otherwise.
I guess we could have something like what Republicans did in some parts of the South where claiming nonpartisanship, but also claiming to want to adhere to civil rights requirements, Republicans drew solidly minority districts first which were overwhelmingly Democratic and then draw the rest of the state supposedly without considering partisan implications.
After it became public that this was a conscious strategy in some places that had the effect of a partisan gerrymander, courts have placed some restrictions on such plans, but perhaps a creative lawyer could come up with a new way to get around those rulings and that is the hope of people supporting reform. I don’t know.
Of course a plan built along similar methods would make the Democratic party a minority party in California, even though a majority of voters currently are more likely to support Democratic candidates in contested elections, but unless that is the goal I can’t think of a way to do a statewide reapportionment under the rules being proposed and I have tried.
Frankly, since this discussion is of interest to at least some of the people who read this blog and there is a history of interest in the subject in California politics (going back to the last century), I would like to repeat a request from the No on Prop 77 campaign that a supporter of reform come forward with a plan using the criteria they were proposing for the state that would protect minority rights and also divide California in such a way as to have legislative districts in there entirety likely to represent something close to the current political breakdown of California residents.
The Pro Prop 77 campaign never came up with such a plan and in fact in one press release identified several areas of increased competition under 77 that in the opinion of Dan Lowenstein (The author of California’s Political Reform Act of 1974 and generally considered California’s foremost legal authority on political issues) wouldn’t have held up to legal scrutiny for a myriad of reasons.
I will add that several of us who were against Prop 77 tried to come up with such a plan, making a substantial effort and trying every variation we could think of to achieve a fair result and we couldn’t get it done.
So if someone on the Pro reapportionment reform side really wants to move the discussion on the issue forward, coming forward with an example of a plan using their criteria which had those results would be a great place to start. Just a suggestion.
April 22nd, 2007 at 12:00 am
I have to post one small disclaimer to my last post which comes about because I am not a lawyer and used to splitting hairs on terminology. First, the City of Los Angeles will have a couple of areas where it is combined with neighboring cities and the City of San Fernando could even be one of them. However, given the rules proposed in every reform plan I have seen, that is highly unlikely. There is also some encouragement to keep cities together under current law, so if you had no knowledge whatsoever of reapportionment, you might think there were no major changes being proposed in these areas. Instead it is becoming perhaps the most important factor in most reform proposals and what will happen under most of the plans is that the small cities on the border of Los Angeles will get combined with small cities further away and wind up generally in Republican leaning districts while as many districts as possible are put into the City of Los Angeles itself. So while you currently have roughly 23 Assembly Districts that currently take in some part of the City of Los Angeles and virtually all are represented by Democrats you would probably have roughly 9 or 10 districts touching the City under most reform plans. Some of the outlying areas would form Democratic districts on their own and if the proponents get their wish, a few would be part of the new group of competitive races. But in most cases, the surrounding communities would be combined with nearby Republican towns that are further away from big cities and the districts would by and large become “lean Republican” districts.