Who should draw the boundaries of electoral regions? Seems obvious that the people already elected out of those regions, right? Talk about a conflict of interest! I voted for Prop 11, which created a citizens panel (5 Reps, 5 Dems, 4 from neither party) to draw the lines. From the group, 3 Reps, 3 Dems, and 3 from neither party must agree to the lines. Prop 11 didn’t extend to the US House. Prop 20 extends it. I’m guessing Prop 11 didn’t go all the way kinda like a cat always leaves that back foot behind when heading into unfamiliar territory. It gave us voters a chance to try this system out before applying it across the board. I was happy to take even the first step, but I wanted to go all the way–call me rash.
Now, I don’t buy the arguments that it’ll reduce partisanship and make races more competitive and elected officials more responsive to their constituents. I think that’d be nice, but it’s wishful thinking. Rather, I don’t like that one knee-jerk election could saddle us with a skewed political balance for 10 years or more. Let’s look at this upcoming election. Strong Democratic swing 2 years ago. Typical reaction back to the other side (Republicans) during the off year election. Has the electorate changed that much over the last 4 years? Have our basic priorities changed all that much? I say, No, it’s a reaction to the labels more than the principles. And I don’t think that change is sufficient to warrant the possibility of district line changes that alter the balance of power.
What should define the lines is, well, I don’t know what. I’m thinking some kind of commonality. I could say that the current process applies that principle by drawing “safe” districts–districts that will keep voting the same way. But I don’t think the current process is built to do that. Rather, it will collect stronger, but fewer, majority districts for the other party as a means to reduce the other party’s legislators. It will draw its own districts so as to siphon off/dilute votes for the other party. By its definition, this method draws lines for political reasons, not commonality reasons.
Drawing lines for commonality reasons provides the opportunity for more voices to be heard in the legislature, and that’s a bedrock principle of the US: the marketplace of free ideas. I’ve found more ideas, more perspectives, more arguments lead to better results. True, at times the diversity can overwhelm and cause stagnation and gridlock, but that’s what we have now anyway, with only 2 ideas–Democratic v. Republican!
So, let’s draw the lines according some kind of local cohesiveness rather than as a means to foster a large scale unity that might not represent me or my neighborhood.
As I work through this one, I realize a danger of the initiative process–amateurs like myself trying to figure out complex issues. Sure my thinking seems to make sense to me, but I’ve studied this subject not at all. What seems natural, though, can be fraught with unanticipated consequences. I look to newspaper endorsements to help me out there, and only the SacBee so far is against it (SJ, LA, SF all for it), and the reasons the SacBee is against it (it’s an experiment, it could reduce CA clout nationally, it narrows the definition of communities of interest) don’t address the fundamental problem of the foxes guarding the henhouse. And that’s the crux for me, all the rest is rationalization.
Leave the politics in the voting. Take it out of the disenfranchisement of the electorate. I think this prop does that. I like the composition of the commission (though I’m a little concerned that it over-represents the Republicans and Democrats). And I like that it requires a majority of each group to agree with the results.
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