California redistricting: If not now, then in 2010Schwarzenegger's plan to relieve elected
officials of redistricting authority is meeting with minimal opposition on
"who," "what," and "how" — but quite a bit on the
"when."
The "when" is the problem. Remember, congressional districts are generally
redrawn once each decade, the year after the census. There have been recent
moves, however, notably in Texas and also in Georgia, to redistrict off-cycle,
in the middle of the decade.
Off-cycle redistricting is tactically desirable for the party in power, in that they get to update the district lines to favor their own candidates in the next election(s). It's particularly desirable if that party is the GOP, since off-cycle redistricting relies on not-so-fresh census data: Population growth tends to be fastest in regions that favor Democrats, so going back three or five years to the last census tends to minimize the electoral influence of Democratic voters, without the nasty aftertaste of e.g. actively disfranchising black people. With that background under our belts, here's the skinny on California: Governor Schwarzenegger proposes to take the power to redistrict out of the hands of a potentially partisan body of elected officials and place it in the hands of a panel of retired judges. It's not a bad idea; indeed, Assembly Democrats don't have much of an objection to those details. The controversy arises over Schwarzenegger's desire to see the first nonpartisan redistricting efforts use old data. From the LA Times (registration required): Such an upsurge in partisan conflict over redistricting, in turn, could provide momentum for efforts to shift control over the process from elected officials to nonpartisan panels. That idea is moving up the agenda in two of the nation's most populous states, with Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger advancing it in California and Democrats promoting it in Florida. State Democrats, the article goes on to say, have essentially offered a deal: Move forward with the retired-judge plan, but do it in 2010, after the next census. That's the crux of the current dispute. The populist rhetoric behind Schwarzenegger's plan sounds great — isn't competitiveness a good thing? — but the push to get it done before November 2006 glosses over a simple equation at the root of the whole effort: If the "problem" is that not enough seats change hands, and the Democrats control the Assembly and send more Representatives to Congress, then the only possible outcome of added "competitiveness" is to reduce the influence of Democratic voters. The redrawn lines would have to use 2000 numbers — six years out of date, and therefore biased against Democrats. California's population has grown by 2.6 million people in the last 6 years. We've gone from a majority-Caucasian state to a no-majority state in that time. Could one reasonably argue that an off-cycle redistricting, whose impact would be felt on three elections before new census data becomes available, would be fair to the newcomers? Granted, the newcomers weren't counted in 2000 either, but the point is that any redrawing of lines that "increased competitiveness," i.e., made Republican candidates more viable in districts where they're not, would be even more biased against them than the current district lines. Another problem: Note how much easier it is to say "let's make redistricting non-partisan" than it is to explain why it shouldn't happen until 2010. This is one of those things Schwarzenegger is "taking to the voters" (i.e., collecting huge amounts of special-interest money to ram down the voters' throats, capping it off with a $70 million price tag for the special election itself), and therefore it's what we'll be running against. Posted: Tue - March 8, 2005 at 08:15 AM | Category: | | | |
|
Quick Links
Search
Related topics
Categories
Archives
Calendar
XML/RSS Feed
Blogroll
Statistics
Total entries in this blog:
Total entries in this category: Published On: Jul 23, 2006 02:49 PM |
||||||||||||||