Bring It On!

California Proposition 77 - Redistricting

November 3rd, 2005 | by Dr. Forbush |

In the 2005 special election eight different Propositions have been placed on the ballot for the people to decide. The legislature normally creates and passes the laws, and propositions are a difficult and expensive way to get laws passed. Therefore placing a proposition on the ballot for the people to deliberate is an extraordinary event. This means that propositions first stand little chance of being passed by the legislature for some reason and they also have a wide spread support of the people for some reason. Of the eight propositions on the California ballot this year Prop 77 comes the closest to the pure intent of this process.

I have to admit that this first time that I was introduced to Gerrymandering I was completely surprised that it was legal. Gerrymandering by its nature redistributes the importance of issues by the drawing of political boundaries. This can be illustrated by considering a highway and the people living along that highway. Drawing a long skinny district that travels 300 miles along this highway will have a large number of people who have concerns about this highway. Drawing 17 districts that intersect this highway at various points along the highway will make sure that only about 6 percent of these people will occupy any given district. Each of these individual districts will have the highway much lower on their priority list. In fact, any issue concerning the highway may never even make it to the agenda since 94% of the people in each of these districts have other issues that which are much more important.

The highway example is just one example of how drawing district lines can effect how an issue might be considered by a legislature. But, in reality the drawing of boundaries effects many issues. A district containing a large number of mines and a low number of resident housing will have one set of priorities. A district with a large number of wealthy landowners will have a different set of priorities than another district with a large number of poor rental housing. Drawing the lines in specific ways will give voice to certain issues and drown out other issues. Once this is understood, then you can see how the drawing of political boundaries can be manipulated for political gain, no matter who draws the lines.

Normally redistricting happens because of new census data that comes in every 10 years. But, when the Republicans took over the Texas state house, their highest priority was to redraw the district lines in order to gain support for the issues they favor and to minimize support for the issues they dislike. They did this without new census data and they created the idea of redistricting when the opportunity presents itself. Next week California and Ohio both have redistricting propositions on the ballot. The Republicans favor California’s proposition, because the Democrats control the legislature and the Democrats favor Ohio’s proposition, because the Republicans control the legislature.

So, I favor redistricting in general so people can not create districts that have certain issues that dominate the agenda for that district. However, Proposition 77 is certainly a confusing way to eliminate drawing lines that favor any particular issue. Instead, this proposition makes it much easier for a few people to favor particular issues by drawing lines that collect supporters of these pet issues. It is hard to imagine that three retired judges would not have some type of agenda. At, the drawing of these lines would be complicated enough that these judges would certainly hire experts to help define districts that would favor certain issues. With only three judges, any two can overrule one dissenter. Convincing a buddy of your noble or nefarious cause could certainly be quite simple in a universe of three people.

With all this being said, I have to mention a couple of TV ads I saw yesterday on this topic. First there was judge Wopner, a self-proclaimed retired judge in a short statement telling viewers not to vote for prop 77, because he is a very unqualified retired judge who doesn’t know enough to draw district lines. That ad could convince people either way in my opinion, but it was funny nonetheless. A second ad trying to convince people to vote for prop 77 tells us that we would have a “bipartisan independent panel of judges.” How can you have a “bipartisan independent” anything? Bipartisan means people from both parties. Therefore we could have two Democrats and one Republican. And, based on my earlier reasoning, only two of the judges need to agree to draw the lines. But, if we have an independent panel, we would have a panel of three people who were never registered with either party. These people would certainly be difficult to find among the general population let alone among judges. After all, the definition of a judge is a lawyer who knows a politician.

So, even though redistricting is a good concept I need to say that proposition 77 is certainly not the way to go about doing this. Surely if we get a few bright people together in a room we could certainly come up with a better way. But for this election, vote NO on 77!