Citizen Redistricting in CA

[Winehole23]

Citizens picked to draw political boundaries

November 18, 2010 | 12:23 pm
State officials Thursday selected a handful of everyday Californians to tackle the politically incendiary task of redrawing the state's voting districts -- a job that voters decided to take away from political insiders.


A retired engineer and city councilman from Claremont, an insurance company principal from San Gabriel and an attorney from Norco are among the eight people selected by the state auditor Thursday to serve on the new citizens commission.


Disappointed at seeing state lawmakers gerrymandering their own districts behind closed doors in ways that protect them from challengers, California voters approved an initiative in 2008 that transfers the job to the Citizens Redistricting Commission.


Using bingo balls and a hand-cranked bingo cage, State Auditor Elaine Howle conducted random drawings of names from three pools of applicants to select three Democrats, three Republicans and two people who don't belong to the either of those parties.


The first eight people selected from 36 finalists to serve on the 14-member panel will select six more people from the same pool to join the commission by Dec. 31, with an eye toward making sure the panel reflects the state's ethnic and geographic diversity.


The eight commissioners selected Thursday include four Asian Americans, two whites, one Latino and one African American. There are five women and three men.


"I feel very lucky,'' said Claremont Councilman Peter Yao, a retired engineer and Republican selected to serve on the panel. "I saw this as an opportunity to help carry out changes. We have a tough job ahead."
The other commissioners selected are:


-- Cynthia Dai, a Democrat from San Francisco who is CEO of a marketing consulting firm.
-- Elaine Kuo , a Democrat from Mountain View. She lists her occupation as a caregiver for her elderly father, but she previously was a senior research analyst at UCLA.
-- Jeanne Raya a Democrat from San Gabriel who is a principal in an insurance company.
-- Vincent Barabba, a Republican from Capitola who is founder of Market Insight Corp., which tracks shopper preference trends through an Internet website.
-- Jodie Filkins Webber, a Republican attorney from Norco.
-- Stanley Forbes, a "decline to state'' voter from Esparto in Yolo County who is owner of The Avid Reader bookstore.
-- Connie Galambos Malloy, a "decline to state'' voter from Oakland who is program director for the Urban Habitat program, which provides advocacy and education for low-income residents.


Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Thursday that redistricting reform is "one of the most important political reforms in the history of California,'' saying the changes "take the power of drawing district lines away from the politicians and puts it in the hands of the people –- where it belongs.''

[ChuckD]

Folks call it the People's Republic of California, and maybe they're right. I've never seen another state where so many people-driven initiatives like this populist redistricting get on the ballot. Nothing like that would ever even make it to the ballot in TX, let alone pass. The politicos here have everything locked down tight.

[RandomGuy]

State officials Thursday selected a handful of everyday Californians to tackle the politically incendiary task of redrawing the state's voting districts -- a job that voters decided to take away from political insiders.

Hallelujah.

and by that I mean " yeah!".

Occasionally sanity will win out over naked partisan ery.

[coyotes_geek]

A novel approach to what always becomes a highly partisan process. It will be interesting to see how that process goes.

State officials Thursday selected a handful of everyday Californians to tackle the politically incendiary task of redrawing the state's voting districts -- a job that voters decided to take away from political insiders.

And somewhere, Tom Delay cried...................

[LnGrrrR]

Sounds like a good idea; assuming those 8 picked or so don't get bribed. A great example of citizens taking back power from politicians.

[panic giraffe]

good idea. has room for error.

how do they know for sure what party they are affiliated with? is there some sort of background check? i have a brother who votes in dem primaries to with the outcome, but always votes repub in general elections.

ditto on the bribing statement, but there can't be any less of a possibility of that then with politicians doing it anyways

is there any background check to see how familiar they are with the area? what if they group together places of completely different demographics?

[Rick Von Braun]

A step in the right direction, but still error prone (e.g. proclivity for corruption). It would be much better to change the voting system to a Single Transferable Vote (STV) or other proportional representation system where the effect of voting waste gets minimized (e.g. Cambridge's city elections). This way, the effect of gerrymandering is dramatically reduced.

Incidentally, I think having a proportional representation system would allow smaller parties to survive and have some level of representation at national level. We could have dems and repubs, but also the extreme right (tea party), the extreme left, and other parties (green, libertarian, etc.) changing the political landscape to a more parliamentary oriented system where compromises and negotiations are more elaborated and not just along party lines and/or economical interests only. However, this is an issue for a different topic.

[ChuckD]

A step in the right direction, but still error prone (e.g. proclivity for corruption). It would be much better to change the voting system to a Single Transferable Vote (STV) or other proportional representation system where the effect of voting waste gets minimized (e.g. Cambridge's city elections). This way, the effect of gerrymandering is dramatically reduced.

Incidentally, I think having a proportional representation system would allow smaller parties to survive and have some level of representation at national level. We could have dems and repubs, but also the extreme right (tea party), the extreme left, and other parties (green, libertarian, etc.) changing the political landscape to a more parliamentary oriented system where compromises and negotiations are more elaborated and not just along party lines and/or economical interests only. However, this is an issue for a different topic.

The corruption potential is MUCH lower. The interest groups have YEARS to grease politicians. They won't have much time here. It's also MUCH harder for a private citizen to hide bribe money. As long as they constantly turn over these citizen committees, they can fight the corruption. Nothing is proof against human greed, but if the corruption scale is 100, I'd put your average politician as a 90, and these citizen committees as a 10 or a 15.

[PGDynasty24]

I love this. Of course there is room for error,but this is definitely a step in the right direction

[Winehole23]

SCOTUS upholds citizen redistricting in AZ:

http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions...-1314_kjfl.pdf

[Winehole23]

Court rulings on redistricting to shake up house races in 2016:

http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/gr...redistricting/

[Winehole23]

Wisconsin case to be heard by SCOTUS:

Smith, a renowned Supreme Court litigator, recently joined the Campaign Legal Center’s battle against Wisconsin’s egregious partisan gerrymander. The CLC believes it has finally developed a winning strategy to combat partisan redistricting, developing a mathematical formula to help courts decide which gerrymanders violate the Cons ution. It triumphed in district court, where a three-judge panel agreed that Wisconsin’s redistricting scheme was uncons utional, citing the CLC’s formula in striking down the map. A peculiarity in federal law ensures that Wisconsin can appeal the decision directly to the Supreme Court, which must hear the case.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_a...stricting.html

[Winehole23]

this sounds like a mess:

For Statehouse districts, a seven-member panel will be established to handle the process in 2021. This panel will consist of the governor, auditor and secretary of state (all Republicans as determined by this year's election), plus two Republicans and two Democrats appointed by party leaders in the Statehouse.


A map must win approval from the two Democrats on this panel, or it will be good for only four years, not 10 years.


For the new congressional maps, the new rules are also geared toward bipartisanship:

• The legislature is to try to pass a map, with at least 50 percent support from members of each of the two major political parties.
• If that fails, a separate, seven-member commission similar to that being used for the Statehouse map could attempt to approve a congressional map. But the commission cannot approve a new map without at least two votes from each party.
• If that fails, the legislature could then approve a map by majority vote, but only if at least one-third of the members of the minority party in the Ohio House and Ohio Senate (currently the Democrats) vote yes.

Only if each of the first three steps fail could the majority party pass a map without minority support. But that map would have to pass additional anti-gerrymandering tests and it would be good for just four years, not the usual 10 years.
Plus, there are a lot of new restrictions placing limits on how the districts can be drawn, the goal being fewer splits of communities and geographically compact districts.
In each case, a calculation will have be made by the Republicans in charge: Is it worth pushing through a more favorable map without the Democrats buying in, if the map is only good for four years?

https://www.cleveland.com/expo/news/...led-repub.html

[boutons_deux]

The Mathematicians Who Want to Save Democracy


With algorithms in hand, scientists try to make U.S. elections more representative

https://www.scientificamerican.com/a...ave-democracy/

There are other efforts to use math to decide district boundaries.

There was one exercise in NC that showed Dems would have 4 or 5 more seats vs how the Repug districting screwed the Dems.

btw, CA GOP is totally wiped out.