Abnormal Interests

The most complete survey of the current redistricting landscape that I have found is on the University of California, Institute of Governmental Studies website. It is a little out of date but things have been moving rapidly.

Here is the summary of the proposition from the California Secretary of State:

Amends state Constitution’s process for redistricting California’s Senate, Assembly, Congressional and Board of Equalization districts. Requires three-member panel of retired judges, selected by legislative leaders, to adopt new redistricting plan if measure passes and again after each national census. Panel must consider legislative, public proposals/comments and hold public hearings. Redistricting plan becomes effective immediately when adopted by judges’ panel and filed with Secretary of State. If voters subsequently reject redistricting plan, process repeats. Specifies time for judicial review of adopted redistricting plan; if plan fails to conform to requirements, court may order new plan. Summary of estimate by Legislative Analyst and Director of Finance of fiscal impact on state and local governments: This measure would have the following major fiscal impact: One-time state redistricting costs, probably totaling a few million dollars. Comparable savings for each redistricting effort after 2010 (once every ten years).

It is proposed by Edward J. (Ted) Costa, Dr. Arthur Laffer, Major General Sidney S. Novaresi (USAF) Ret., Jimmie Johnson (916) 482-6175. You can find the complete text at the website of the Office of the Attorney General of the State of California.

So, what are the problems with this initiative other than that it is an initiative? Here are the points often made against it.

1. It opens the door to constant revisions.
2. While some people may not like it, the current partisan balance in the state Legislature is closely matched to the balance of total votes by party in the state.
3. Redistricting is inherently political and promising to de-politicize it will only create false and harmful expectations.
4. The current California Constitution procedures for redistricting appropriately give elected legislators the authority to make decisions on behalf of the people they represent.

And why would anyone support it? Again, common arguments are:

1. The current system allows legislators to draw district lines that eliminate competition and preserve the current partisan balance.
2. Taking the process out of the hands of politicians will lead to districts that are more responsive to voters.
3. More competitive races will lead to more moderate legislators.

I am sympathetic to many of the arguments of the proponents of this initiative. But I'm not convinced it will work the way they want or that the "current partisan balance" is different than the current partisan desires of the electorate. The real goal of the initiative, which I do not support, is to reduce the number on Democrats in the State Legislator and in California's congressional delegation by some means other than the ballot box.

Let's look at a few numbers. 60% of the current members of the State Assemble are Democrats, 62.5% of members of the State Senate are Democrats, and 62% of California's delegation to the House of Representatives is Democrat. That looks awfully lopsided and might tend to indicate that the current districts do not represent the will of the people. But how do these numbers stack up against statewide elections where the district boundaries do not come into play? The most recent example is the 2004 Senatorial race between Barbara Boxer, Bill Jones and a few other candidates. Here are the results: Boxer - 58.0%, Jones 37.7%, all others 4.4%. One can quibble about how to divide up the "others" to get a proper comparison, but because their numbers were relatively small and the other candidates in the Senatorial race represented a very wide spectrum of political positions, dividing them in two should not introduce a large error. Using this reasoning, Boxer would have gotten 60.2% of the vote if the other candidates had not been on the ballot: exactly the percentage of Democrats in the State Assembly and only two percentage points fewer than the number of California Democrats in the House of Reprehensive. By this, admittedly incomplete, test, it looks like the current district boundaries produce a legislature that closely matches the desires of the people.

I would favor an apolitical way of setting district boundaries if there were such a thing. For example, I might favor a square grid on a population density flat map as a way of determining district boundaries. Not everyone would agree to such an abstract computer driven mathematical approach. Almost all of us want people involved in some way and, at the same time, we want it apolitical. This desire is impossible to fulfill. Even retired judges, who have never held a political office, are not apolitical. The real problem is that we often don't know and can't find out what their political positions are.

It is likely true that the current boundaries tend to reduce the number of more moderate candidates that are elected. But as the political landscape moves, yesterday's moderate may be today's radical. There is little doubt that the political landscape has moved to the right over the last few decades. How big of a problem are election margins? Well election margins for the State Assembly are pretty darn big. Just look at these numbers from the 2004 Assembly race in Los Angeles County alone. The average margin of victory of the winners over their next nearest opponent was 40.5 percentage points! It goes down to 38 points if one excludes 52nd District where Mervyn M. Dymally ran unopposed. But that margin dropped to only 28.5 points in contests where there was no incumbent. Still big but there was indeed competition. In fact, fewer than 30 percentage points decided 36% of all races. And remember, Boxers margin was over 20 points. Based on these figures, I doubt the claim that different districts will make for more competition and more moderation. If the goal is to limit the advantage held by incumbents, redistricting may work but only once. In general, people tend to like their own representatives better than they like the representatives of other districts.

In his announcement of the special election the Governor said, with regard to the urgency of the election,

If you break your arm, you don't wait until your next physical. You get it fixed now.

In my forthcoming posts on the other initiatives, I'll explore the extent we have a broken arm in those areas but this level of urgency clearly does not apply to this issue. If passed, it will not be possible to implement it until the 2010 elections and likely, it will not desirable to do so until after 2011. Steve Lawrence had this AP account on the timing of any implementation,

On Tuesday [May 17, 2005] , McPherson, a former Republican state senator appointed by Schwarzenegger in February to replace former Secretary of State Kevin Shelley, agreed with his local counterparts in a question-and-answer session at a Press Club luncheon.

A spokeswoman for McPherson, Caren Daniels-Meade, said the secretary of state felt that logistical problems, questions about the accuracy of population figures that would be used for a mid-decade redistricting and a flood of lawsuits would hold up implementing the new districts.

McPherson said new districts could probably be in place by 2010. But doing it then would raise questions about timing, since the panel of ex-judges would have new population figures to work with from the 2010 census if they waited until 2011 to act.

So what we have is an initiative that will likely not solve the problem it is supposed to solve and that on its own would never justify the cost of a special election.

Just say, "No."

Update: July 21, 2005

According Los Angeles Times this evening,

A judge kicked Arnold Schwarzenegger's redistricting measure off the special election ballot today, a crushing blow for a proposition that was held up as a centerpiece of the governor's campaign to reform state government.

The judge ruled that supporters violated California's constitution by using two versions of the initiative in the process of qualifying the measure for the ballot.

The differences [between two versions of the petition people signed] are not simply typographical errors," Judge Gail Ohanesian said. "They're not merely about the format of the measure. They are not simply technical. Instead they go to the substantive terms of the measure."

The proposal, Proposition 77, is one of three initiatives that the Republican governor is pushing in the Nov. 8 election. It would take the power to draw legislative and congressional districts away from the Legislature and give it to a panel of three retired judges.

The attorney for Ted Costa who wrote the initiative, says he will appeal the ruling but for now it is off the ballot. It's not nice to have two wordings no matter how similar. It's even worse to know it and not tell anyone for a long time.

Update: August 13, 2005

This initiative is back on the ballot. It may not be legal but we Californians will vote on it anyway. Just say, "No!"

The Supreme Court overturned those lower-court decisions. But it left open the possibility that the election-law violations could still sink the ballot measure. If voters approve the measure, the justices said, they might then review the legal issues to determine if it is valid.

"The court hasn't ruled on the merits," said Lance Olson, a Sacramento attorney representing opponents of Proposition 77, "so we don't know if it's a valid initiative or not." [Los Angeles Times]