Mid-decade Redistricting
David Broder argues in an op-ed piece in the Post today that California and the nation will be a better place if there were more competition in the congressional and state legislative districts. He advocates Governor Schwarzenegger's plan to shift the power to draw district lines away from the legislature and into the an "independent" body, as the state has done in the past when there have been districting plan impasses.
In his piece, he foresees these arguments but I'm going to make them anyway.
Although much of the problem with the system is that it is designed by the legislature themselves, the 2001 plan was made on a bipartisan basis and represents much more of a diplomatic effort to reach across the aisle than we've seen in California politics since the 1960s, let alone the partisanship that we saw in the criminal campaign led by Tom DeLay to redraw Texas lines mid-decade. Redistricting mid-decade sets a horrible precedent and delegitimizes our democratic process more than safe districts do.
California's safe districts are also a product of the political, racial, and economic self-sorting that has accelerated in the last decade. People like living near people who look and think like they do, that's jsut the plain hard truth. Go to San Francisco, Stockton, Berkeley, or Irvine and you will see exactly what I'm talking about. Schools and cities are more segregated today than they have ever been. This makes it damn hard to draw competitive districts. Example: tell me how you would draw a competitive district in San Francisco? Would you go across the Golden Gate Bridge or the Bay Bridge? Of course not? Would you extend it further south? There are only Democrats on the peninsula, that wouldn't work. The state is filled with examples of this. It's easy for Mr. Broder to throw stones but I'll remind him that he has never drawn district lines. Let's see him squeeze a competitive district out of DC!
The state's constitution and past court decisions mandate that districts be as compact as possible, that districts cross as few county and city lines as possible, that districts must be contiguous, that assembly districts be nested within a senate district, and that you cannot draw lines that distinctly disadvantage racial minorities in electing a minority candidate. This set of rules creates a very rigid framework for designing district lines - there really is not that much give in them. The state made a bargain with the devil back in 1991 redistricting: they gave up competition in the state legislature so that they could boost minority representation. The plan created many majority-minority districts and, understandably, made many districts very safe. Undoing that deal with the devil would endanger those minority seats and we might see a return to an even more white-dominated legislature. Does Mr. Broder want that?
Criticizing California's legislature for becoming more partisan is unfair given the political climate in the US at large. Congress is obviously as paralzed by partisanship as the California state legislature is. Most of the gridlock in the state legislature is due to the arcane, populist-era requirement that the budget earn two-thirds majority in order to pass. Any increasing partisanship is mostly due to the self-sorting mechanism described above. I've actually looked at some district data over the last thirty years and I noticed a distinct drop in the margin of victory in many districts just after redistricting, largely because the master planners or the legislature were trying to even out some of the most lopsided districts.
In short, most of the problem is not with the legislature in California. Many of the causes of the incumbency advantage here are external to the legislature or due to political realities that they actually had no control over - the high threshold for budget passage, for instance. Finally, any indictment against California's safe seats needs to be leveled against the state legislatures across the country and the country as a whole in gerrymandering it's congressional district lines. And Mr. Broder, please don't promote DeLay-like behavior, it's just no healthy for anyone.
In his piece, he foresees these arguments but I'm going to make them anyway.
Although much of the problem with the system is that it is designed by the legislature themselves, the 2001 plan was made on a bipartisan basis and represents much more of a diplomatic effort to reach across the aisle than we've seen in California politics since the 1960s, let alone the partisanship that we saw in the criminal campaign led by Tom DeLay to redraw Texas lines mid-decade. Redistricting mid-decade sets a horrible precedent and delegitimizes our democratic process more than safe districts do.
California's safe districts are also a product of the political, racial, and economic self-sorting that has accelerated in the last decade. People like living near people who look and think like they do, that's jsut the plain hard truth. Go to San Francisco, Stockton, Berkeley, or Irvine and you will see exactly what I'm talking about. Schools and cities are more segregated today than they have ever been. This makes it damn hard to draw competitive districts. Example: tell me how you would draw a competitive district in San Francisco? Would you go across the Golden Gate Bridge or the Bay Bridge? Of course not? Would you extend it further south? There are only Democrats on the peninsula, that wouldn't work. The state is filled with examples of this. It's easy for Mr. Broder to throw stones but I'll remind him that he has never drawn district lines. Let's see him squeeze a competitive district out of DC!
The state's constitution and past court decisions mandate that districts be as compact as possible, that districts cross as few county and city lines as possible, that districts must be contiguous, that assembly districts be nested within a senate district, and that you cannot draw lines that distinctly disadvantage racial minorities in electing a minority candidate. This set of rules creates a very rigid framework for designing district lines - there really is not that much give in them. The state made a bargain with the devil back in 1991 redistricting: they gave up competition in the state legislature so that they could boost minority representation. The plan created many majority-minority districts and, understandably, made many districts very safe. Undoing that deal with the devil would endanger those minority seats and we might see a return to an even more white-dominated legislature. Does Mr. Broder want that?
Criticizing California's legislature for becoming more partisan is unfair given the political climate in the US at large. Congress is obviously as paralzed by partisanship as the California state legislature is. Most of the gridlock in the state legislature is due to the arcane, populist-era requirement that the budget earn two-thirds majority in order to pass. Any increasing partisanship is mostly due to the self-sorting mechanism described above. I've actually looked at some district data over the last thirty years and I noticed a distinct drop in the margin of victory in many districts just after redistricting, largely because the master planners or the legislature were trying to even out some of the most lopsided districts.
In short, most of the problem is not with the legislature in California. Many of the causes of the incumbency advantage here are external to the legislature or due to political realities that they actually had no control over - the high threshold for budget passage, for instance. Finally, any indictment against California's safe seats needs to be leveled against the state legislatures across the country and the country as a whole in gerrymandering it's congressional district lines. And Mr. Broder, please don't promote DeLay-like behavior, it's just no healthy for anyone.
posted by S D at 6:09 PM
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