Is latest remap try also DOA?

By Steve Wiegand - swiegand@sacbee.com
Published 12:00 am PDT Saturday, October 27, 2007

In 1832, the British Prime Minister Arthur Wellesley was confronted with a parliamentary act to reform the United Kingdom's election system. "Reform? Reform?" the prime minister was said to have cried. "Aren't things bad enough already?"

The anecdote came to mind this week with the announcement that a coalition of groups are launching an initiative drive to reform California's redistricting system. Now, most normal people are put off even being in the same room with a redistricting-reform proposal, seeing as it oozes complexity and is covered with scaly arcane details. But the issue is most odious to incumbent legislators. It forces them not only to confront their own political mortality, but to don mantles of hypocrisy so transparent even Britney Spears wouldn't wear them.

"Of course we want to give up the power to draw our own district lines," they bleat piously, "and reform a system that currently ensures a legislature dominated by the rock-ribbed right and the bleeding-heart left. Only gosh, we can't seem to agree on just how best to do it."

They've been whining thusly for three years, while never quite reaching a bipartisan compromise on a nonpartisan reform plan. Their protestations notwithstanding, most incumbents bask in the security of district lines drawn to favor one party or the other, their six-figure-salary jobs safe - at least until term limits force them out.

The coalition's plan would create a 14-person commission whose members would be chosen through a multistep process and whose decisions would require approval of at least three Republicans, three Democrats and three representatives of independent voters/minor parties. Failing that, the state Supreme Court would step in.

If history is any guide, this effort will fail. California voters have killed redistricting-reform proposals five times in the past 25 years and nine or 10 times in the past century.

Because the proposal does not include congressional districts, both of the major parties have a built-in excuse to oppose it. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will probably support it, but his campaign efforts are sometimes tepid in their level of enthusiasm. None of its key supporters so far have particularly deep pockets to finance a high-powered campaign for it.

And while voters hate complexity, this thing is fairly dripping with details. Unfortunately, the best approach to moving the Legislature toward the political middle, where most voters are, may have died three years ago. Proposition 62, which was on the November 2004 ballot, would have created a system where the top two vote-getters in the primary moved on to the general election, regardless of their party affiliations.

It could have substantially reduced the bipolarization of the Legislature. For example, the top two vote-getters in a solid Republican district might have been a conservative Reep and a moderate one, instead of a far-right Reep and a token liberal Democrat with no chance of winning.

For all but the most liberal Democrats, the former matchup would have been more palatable, and the mirror situation would be true for voters in hard-core Demo districts.

Of course even if California voters hadn't rejected it, political parties would almost certainly have taken the proposal to court, as they have in Washington state, contending it violates their constitutional right to dominate elections.

So, good luck to the latest collection of groups trying to slay the redistricting dragon. Just be aware of the concession speech of the legendary political prankster Dick Tuck after he lost a 1964 race for the state Senate.