POLITICIANS SHOULDN'T REDISTRICT

Jim Boren
The Modesto Bee
November 21, 2002

There are few things that could make the public more cynical about their government than the process politicians use to redraw legislative boundaries. In California, they held sham public hearings last year and then crafted the actual districts in private.

Most members of the public didn't catch up with this ruse until they saw the results coming in on election night. In district after district -- Assembly, state Senate or congressional -- the vast majority of races had been decided by the way district lines were drawn in those back rooms more than a year ago.

The major parties protected each other, locking in most legislative seats until the next reapportionment in 10 years. If this had been big business, the Justice Department would have filed an antitrust action to break up a monopoly that wasn't acting in the public's interest.

Unfortunately, voters did it to themselves by not paying attention to the redistricting hearings or putting pressure on their legislators to draw more competitive districts. But the process, while important, is boring to most people, and the politicians knew the public wouldn't care until it was too late.

And on Election Day, it was way too late.

There are many problems with this system, which essentially lets the parties anoint the winners in most districts even before a vote is cast in the general election.

A major flaw -- at least in the view of most Californians -- is that the candidates who get elected aren't necessarily reflective of the political philosophies of their regions. By making the primary election the deciding election, the parties can nominate more extreme politicians who couldn't win an election in a competitive district.

In a district drawn for a Republican, an ultra-conservative can win, and in a district drawn for a Democrat, an ultra-liberal can win.

The moderates need not apply because they couldn't win their party's primaries.

But while the public mostly ignores redistricting, there are a few outside the clubby world of politicians who want to fix this problem.

David L. Schecter, a political science professor at California State University, Fresno, would like to see redistricting taken away from the Legislature and given to a bipartisan commission. Others around the country also are pushing the commission system for redrawing district lines.

"As long as we vest reapportionment changes in legislative hands, we're going to have these problems," Schecter said. "Until California's citizens decide to move to a commission or independent agency, little will change."

Redistricting now is essentially an "incumbency protection act," he said, and that obviously is good only for the politicians.

"When you have reapportionment in the hands of the Legislature, the partisanship takes over and the need for incumbents to be re-elected takes over. Those two dynamics cause fewer seats to be competitive in each election and fewer choices for voters."

In the Nov. 5 election, 98 percent of incumbents in Congress were re-elected, according to Schecter. That's troubling. "Redistricting has taken away the very essence of an election -- having a choice," Schecter said.

Letting legislators control the district lines of its members is "ugly partisanship playing itself out," he said.

Going to a commission would take some of the politics out of the redistricting process.

Tim Storey of the National Conference of State Legislatures said no system will remove politics from redistricting entirely because the "final outcome of moving lines is ultimately political." But a commission could make it less political, and that would be good for the public.

Twelve states have redistricting commissions, Storey said. California could make that change through the initiative process. The Legislature sure isn't going to do it.

Reform-minded people should begin collecting signatures for a bipartisan redistricting commission in California. They might be surprised at how many voters would join the movement.

Politicians might like their latest scam, but the voters will soon tire of a system that has the winners of legislative and congressional races predetermined.