Redistricting plan

Tri-Valley Herald
November 30, 2002

IT IS a mockery of democracy to disenfranchise California voters by letting politicians pick the voters they want, instead of the other way around. Finding a competent nonpartisan group to solve the problem may be wishful thinking.

A simpler solution is to put redistricting in computers. It can be implemented by companies that have a database with all the streets and roads in California. This is how it could work:

First, compute the geographic center of district voters. This will be spot on a road nearest to something like a center of gravity based on the distance to each voter in a district. But the distance would be the one traveled by street and roads, not by direct line -- lack of roads makes forests, mountains, deserts, parks and rivers natural boundaries.

Second, for each district, starting with the southernmost district, and continuing in a fixed sequence, the 1 percent of voters with the longest driving distances would be moved to the district with the most accessible center, or not, if there is none closer.

Third, starting with the southernmost district, for those districts with less than ideal number of voters, add the closest voters from any adjacent district until the district has an ideal population.

Finally, the previous three steps are repeated until the results cannot be improved.

The result will be districts -- Assembly, state Senate or congressional -- close to where they are but far more politically accessible, to promote gatherings and totally free of political bias. But there will be errors in the database, and exceptions will be required; one state judicial commission should deal with them in a case-by-case basis.

Michael Sarabia

Bay Point