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Go Home California Redistricting, Courtesy Of Lindsay Lohan?

THE PLANK JULY 29, 2008

California Redistricting, Courtesy Of Lindsay Lohan?

BY JOSH PATASHNIK

I was excited to learn that there will be a redistricting reform initiative, Proposition 11 (full text here--pdf) on the California statewide ballot this fall--taking redistricting duties out of the hands of self-interested politicians strikes me as a pretty good idea. Most objections to redistricting reform are either self-serving (Democrats want to keep the power to draw districts for themselves) or unconvincing (bogus claims that black and Latino politicians need a crooked redistricting process to get elected).

On the other hand, there is one compelling argument against it: The Rube Goldberg-esque process it puts in place for drawing new lines. If Prop 11 passes, districts would be drawn by a panel of 14 random California voters (five Democrats, five Republicans, and four unaffiliated voters) selected by lottery by a panel of three independent auditors (one Democrat, one Republican, one unaffiliated) also selected at random. Now, the state of California has a lot of great qualities, but an electorate free of wacky characters with an interest in politics isn't one of them. Supposedly that panel of three auditors is going to weed out unqualified applicants before conducting the lottery--but it still seems like there's a decent chance you could wind up with, say, Pleasanton resident John Madden drawing interestingly shaped districts with his telestrator while Malibu resident Mel Gibson mumbles conspiracy theories off in the corner. In many respects this would still be preferable to the status quo, so I'll probably vote for the proposition in the end.

My own preferred idea for redistricting reform, which some friends and I devised a few years ago (possibly after a night of heavy drinking), is the "Secret Santa Redistricting Plan", in which each state picks a different state's name out of a hat and draws that state's districts for it. How easy can it be for special interests in Vermont to influence the Nevada legislature? Laugh if you will, but I think it makes more sense than picking 14 random dudes off the street to do the job (or, for that matter, letting politicians do it themselves).

--Josh Patashnik 

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21 comments

I'm totally in favor of redistricting reform, but that's more than a little silly Josh (to be honest, I can't tell if you're joking).  The problem with redistricting isn't "special interests" unless you mean that term to include political parties.  I'm pretty sure the Republicans in, say, Pennsylvania, are smart enough to figure out how to shape districts to favor Republicans in other states.

Still, pulling random people off the street sounds like a disaster waiting to happen.

What about something along the lines of what Iowa does? www.legis.state.ia.us/.../redist.htm

- AlanSP

July 29, 2008 at 6:39pm

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I wonder if there's a way to apply the classic "I split you choose" method of fair apportionment. if only one side could draw the districts and the other could decide which ones they get to have, but I guess the voters want to, you know, vote.

- perkowitz

July 29, 2008 at 7:01pm

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I had a friend who used to suggest drawing straws every two years so that I Californian might end up representing part of Wisconsin one year and South Carolina the next and not know whether to suck up to the dairy interest or the textile lobby or exactly what.  

Or how about random assignment of your votes; i.e. everyone in California votes either Dem or Rep and a computer randomly asssigns them to a particular district.

For that matter how about doing away with districts entirely and using state wide proportional representation (I think they can).  

- stanmvp48

July 29, 2008 at 7:16pm

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That is ballz to the wall awesomely arcane!!!

Sounded like some ancient Greek law or something...

- cthulhu2008

July 29, 2008 at 7:16pm

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The Iowa approach (a bi-partisan commission with a non-partisan tie-breaker, that is mandated by law to create districts that respects existing political subdivisions such as counties and cities, is contiguous and is as compact as is feasible subject to the first two considerations, and which the legislature cannot ammend until after at least two failures to pass a plan)  has worked reasonably well here. But we have relatively low key partisan politics to start with.  I'm not sure how the commission part  would play in a highly charged environment.

But you could overcome even that objection by dictating a mechanism for redistricting that more or less slavishly follows the Iowa criteria.   With modern population information and computer power, it's not that hard to devise algorithms that will yield reasonably defensible plans.  I would favor a national agency that developed up to five specific algorithms (that could vary, e.g., on how much emphasis they placed on making districts predominantly urban or rural vs favoring mixed rural/urban, or just imply variants of algorithms) and ran these for each state at the end of the census, and left the legislatures the power only to choose one of the plans.

Of course you'd need a constitutional amendment to do that, but hey, it probably is going to take a constitutional amendment to make most states get sense on this question anyway.

California's proposed plan just seems hare-brained to me, as does the "let some other state do it" plan.

- sdemuth

July 29, 2008 at 7:23pm

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What AlanSP said.  Like, exactly.  I was about to type exactly what AlanSP said.

- jhildner

July 29, 2008 at 8:09pm

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Oh, and did someone mention Lindsay Lohan?

- jhildner

July 29, 2008 at 8:09pm

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OK, I know it was snark, but given that the main "special interests" contorting the redistricting process are the entities known as the Democratic and Republican parties, I dont see how the Secret Santa model helps at all. I mean, just think of what Alabama politicians could do with a map of Ohio! I'm sure they could make it so that not a single Democratic district would survive ;-)

- jobeek2

July 29, 2008 at 8:53pm

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Seriously, in my redraft of the U.S. Constitution -- yeah, that's the sort of thing I do in my spare time -- I make gerrymandering of *any* sort unconstitutional, provide that an Iowa-ish process for drawing district lines would lead to a presumption of compliance in court, and prohibit redistricting more than once every ten years.  Objections?

- jhildner

July 29, 2008 at 9:24pm

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Yeah, letting another state decide would give the same result - Repubs and Dems will pick the same way for another state as they do for their own.

population + contiguousness, isn't that the approved model? I'm for the computer solution, and I'm not sure the benefit of picking five algorithms, or balancing rural and urban. Once you get into balancing rural and urban, you get into black and white, blue and red, etc. etc.

Just make it population and contiguousness, and throw in following natural borders like rivers if you like - that's in the same spirit as contiguousness, and that's all you should have factored in. Then the computer can do it. For every state.

- psantillana

July 29, 2008 at 9:27pm

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Why'd you guys have to recommend computer algorithms?! Now I'm going to be thinking of how to write one all day. Bastards!

- GSpinks

July 30, 2008 at 8:44am

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So in our free time, we think up alternatives for the redistricting system, rewrite the Constitution, and deliberate on computer algorithms. We must be the internet's wonk central :-)

- jobeek2

July 30, 2008 at 8:55am

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Simpler solution, and one that requires only a simple change in federal statute: Increase the size of the House of Representatives. The House was set at 435 by statute a century ago; had the House continued to grow to keep pace with population growth, we'd have about 1,200 seats in the House right now. Expanding the House to that number would have two direct impacts on gerrymandering: (1) By reducing the value of any one seat, thus diluting the incentive for mischief; and (2) By increasing the number of districts in each state, it becomes more difficult even for concerted gerrymanderers to engineer a result greatly at odds with the actual popular will.

Two ancillary benefits: Smaller districts reduce the power of incumbency, by making it more possible for smaller groups of pissed-off constituents to unseat their sitting representative. Right now, districts have 600,000+ people. With districts of only 200,000, you only need a few hundred really committed people to make a big stir, rather than a few thousand. Secondly, such an increase in the size of the House would make it impossible for the Electoral College to overturn the popular vote.

- rhubarbs

July 30, 2008 at 9:01am

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Agree with increasing the size of the house; agree with the Rawlsian solution of determining neutral criteria ahead of time and having a computer draw the map after the fact.  

population + contiguousness can actually introduce as many problems as they solve.  E.g,, population.  One of the side effects of strict adherence (<.1%) to one-person-one-vote is it gives legislatures a reason to cross traditional political boundaries for the purposes of making roughly equal districts precisely equal.  Self-interested legislatures then start chopping up towns and precincts to maximize the partisan strength of their particular districts.  One thing I'd like to see is courts allow some flexibility in one-person-one-vote for truly neutral systems (automated or commission).  

I also want to say that bipartisan (or incumbent) gerrymandering is more pernicious than partisan gerrymandering.  In PA (subject of the Vieth case, and probably the most partisan map of the 2000 census... not including TX's mid-decade debacle), Ds now control a majority of the seats and look to pick up even more this round.  Partisan districting, in short, contains the risk that one side will overreach.  Bipartisan gerrymandering (as in CA and NY) is sheer entrenchment that makes it very difficult for incumbents to be defeated.

At the end of the day, SCOTUS needs to get into this area.

- prnoonan

July 30, 2008 at 9:46am

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Actually, it reminds me of the way the Venetian aristocracy used to choose their Doge:

"Thirty members of the Great Council, chosen by lot, were reduced by lot to nine; the nine chose forty and the forty were reduced by lot to twelve, who chose twenty-five. The twenty-five were reduced by lot to nine and the nine elected forty-five. Then the forty-five were once more reduced by lot to eleven, and the eleven finally chose the forty-one who actually elected the doge."

- emigdio

July 30, 2008 at 10:01am

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There are lots of objective ways to draw districts -- Robert Popper is one person who has written about this (I'm sure there are others) .  A huge ditto on all the anti-gerrymandering comments above -- of all the "outrages " in politics, the cooperation of the GOP and Dems in making votes as powerless as possible tops the list.  

- Lymon1

July 30, 2008 at 10:27am

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I agree with Lymon.  Given the same computer technology that allows detailed gerrymandering, it is a simple thing today to require districts to be 1) equal in population and 2) maximally compact (i.e. the shortest total boundary length consistent with equal population with 3) a very small aggregate deviation from maximum compactness permitted to conform to other political boundaries.  There is no excuse for partisan districting and no excuse for any other criteria.

- roidubouloi

July 30, 2008 at 10:38am

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"... (a bi-partisan commission with a non-partisan tie-breaker, that is mandated by law to create districts that respects existing political subdivisions such as counties and cities, is contiguous and is as compact as is feasible subject to the first two considerations, and which the legislature cannot ammend until after at least two failures to pass a plan)..."

What?!?

- tomeg

July 30, 2008 at 12:01pm

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From "Fact Sheet" at Yes on 11 website:

"Proposition 11 has broad-based bi-partisan support throughout the state including the League of Women Voters of California, AARP, Governor Schwarzenegger, " etc.

Any California statewide "bi-partisan" pro-proposition interest group(s) that premiers support by League of Women Voters is all but certain to fail.

Pissing in the wind...

- tomeg

July 30, 2008 at 12:14pm

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I say farm it  (redistricting) out to Canada.

What?  It's worked great for TNR, right?

- cspencef

July 30, 2008 at 2:42pm

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You could also get rid of gerrymandering with larger multi-member districts.  Not only are these more difficult to rig, it would have the added bonus of making elections more volitale.  E.g., NH has these and people were sufficiently pissed off last election to vote the straight D ticket and give the state house to the Ds for the first time since 1874!

Of course, you'd need an act of Congress for this, so it's not likely.

- prnoonan

July 30, 2008 at 2:53pm

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