Mark's Notebook


	If you believe everything you read, better not read. - Japanese Proverb

Terminator vs. Gerrymander

New York Times

Monday 7 November 2005, 12:02 pm
Keywords: News Articles

By Jill Stewart

In seeking to have a panel of retired judges take over drawing electoral districts, the governor is clearly looking out for the voters' best interests.

Honest observers on the left and right have long complained that California's voting district map is a masterwork of cynicism that assures victories for incumbents as well as party hacks seeking open seats. The fix is so complete that in 2004 not one of the 173 state legislative and Congressional seats being contested in California changed party hands. Robert Stern, president of the liberal-leaning Center for Governmental Studies in Los Angeles, told me that California's elections are "less democratic than the Soviet Politburo."

Democrats, led by Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez, have aggressively tried to paint Proposition 77 as a power grab by shady retired judges and the Republicans. The fact is, to maintain the undemocratic system that now exists, the Democrats need to distract voters from the truth: that Proposition 77 is a series of fair-minded steps that assures elected leaders reasonable input in creating the panel of judges, none of whom are running for office in the voting districts they fashion.

Unfortunately, the governor is not just up against the Democrats. Many Republicans are also fighting him. After all, the "fix" also guarantees elected Republicans their automatic re-elections.

These dishonest voting districts slash across communities of interest and geography. One State Assembly district sprawls from the upscale Westside area of Los Angeles, across some mountains, to the farms of Oxnard. One Congressional district looks like a noodle draped along the coast, so skinny it is jokingly said to disappear beneath the waves of the Pacific at high tide.

Once voters are herded, by party, into these trumped-up districts, the parties feed them an incumbent or pre-selected party crony. And they are getting sick of it.

They have to realize that in the long run, this isn't about Arnold Schwarzenegger; it's about California's long-ruling Democrats, who have decided democracy is no longer part of their agenda.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/07/opinion/07stewart.html