[EM] Geographical districts

[Brian Olson]

On Sep 4, 2008, at 7:21 PM, Jonathan Lundell wrote:

> On Sep 4, 2008, at 3:34 PM, James Gilmour wrote:
>
>> Those who would devise new schemes of electoral districts, especially
>> to go with new voting systems, ignore the reality of these various  
>> "geographically defined communities" at their peril.
>
> There's a proposition on the November ballot in California that  
> would establish an independent commission to draw (single-member)  
> state legislative districts (the legislature draws them now). The  
> list might be interested in the criteria specified for use by the  
> commission. Sorry, I only have a scan and don't feel like typing it  
> in.
>
> <pastedGraphic.jpg>----

California tried this a few years ago, and a few years before that,  
and probably several times before that. They change around little  
things about how the commission is formed or the guidelines for what  
the commission should produce, but I think they always fail because:
  1. The commission is ultimately unaccountable. The procedure for  
making it is undemocratic, and while they're not beholden to the  
powers we're trying to challenge, they're not accountable to the  
citizens either. If we get random people on the commission we could  
get random maps out, or maps actually designed by establishment  
bureaucrats who know what they're doing.
  2. The guidelines are vague and probably unenforceable. I'd bet  
there's a good chance of a court challenge for any map that comes out  
of the commission because it wouldn't be compact somewhere or it would  
break some community of interest and any group that happened to or any  
other group with an axe to grind with the map that came out could  
challenge based on that. At worst the map would get redrawn by that  
court case, possibly only to be left in a configuration that could  
again be challenged, ad nauseum.

So, when I lived in CA, I voted against this nonsense. Oh, last time  
they also included the bitter pill of immediate mid-term  
redistricting, and it was being backed by a Republican governor, and  
the specter of the Texas mid-term-gerrymander-House-theft loomed large.

And back then I decided the proposed system was crazy, and that I  
could do better, and thus was born:
http://bolson.org/dist/CA/