Salvaging democracy

Prop. 77 will restore honesty to California elections

By Mickey Klein
From the November 2005 Print Edition

Although changing the process of drafting Assembly districts does not stir the blood like abortion, affirmative action, and tax cuts, Proposition 77, the initiative to abolish fixing elections through redistricting, is one of the most important votes the people of California will ever make. At stake is the future of the republican system of government in our state.

Representative democracy in California is broken. In the previous election, not a single Assembly, Senate, or House seat changed hands. By the current system the legislature is allowed to stack its own deck, drawing the very districts in which they are elected. With this power, and acting in natural self-interest, the legislators have drawn districts designed to eliminate competition and entrench their own power. Contemporary districts bear little-to-no resemblance to population centers and are molded around pockets of partisan and special-interest voters. Every seat is a guaranteed victory for a particular party, resulting in Soviet-style elections every two years.

It was not always like this. In the past California had a nonpartisan system of making districts, before state government broke down into deadlock in the years leading up to the recall election. When a judicial panel drew the districts in 1991 — it is done every 10 years after the census — 30 districts were highly competitive and 18 were reasonably contested. When the legislature took power back into its own hands and drew the districts in 2001, only five competitive seats remained, leaving the other 175 totally locked.

The result is intransigence in Sacramento on both sides. The majority party has no reason, and has shown no intent, to reasonably negotiate with the minority because their numbers are guaranteed. Likewise, the minority party has no incentive to cease obstructing government because they have no hope of gaining seats or fear of losing them.

This situation defies the very point of representative democracy. In the republican system of government, citizens are elected to office with the caveat that if they fail to properly execute their office, they will be removed from office. In the current system, both parties are essentially allotted a number of seats to fill in government without any real consultation by the people. Instead of rule by the people, we have rule by the party committees.

Recent years have seen the legislature so paralyzed by partisan rancor that the people have had to step in to enact critical legislation, the trend reaching its crescendo in 2004 when voters saved the state from fiscal collapse with emergency bonds. It has become standard-political practice now to defer the truly serious issues to ballot propositions. When bold reform is needed to invigorate government, the Sacramento majority can afford to dig in its heels and protect its own with impunity. When budgets hit hard deadlines, the minority can entrench itself and fight as long as it pleases without fear of punishment.

We the people must rise up this election and take back our government. The passage of Proposition 77 will seize the power of districting away from the legislature and return it to the people in a fair, nonpartisan system. This law will create a program by which an independent body will draft the districts, and the people will vote directly on the proposal in referendum.

The mechanics of the proposition are as follows. First, the bill turns over the power of drawing the districts from the legislature to the Judicial Council as it was in the 1990s. The Council will assemble a master list of retired judges who have never held partisan office, have not changed their party affiliation in their time on the bench, and have not received any form of political income within the last year. The list will be separated by major party. From this pool, 24 judges will be selected by lot, 12 coming from each party. The legislative leaders from both parties then each nominate six from the reduced set. Three of the judges nominated from both sides must be of the opposite party.

From this final grouping, three judges are selected randomly, each party having at least one representative. The panel then draws a districting plan that must keep all district populations within 1 percent of each other, and must maximize proximity to existing population centers and city boundaries. Finally, and most importantly, the plan will be submitted to the voters for approval or rejection.

Legislative districts must be drawn to represent the people, not to give party officials public office. We have to expect politicians to act in their own self-interest. Therefore, we cannot maintain a fair democratic system where the politicians set the terms of their own elections. We the people of California must take control of the process and enact Proposition 77, making the legislature once again the representative body for the citizens of the state.

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