Districts

[pecunium]

The redistricting measure was the one I most wanted to vote for, when it was first proposed.

The present system (and examples like Texas) made me decide against it. That I am becoming that much a creature of party (even if it's reactionary partisanship) pisses me off.

I happen to think the present method of districting plays a large part in that. I wish I could see a way to fix it. No, I rather wish I could see a way to fix it which wasn't handicapping Dems in those places they have an advantage.

There are those who will say that means I'm engagin in a double standard. I don't think I am, it's rather that I see the other side playing dirty, and I see no reason to take the high road on this one, so they can have a stronger hand. If evenly built districts were made, across the board, with a competitive ratio of each party in play, I'd be on that so fast you'd think I was knocked from a horse on my way to Damascus. I'd be working the phones, spending my money and donating my time.

Because the present nature of safe seats is what has caused (if you ask me) a lot of the present crop of ideologues on the right to rise to power.

They are safe. They can blather about all sorts of evil things; they can drag the Republican Party off to the fringes of Fascism, and no one will call them to heel, because they are the incumbent. They have the money, and the Party isn't going to tell them to stop feeding red meat to the vocal sorts who turn out to vote (that 30 percent Arnie is playing to, right now) because those are the people who put them in power.

If that 30 percent was only able to exercise the influence that 30 percent represents, I'd care a lot less about them. But that 30 percent is what put the idjits in Dover, Penn., on the school board. It took the 70 percent getting steamed to put them off. But school boards are built differenly from legislative seats.

I don't see a way to fix it, because I don't see a way to make it nationwide. Texas is going to look more Republican than it is, for quite some time, because of DeLays redistricting (and it's amusing, I didn't see McCain complaining that Texas was being redistricted by politicians; who were taking it away from judges, but I digress), and absent a great change in the awareness/sense of self interest of the body politic, I see no way to change it; until it's so broken it can't be allowed to stand.

I just hope that happens before the Republic is too badly damaged to recover.

Comments

[red-silk-robe.livejournal.com]

I read this with a shiver because I came of age in Texas and really, with 4 generations of family there, grew up within the Texas political machine, or really, acceptance of the Texas political machine. My father's family could never understand why I always questioned Texas Politics when "it's always been done this way."

I watched from afar the gerrymandering a few years ago, watched legislature members flee the state in order to force a no vote for lack of a quorum, watched the slicing and dicing of districts and I sat here thinking. 'I know it hasn't always been done this way', and 'I am so embarrassed to be from that state.'

I dislike the why and the how of DeLay's deconstruction of Texas districts, but really is that machination a much of a change? The all encompassing power of the many judges and political bosses of Texas, from reconstruction to World War II is a history in idealism, graft, greed, hate, and pure power. Read that history and one can be forgiven for thinking the district lines in Texas have always been drawn in the lightest of tracing pencil with a fat eraser always at the ready in the ham-fist of which ever politico currently held the most power.

These are the same power men who held the state in thrall so that most small and many moderate sized rural communities in the state didn't have electricity or running water until the early 1960s. The Texas Utility Commission is the closest thing to state run mafia Texas has to this day.

So when I read our California Proposal for redistricting I flinched so hard, I nearly knocked a hole in the plaster. I rooted around to find the document so that I could read the actual text of the proposed law. It has enough jargon in it to make your eyes bleed, but I read anyway. It is one of the few times I am thankful for the training I had as a paralegal all those years ago. It does help me weed through high language and the convoulted grammar of law. My only conclusion: this is a bad way to go about it. Not that I was surprised by that conclusion, mind you.

I do not have quite the steeping in California state history as I do of Texas. I've lived here for 15 years now. I remember my stints here, both north and south, as a child when my dad was stationed at Alameda and Long Beach. I have often been amused by the idea that California needs to be divided north and south by a line that runs from Paso Robles due east.

But the question is: the way our districts are currently drawn. Do they make sense, are they fair, and does it allow for accurate representation of the constituents? I'd say no, it doesn't. However, I've yet to see a fair, workable, viable plan of redrawing districts that serves the populace, not a special interest group or a political party, political machine, or individual politician.

We are the spoils of their very self-serving war and that irritates me to no end.

[chipuni.livejournal.com]

*sigh* I also voted for redistricting. I didn't notice the hook in the redistricting measure until after I voted:

The redistricting would start within 20 days of the election if it passed. We'd see a Texas-style redistricting if we followed through.

Grump.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I didn't vote for it.

I decided it was a power grab, and that it made things more unstable, as well as being of more benefit to the Republican party then to the people.

TK

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it was that much of a change.

The law said districts got changed with the census. For reasons unclear to me the legislature failed to draw districts (either they were badly done or there was some sort of gridlock) so it went to the courts. Not as a means of first resort, but of last.

Delay spent a lot of money (some of which being why he's been indicted) to get people elected, so he could get a majority, and then (by dint of illegal attempts at extradition, and other strong-arm tactics) force a new set of districts through, with the express intent of redrawing the lines, not to ensure incumbents kept their seats (which is politics as usual) but rather to make it almost certain more Republicans would be elected (and as I recall they were, four more Republican Representatives from Texas), with the intent of shaping the national politics by making a larger majority in the house, so that things like Hastert's assertion that only legislation wanted by a majority of Republican representatives could make it to the floor.

It was part of an attempt to disenfranchise (in part by muzzling their elected representatives) anyone who isn't voting Republican.

TK