California’s Redistricting Scheme Creates Nervous Incumbents

In 2010, the Census Bureau counted every man, woman, and child in the United States. Sometime this year, states will have redrawn their congressional districts to reflect population changes. How each state draws its districts is a matter of state law and necessarily varies by state. It’s also a matter of political scheming, as drawing electoral districts is one way that representatives can game the electoral system, ensuring that some people get reelected, certain groups’ electoral power is diluted, or a particular party remains in power forever.

In California, we prefer the last one. About thirty years ago, Republicans in California came to a heart-breaking conclusion: a Republican state it ain’t. So Republicans and Democrats formed an entente. Gerrymandering created districts that skewed heavily Democratic or heavily Republican, entrenching one party in one district. Since 2000, the last time the maps were redrawn, only five federal or state legislative seats changed parties. Even in 2006, as the San Jose Mercury News observed, when Democrats took control of the House of Representatives after twelve years of Republican control, only one seat changed parties in California.

Fed up with this, voters used California’s ballot initiative system to change the way districts were drawn. Proposition 11, passed in 2008, took redistricting power away from the legislature and placed it in the hands of a non-partisan group of retired judges and other people generally believed to be above the partisan fray. The judges draw several maps, and then voters decide on one of them.

Among the other interesting things Proposition 11 permitted was the creation of “communities of interest.” Normally, you’d draw a district so as to be congruent with existing county lines. Not so fast, Jack: oceanside Ventura County probably has more in common with oceanside Santa Barbara County than it does with inland Ventura County. So why not combine them into one district, as they share common issues? That’s a community of interest.

 

It’s a neat idea. But incumbents, not surprisingly, hate it. Rep. Nancy Pelosi spearheaded a campaign in 2010 to repeal Proposition 11. Publicly, the arguments against Prop. 11 consisted mostly of “it’s a waste of money,” but when the former Speaker of the House gets involved, it’s probably not about the state budget. Proposition 11 would have destroyed the carefully-crafted entente and could even have — horrors! — made legislators work to get reelected!

Failing to stop Proposition 11 in public, the legislature switched to smoke-filled rooms. The watchdog group Pro Publica wrote on Dec. 21 that California Democrats were working furiously to undermine the new system. Public comment is solicited during the redistricting process, and Democrats created astroturf groups designed to look after their interests during the comment period.

I had some intense discussions in 2010 about the redistricting commission. Was it really fairer? More democratic? Looking at the way incumbents have tried frantically either to destroy or rig the system tells me that it must be doing something right.