California’s Redistricting Scheme Creates Nervous Incumbents
Posted 138 days ago by Mark Wilson
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. Last decade gerrymandering created districts that skewed heavily Democratic or heavily Republican, entrenching one party in one district. 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. However, during the public comment period, some Democratic incumbents created astroturf groups designed to look after their interests.
