This editorial speaks for itself.
from LA Daily News
Anti-democracy: Redistricting panel in cross hairs of legislators. Don’t let them kill it.
Updated: 02/26/2010 10:14:22 AM PST
CALIFORNIA voters are starting to make some moves to wrest control of their government away from entrenched interests and entrenched legislators. And now those threatened interests are fighting back.
That’s the only way you can look at the attempt to do away with the state’s new Citizens Redistricting Commission, which is drawing support from Democrats in California’s congressional delegation.
The Citizens Redistricting Commission is a result of the voters passing Proposition11, the Voters FIRST Act in the November 2008 general election. The commission is still being set up, but it clearly already has lawmakers worried.
U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, and 12 other Democratic Congress members have given at least $5,000 each to a campaign to scrap the redistricting committee before it does its work. And Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, D-Los Angeles, who will run for the seat held by retiring Rep. Diane Watson, chipped in $20,000.
The 14 legislators gave $160,000 in all to the so-called Financial Accountability in Redistricting Act, or FAIR Act, an initiative to repeal Prop. 11, which is currently in the signature-gathering phase.
If FAIR petitions get 694,354 valid signature by July 5, the act will land on the November ballot, endangering the voters’ 2008 decision to let citizens redraw Assembly, state Senate and Board of Equalization boundaries – instead of letting sitting Assembly members and senators draw their own boundaries to keep themselves and their parties in power.
There’s a reason lawmakers are willing to shell out so much money for this initiative, and it’s not about good government. They want to keep their jobs secure and know that a fair redrawing of the state’s political districts might endanger their re-election chances.
Our advice to readers is to thwart this well-funded attempt to override the voters by not signing any petition that includes this summary:
“Eliminates State Commission on Redistricting. Consolidates Authority for Redistricting with Elected Representatives. Initiative Constitutional Amendment and Statute.”
The last time legislators redrew their district boundaries, in 2001, they divvied up the state into safe districts for Democrats and Republicans – choosing their own voters instead of letting voters choose them.
Districts almost never change hands from one party to the other, which favors the most conservative Republicans and the most liberal Democrats in primaries because they don’t have to worry about the general election. This leaves the moderates – the people who might actually work together to solve California’s problems – out in the cold.
The result is a gridlocked Sacramento, where state lawmakers put more stock in ideological divisions than in solving problems or governing for the benefit of the entire state.
The citizens commission will help end that partisan gridlock, which is why it is the target of the FAIR act.
In California, it is Democrats who most fear redistricting the most. They hold most of the elected positions and therefore have the most to lose in redrawn districts. If Republicans held majorities, they would do the same thing.
That’s because, to most legislators, staying in office and keeping the party in control of seats has become more important than representing the people who gave them those seats in the first place.
And there is nothing good about that kind of government.
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