What's Wrong with the Common Cause Redistricting Initiative

[courtesy of The California Majority Report]

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is expected to embrace Common Cause's latest attempt at redistricting, the "Voters First" initiative, at a press conference today. The initiative, if it qualifies, will be on the November 2008 ballot.

Schwarzenegger has endorsed every variety of redistricting to come down the pike. Nevermind the details that could likely tilt map-making into the hands of Republicans. Nevermind that there's no similar system anywhere in the United States. Nevermind that it would put the complex of drawing the state's lines into the hands of amateurs. Yet there's no doubt that the editorial boards will praise him to high heaven, given their fantasyland notion that redistricting alone will somehow transform California politics.

This initiative, however, has its own set of problems. It would put the power of redistricting largely in the hands of the State Auditor -- someone with zero experience in redistricting and who is nominated by the Legislature and selected by the Governor. So much for "independence."

And that's just the beginning.

Even progressives find it distasteful. Last month, Bob Bauer, counsel to Obama for America and the Democratic Senatorial and Congressional Campaign Committees, took a whack at the new Common Cause/VOTERS FIRST redistricting initiative on this "More Soft Money More Hard Law" website.

"To wish the political process to function as in their dreams is no dishonor to the dreamers," Bauer starts off. "There is trouble only in confusing the dreaming and waking states, and when the waking state is found short on the desired and dreamy qualities, proposing to legislate fantasy into reality. This is the sure road to laws that, establishing goals both unwise and impossible to achieve, betray, by a stunning complexity, the hopelessness and confusion of their mission."
 
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