{"id":884,"date":"2011-06-21T09:00:44","date_gmt":"2011-06-21T13:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www3.law.harvard.edu\/journals\/hlpr\/?p=884"},"modified":"2015-10-02T15:52:50","modified_gmt":"2015-10-02T15:52:50","slug":"pushing-boundaries-toward-fairer-redistricting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/2011\/06\/21\/pushing-boundaries-toward-fairer-redistricting\/","title":{"rendered":"Pushing Boundaries toward Fairer Redistricting"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anthony Kammer\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Following two landmark ballot initiatives, California transferred the power to draw legislative districts from the state legislature to an independent commission. And\u00a0on June 10, the\u00a0Citizen Redistricting Commission<\/a>unveiled its first proposed maps for CA\u2019s State\u00a0Assembly, State Senate, and U.S. Congressional seats.<\/p>\n

\n

By most accounts, California made a massive stride toward improved democratic representation in taking redistricting away from legislatures.\u00a0Rather than focusing on the particulars of these new maps or asking which party came out ahead, good government advocates watching from other states should seek to understand the dynamic produced by this new quasi-independent redistricting system.<\/p>\n

The redisticting process in place before 2008 and still used in the majority of other states\u2013a system whereby representatives choose their constituents using the most up-to-date census and demographic data\u2013screams conflict-of-interest and is antithetical to bottom-up democracy.\u00a0 Both\u00a0empirical\u00a0and anecdotal accounts have revealed that legislative redistricting often serve incumbent interests, add to legislative gridlock, and allows parties to trade seats for influence elsewhere. Abandoning this troublesome process is only one step toward improving the institutions of self-government. But the question remaining for other states is whether California\u2019s model, which\u00a0has\u00a0more<\/a>\u00a0than<\/a>\u00a0once<\/a>\u00a0been called Rube Goldberg-esque, is better than the system it\u2019s replacing.<\/p>\n

California\u2019s new procedures have generated greatly increased citizen engagement with the redistricting process, and particularly with the development of\u00a0at-home redistricting tools<\/a>, gerrymandering is becoming an increasingly accessible issue of debate.\u00a0 Another interesting shift, which\u00a0Evan Halper and Richard Simon\u00a0noted<\/a>\u00a0in the LA Times, is that the lack of predictability for incumbents means politicians may have to be more flexible and appeal to broader constituencies as the political landscape changes beneath them.\u00a0 The Public Policy Institute of California has posted some interesting data about the competitiveness of the new districts\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What may seem like overwhelmingly positive, pro-democracy developments has others more skeptical.\u00a0As Peter Schrag\u00a0outlined<\/a>\u00a0in a recent article for the LA Times, \u201c\u2018Bold\u2019 reforms are rarely immune to the law of unintended consequences.\u201d After all, the redistricting process still exists within the framework of America\u2019s exorbitant campaign finance system. Furthermore, most attempts at limiting partisan influence end up resembling cartoon attempts to plug a leak:\u00a0if you push down in one place, water just pops up somewhere else.<\/p>\n

Despite complicated procedural efforts (which include numbered bingo balls<\/a>) to ensure four of the fourteen seats on the redistricting commission go to individuals from neither major party, partisan pressure may prove hard to ignore, particularly at a time when states like California are facing such massive budgetary crises. Jennifer Steen\u2019s\u00a0piece, \u201cRedistricting Will Fix Everything in California\u2014Except For Its Problems<\/a>,\u201d also questions the potential benefits of the new system.\u00a0 Steen argues that onerous legal instructions\u2014such as requirements to preserve \u2018communities of interest,\u2019 to comply with the federal Voting Rights Act, and to maintain \u2018geographic integrity\u2019\u2014mean that \u201ccompetitive elections can be tricky to engineer through mapping.\u201d<\/p>\n

In short, the success of the commission is going to depend on how it interfaces with other aspects of election law and our campaign finance system. While California\u2019s other experiments with direct democracy may have helped contribute to its current gridlock and its budgetary woes, the state continues to offer experiments in political institutions that should inform policymakers around the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anthony Kammer\u00a0 Following two landmark ballot initiatives, California transferred the power to draw legislative districts from the state legislature to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peZQka-eg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}