This is the last part of a series of posts giving recommendations on California's propositions. This post recommends a "no" vote on Proposition 27, which switches the power of state-level redistricting from a citizen's committee to the legislature.
This is the first part of a series of posts giving recommendations on California's propositions. This post recommends a "yes" vote on Proposition 20, which gives the power of redistricting congressional districts from the state legislature to a Citizen's Redistricting Committee.
Proposition 21 will be the subject of the next post in this series.
Gerrymandering...
California has 53 congressional districts, the most in the entire nation. Of these districts, 34 are represented by Democrats and 19 by Republicans.
This ratio is almost exactly the same as it was in 2002, when California's Democrats and Republicans agreed to a bipartisan gerrymander that would protect the representatives in both parties.
Attacking gerrymandering these days is as popular as saying Wall Street needs reform. It's a truism; everybody agrees with that "gerrymandering is bad," just as everybody agrees that breathing is good.
Gerrymanders do get pretty ridiculous. Consider Maryland's 3rd congressional district:
Maryland's legislature designed this gerrymander to favor Democrats. And it worked: Maryland is represented by seven Democrats and one Republican.
You can probably go search a few terrible gerrymanders of your own; they're not exactly difficult to find. For the purposes of this post, however, I will be concentrating on one particular gerrymander: Arizona's 2nd congressional district.
Here is how it looks:
To understand why this is a good gerrymander, see below the fold.
