Several States May Revisit Redistricting (IMPORTANT: less political lines)

[DeepModem Mom]

LAT: Several States May Revisit Redistricting
California voters are not the only ones who will decide whether to take the redrawing of political lines out of the hands of officeholders.

By Nancy Vogel, Times Staff Writer


SACRAMENTO — When California voters go to the polls Nov. 8 to decide whether to strip lawmakers of the authority to draw their own districts, so will voters in Ohio. Millions more are likely to follow in Massachusetts and Florida.

In these and more than a dozen other states, activists are busy concocting different solutions to the same problem. They are trying to find a less political way to draw districts for Congress and legislatures so voters have a better crack at actually deciding elections.

What's at stake, some say, is democracy's cornerstone.

"To some extent, the power to draw lines is more important than the power of voting," said Nathaniel Persily, a redistricting expert who is a professor of law and political science at the University of Pennsylvania. "The redistricting process is often more determinative of who wins elections than the voting in elections itself."

From California, where Proposition 77 would put redistricting in the hands of three retired judges, to Florida, where a circulating initiative would create a 15-member bipartisan redistricting commission, the usually arcane, once-a-decade process of redrawing districts to even out shifts in population is a hot political topic....


http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-redistrict26sep26,0,7160984,full.story?coll=la-home-local

[Roland99]

1. Why can't they be based upon groupings of Zip Codes?

edit: because I HATE my keyboard.

[applegrove]

2. Oh thank god.

[eallen]

3. The better answer is proportional representation.

Draw multi-member districts, and use some form of preference voting to select the members. Then it doesn't matter much how the districts are drawn. This also would break the two-party lock.

[tainowarrior]

4. agreed

you're right on this one.

[Toots]

5. once-a-decade process of redrawing districts

Didn't Texas bypass that precident and do their redistricting right before the election? Redistricting is supposed to be only based on census but Texas did their redistricting before the census was taken ik I recall correctly and the Democrats took it to court and it was ruled the redistricting could stand. :shrug: That is six Democratic seats we lost and will never get back.

[Helga Scow Stern]

6. That's what's going on in California.

[kma3346]

7. But Arnold is pushing this, isn't he?

That means it can't be good for Democrats. Or am I missing something?

[WCGreen]

8. The districts should be drawn based on poplution...

Not on the political proclivities of a group of people....

[HereSince1628]

9. Congressional districts are too important to leave up to politicians

Seems like a doable optimization problem for mathematical geographers:

Using precincts as the smallest unit of area, map the designated number of congressinal districts alloted to the state to achieve the most equal population size per district and most regular geographic boundaries.