1 post tagged “governor”

Today, in an interview on the News Hour (download here) amid lots of his bullet point answers, Arnold Schwarzenegger said that in California "redistricting is horrible." and "it's not competitive".  He says he wants to change it, and make it more accountable to the people, instead of the elected officials.

Schwarzenegger

It wasn't like he was cornered by the reporter and he had to comment.  He brought it up himself.  And this is AFTER Proposition 77 got shot down in 2005.  It isn't popular among his own party, or among Democrats, or (apparently) the voters, yet he still is talking about it.  This is a good sign.

Redistricting is something that no politician likes to talk about. It is when, usually following the census, the political districts are redrawn.  With sophisticated technology and voter data, it means that many states have re-drawn the various districts in complex ways so that House Representatives have almost no chance of loosing their set.  It has gotten so bad that Incumbents in the House actually have more job security that those in the Senate, even though one term of service in the house is only 2 years, while the senate is 6.  This is exactly why, in the U.K., they do it differently.  Their political boundaries actually make sense.

If you remember hearing about redistricting in the news, it was probably in connection with that mess in Texas in 2003.

Neither Republican nor Democrat is interested in messing with this process, for two reasons. (Here)

1)  They just want to win.  They want job security and consolidation of party power, not representative government

2) It isn't sexy.  It is harder to drum up support for redistricting than it is for , say, abortion issues, or taxes.

I am still a bit cynical about Arnold.  For every good he does, I think about how much better it would have been if we had started out with someone who had more political integrity, instead of having to wait for Arnold to come around.  Still, this is very, very encouraging.