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Size of California Legislature Should be Increased--Districts Are Too Large

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By Bill Cavala
A veteran of over 30 years in Sacramento

Steve Wiegand, a Sacramento Bee columnist, opines today that a larger Legislature would relieve some of the fundraising pressure produced by the high cost of campaigning to such large numbers of people – which he incorrectly pegs at 300,000.

The next redistricting will shift lines to equalize 80 Assembly seats in a State of 40,000,000. That’s 500,000 per Assembly seat (up from 426,000) and a cool million per Senate seat.

I think Wiegand is right on this one. In campaigns run 30 years ago the activity of the candidate mattered. Lacking funds, a candidate could make it up to some extent with shoe leather, meeting voters on a door-to-door basis. Today the combination of longer work hours, two job families and an extra 175,000 people per district make any effort by the candidate more symbolic than anything else.

Double then number of Legislators in the Assembly and you’d bring districts down to 250,000 – 1960 numbers. If half registered to vote and 70% of those voted, you’d have an electorate of 87,500 with 44,000 needed to win. Hard core partisans would comprise two-thirds of that total – they don’t need campaign information for their choice – so the real campaign would be to the third remaining, somewhere around 15,000 voters.

A hard working candidate can make a dent of 6-7,000 votes over a 7-8 month period. Why that’s almost half the “swing” vote.

That would at least change the education of our public officials if it didn’t serve to decrease costs (the marginal value of each vote rises in direct proportion to the closeness of the race – elementary game theory). So the demand for campaign money would be unlikely to diminish. The demand for campaign consultants, however, would double.

The Legislature itself would change – I think in beneficial ways. Two days of the four day week the Legislature works is devoted to “floor session”. This is ostensibly a debate and vote on legislation that survives the committee process. But it has become – especially since the advent of televised sessions – a ritual similar to a Chinese play where the Majority passes what it chooses without any heed to the speeches of minority members – and where the Minority Party postures and speech makes for the camera. (I can recall only half dozen situations in the last decade where debate turned any votes on an issue).

With a larger house the “floor debates” would be necessarily muffled. Rules would be adopted similar to those of the House of Representatives that limit debate, limit amendments in reach and number and so on. Time on the floor would be limited by the time needed to work in committees (now larger so subcommittees would play a markup role similar to that of the House in DC). Eventually the televised sessions would give way to increased television of committees and subcommittees.

All this would be a benefit to the Legislature and to the voters.

Bill Cavala was Deputy Director of the Assembly Speaker’s Office of Member Services where he worked for over 30 years.

He attended undergraduate and graduate school in the 1960’s and received adoctorate in political science at UC Berkeley. He taught political science at UC Berkeley during the 1970's while he worked part-time for the State Assembly.

Cavala left teaching at UC Berkeley and went to work for Assembly Speaker Willie Brown in 1981 until his tenure as Speaker ended in 1995, and he has worked for his five successors as Speaker up to and including Speaker Fabian Nunez.

Mr. Cavala manages election campaigns for Democratic candidates.

Posted on November 30, 2006

Comments

Increasing the number of districts is one way of doing increasing the number of legislators -- which is definitely needed -- but possibly a more workable solution would be multi-member districts. As you know, the state has the same number of members of the Assembly and Senate that it had in the late 19th Century, with the ratio of constituents to Assembly members now being something like 420,000 constitutents to each Assembly member. Only the U.S. House has a higher ratio.

Some states, like Vermont, already have multi-member districts. Their lower house has 66 single member districts and 42 two-member districts, making 150 lower house representatives, for a ratio of about 4,100 per legislator. The senate in Vermont is also made up of multi-member districts: Senate districting divides the 30 members into three single-member districts, six two-member districts, three three-member districts, and one six-member district. Each Senator represents at least 20,300 citizens.

The concept of multi-member districts in both houses is something that should be considered when the issue of both redistricting and enlarging the legislature comes up.

Posted by: Larry Cafiero at December 4, 2006 11:53 PM

Argh. That first sentence above should read, "Increasing the number of districts is one way of increasing the number of legislators . . . ." I don't know how that "doing" got in there, but my apologies.

Posted by: Larry Cafiero at December 4, 2006 11:57 PM

I fully support the idea of expanding the size of the State Assembly to 160 members. I would elect them using the ranked-choiced voting method used in Ireland, Australia and increasingly Britain, either from 160 single member districts, or a four-member multi-member district matching State Senate boundaries.

I also think it's fair to ask why we still have a bicameral legislature, especially with the move towards allowing legislators to serve 12 years in total in the same house.

If we had a Unicameral legislature we could have afford larger number of total legislators, say 200 or 250. reducing the ratio of legislator to citizen to 125,000 - 150,000 (which is still high for this country.)

These could be elected either from single-member or multi-member districts.

If the current 40 State Senate districts elected five members each, we would probably have 200 legislators which include a few Libertarian Party, Green Party and Independent members.

Using the Ireland/Australia model would result in a much more representative legislature.

Expanding the Assembly to 160 members or creating a Unicameral legislature of 200-250 members are both excellent ideas and I would volunteer time and energy on any grass roots initiative to make this happen.

An 80-member lower house is ridiculous for a state of this size and California deserves better. All having large ratios of legislator to citizen does is increase the power of money in campaigning and lobbying in office.

Posted by: Dan Wentzel at September 5, 2007 01:54 PM

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