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A Few Pesky Facts That Get in the Way of the “League of Women Voters” Arguments for the Governor’s Redistricting Reform

towashington 089.gif By Bill Cavala
A veteran of over 30 years in Sacramento

The League President puts forth several arguments in favor of the Governor’s redistricting proposal. Let’s look at them one at a time.

1. Enhanced Voting Rights Protection. Would place the requirements of the Federal Voting Rights Act in the California Constitution. This is a nice gesture, but the State must comply with the Voting Rights Act because Federal Law trumps State Constitutions.

The League of Women Voters must, we assume, know this. And know as well that the Legislature – and the California Supreme Court – have both been sued for not following the Voting Rights Act. Both suits were failures.

2. The Governor’s proposal allows “all relevant data” for Voting Rights Act compliance.

This means that political data – voter registration and turnout statistics – can be used by the Redistricting Commission. This belies the notion that partisan information won’t be used as it has in the past. It will.

3. Respect for Cities and County boundaries. As the League of Woman Voters should know, the Supreme Court masters – using census tracts to build instead of census blocks which could follow city boundaries – did a terrible job in keeping Cities and Counties whole. The Legislature did a much better job.

4. Nesting criteria - this means a Senate seat will be made up of two Assembly seats.

Assembly Members like this – it increases their chances of becoming Senators. Senators dislike this – it increases the chance of a challenge from one of the two Assemblymembers making up the seat.

Voters could care less.

5. A qualified, diverse commission?

No Commission of 14 can provide the diversity of the 120 Members of the Legislature - with one exception. The Governor’s proposal would give Republicans an equal vote with Democrats (the Democrats have elected a majority of both the Assembly and the Senate) – and would have four Commissioners from neither party. These are likely to be extremists from minor parties with an axe to grind (voters who decline to state a party are, as every academic study shows, the least interested in government and politics and the least likely to apply for a slot on the Commission).

The League of Women Voters is aware of this fact. Their Commission was designed to look neutral to the media – while, in fact, Commissioners won’t have more of a role than ratifying the complex plan designed by invisible staff

6. The initiative makes proceedings and deliberations open, transparent, and accessible to all members of the public including civil rights organizations.

The League President accuses the Legislature of hiding racially discriminatory intent. She knows the Legislature was sued – unsuccessfully – on those grounds.

As the lead staff person for the Assembly for redistricting over a 30 year time span, I never had a conversation with any Legislator without the presence of our staff attorney and another Member. Discriminatory intent never existed – as the final plan proved to the satisfaction of every Court who looked at the issue.

7. The Governor’s initiative would require consolidated hearings on the Assembly, Senate, and Congress - half as many hearings as the Legislature conducted in 2001.

This is called “reform” because “multiple hearings would be burdensome”.

How can the League of Women Voters defend a process with fewer public hearings?

The basic truth is that this proposal would reduce the input of Democrats from the majority they won at the polls to a minority of 35% of the Commission.

In the name of ‘fairness’, this plan would have the likely effect of taking the
Democratic majority of 48 in the State Assembly to a 38-39 minority position.

Democrats would have to win all the remaining districts – an extraordinarily expensive proposition – to eke out by a single vote the right to name a Speaker.

A more likely scenario has this reform producing a Republican majority.

(Now why would the League of Women Voters want that result???)

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 a doctorate 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 April 17, 2008

Comments

"A more likely scenario has this reform producing a Republican majority."

That's just absurd. You couldn't make a Democratic minority in the California legislature if $1 billion was staring you in the face

As far as reducing the input of Democrats. The commission SHOULD be equal. If the Democrats are in the majority of this commission and don't need anyone else's votes, then do you really think they will settle only for a map that gives them representation equal to the proportion of California Democratic voters? Of course not! They will manipulate the map to make the legislature more Democratic than California is at large

By making them equal, the Republicans are able to hold out so they themselves have representation equal to the proportion of Republican voters and can ensure the Democrats don't get over-represented in the legislature.

The bigger question remains: why should the politicians get to choose their voters?

Posted by: Ben at April 17, 2008 05:49 PM

Fact: no Legislator up for election this year
voted for his or her district. Not one

Fact: Republicans would not hold out to get
representation equal to the proportion of
Republican voters. They have that now.

Posted by: cavala at April 17, 2008 08:21 PM

Fact: no Legislator up for election this year
voted for his or her district. Not one

Fact: Republicans would not hold out to get
representation equal to the proportion of
Republican voters. They have that now.

Posted by: cavala at April 17, 2008 08:22 PM

"Fact: no Legislator up for election this year
voted for his or her district. Not one"

Irrelevant

"Fact: Republicans would not hold out to get
representation equal to the proportion of
Republican voters. They have that now."

They may try holding out for more, but with an equal amount of Democrats, the Democrats won't settle for anything less than their proportion of voters. What's inevitable is they get representation that's proportional to the amount of voters they have.

This proposal has nothing to do with party, it has everything to do with fairness. The fact that partisans are against this is a positive. Politicians choosing their voters is not fair

Posted by: Ben at April 17, 2008 09:07 PM

IF the GOP refuses to support any plan, redistricting would revert to the Supreme Court (where all members are GOP appointments).

Hardly a diversified group

Posted by: cavala at April 18, 2008 07:54 AM

"IF the GOP refuses to support any plan, redistricting would revert to the Supreme Court (where all members are GOP appointments)."

Is that seriously your best response? I'm assuming you mean the California Supreme Court, first and foremost. Being appointed by the GOP in the Courts does not necessarily make them activists

Posted by: Ben at April 18, 2008 05:02 PM

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