Doug
The biggest problem the new commission will face is reconciling the
VRA/community of interest mandate in prop 20/state mandate for minimizing
city/county splits with the public expectation (fed by the CA Forward
people) of multiple competititve seats. As you know, the AZ commission
struggled--some would say unsuccesffully-- with this problem.
Another interesting question is what are the odds of the
commission deadlocking, given that votes will have to come from three
blocs of members, and the whole matter will go to court masters...adding
the Congress has raised the stakes substantially.
Care to venture a prediction on that?
Bruce
On Mon, 8 Nov 2010, Douglas Johnson wrote:
I realize this isn't the most serious of threads, and I've enjoyed the
banter, but just in case anyone's still following it, the Commission's work
will be overseen by the voters (the redistricting plans are subject to
referendum) and by the courts (the commission must comply with the Federal
Voting Rights Act).
In California, as in Florida, the question of how active the courts will be
in overseeing the implementation of state redistricting criteria is an open
question.
- Doug
Douglas Johnson
Fellow
Rose Institute of State and Local Government
Claremont McKenna College
o 909-621-8159
m 310-200-2058
douglas.johnson@cmc.edu
www.RoseReport.org
From: election-law-bounces@mailman.lls.edu
[mailto:election-law-bounces@mailman.lls.edu] On Behalf Of James Fischer
Sent: Monday, November 08, 2010 11:18 AM
To: James Lacy; jon.roland@constitution.org
Cc: JBoppjr@aol.com; election-law@mailman.lls.edu
Subject: Re: [EL] California redistricting commission
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
From: election-law-bounces@mailman.lls.edu
[mailto:election-law-bounces@mailman.lls.edu] On Behalf Of James Lacy
Sent: Monday, November 08, 2010 8:51 AM
To: jon.roland@constitution.org
Cc: JBoppjr@aol.com; election-law@mailman.lls.edu
Subject: Re: [EL] California redistricting commission
Then what we will need is an additional set of computers to program and run
the computers. The first set of commuters will need randomly selected
programmers to oversee the randomly selected programers who program the
first set of computers so that the work of randomly selected panels
overseeing the randomly elected panels is as random as possible.
James V. Lacy
Confidentiality applies
Sent from my iPad
On Nov 8, 2010, at 7:22 AM, Jon Roland <jon.roland@constitution.org> wrote:
On 11/08/2010 08:58 AM, JBoppjr@aol.com wrote:
It will be interesting to see how Jon's promotion of random
selection works out when the Calif redistricting comm is
randomly selected. I wonder what are the efforts leading up to
that to try to manipulate the process.
I got a report, as yet unconfirmed, that the framers of that
reform got the idea from reading my stuff. Of course, if any
process can be manipulated it will be. It had better be
supervised by a grand jury for execution of the selection.
Randomly selected panels need to supervise the selection of
other randomly selected panels. It is too important not to have
a lot of independent people watching.
That still leaves the question of how computer mapping software
is used in drawing the maps. If they do it right they will not
attempt to do things like protect incumbents. Better to have
little if any human input into the drawing. Let the computer do
it.
-- Jon
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512/299-5001 jon.roland@constitution.org
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