I don’t mean to sound fawning, but I’m very impressed by the willingness of the DFL majority — and in particular, the DFL majority leader — to push for a fairer process for redistricting.
Redistricting — the redrawing of the state’s voting districts which takes place after every decennial census — has historically been a messy affair, because the process is controlled by state legislators who have obvious conflicts of interest. There are always instances of gerrymandering, the process of drawing the boundaries precisely in a way that maximizes one party’s advantage. Gerrymandered districts usually look like the one to the right; you can see more at Slate.
There are two primary methods of gerrymandering: You can split up a large bloc of one party’s voters, effectively diluting their influence, or you can cram them all into one district, conceding that one district but taking them out of all of the other districts. Either way, it’s a shady process. That’s why, here in Minnesota, Senate Majority leader Larry Pogemiller has proposed a bill to make the process significantly less political (more on that bill below the break).
I’ve written about this topic a few times before I came to MNpublius, but I’ve started thinking of the next redistricting again after an article in MinnPost by Doug Grow that forecasts a battle royale over redistricting. Of course, that’s because Grow decided to talk to former blogger and now GOP Deputy Chair Michael Brodkorb, to whom everything is a fight to the death. Here’s what Brodkorb has to say about redistricting:
He’s constantly telling Republicans that redistricting is one of the most powerful reasons that Republicans must keep one of their own in the governor’s mansion.
“If Democrats have the governor and both legislative bodies, they’d draw a map that would drive us out of existence,” Brodkorb said.
At least, that’s what the Republicans would do, particularly with Brodkorb in charge. The DFL, on the other hand, is searching for a better way. Pogemiller’s bill, which has already passed the Senate and received its first reading in the House at the very end of the last session, takes legislators out of the process as much as possible:
By March 1 of each year ending in one, the leaders of the legislature shall appoint a redistricting commission… to draw the boundaries of legislative and congressional districts…. The commission consists of five retired judges of the appellate or district courts of this state who have not served in a party designated or party endorsed position, such as legislator. The majority leader of the senate, the minority leader of the senate, the speaker of the house, and the minority leader of the house shall each appoint one judge, after consulting with each other in an effort to attain geographic balance in their appointments.
Of course, the redistricting would still have to be approved by legislators, but this seems to me to be much closer to the way we should have been doing redistricting in the first place. I’m impressed that this bill was proposed by the DFL’s Majority Leader, at a time when the DFL has a nearly veto-proof majority in the legislature.
Given Brodkorb’s concerns about “bare-knuckle politics” in the redistricting, I’m hopeful that there will be some GOP support to get Pogemiller’s bill through the House. My fear is that Brodkorb’s concerns are more like hopes, and that the GOP is hunkering down for a battle over redistricting. We all know that they do these sorts of battles far better than the DFL. This sort of administrative process, though, shouldn’t be so politicized; it’s time for a fairer way.
This bill is a good start. Added provisos should be that districts will respect, as much as possible, city and county boundaries, that partisan make-up of districts may not be a factor in plotting districts, and (especially) that the residence of incumbent officeholders also may not be considered.
Let's be clear. The DFL Majority Leader is pushing this plan, not the DFL per se. Personally, as a party officer in the DFL, I think our plan should be to win the election and then draw the maps however we want.
You're always saying that we compromise to early. And you are doing it with this. God knows the Republicans would not be this charitable and "fair." Why should we?
How about: because it would be the right thing to do.
"You're always saying that we compromise to early. And you are doing it with this. God knows the Republicans would not be this charitable and "fair." Why should we?"
Are you kidding? I'm all for vigorous defense of our interests, but I sure as hell am not for flattering Republicans by imitation. I'm very happy to see this from Pogemiller: it's one of those (many) concrete things that just plain make us better than them.
Advocating a fair redistricting process would build goodwill with the people of Minnesota. In the long run, what could be a better move for your party than that?
I think this plan is great, and if done will show the DFL is trying to take steps to be the more adult and thoughtful party. That would be a brilliant move and good public service.
While a much bigger issue than simple redistricting I think the reality is representation based on geography is outdated at best. Given the mobility of products, people and ideas there is no reason to base political power on dividing a map into little puzzle pieces. Real meaningful change would be switching the house over to a proportional system. Maybe start it out on a state by state basis at first and work to representation based on a national vote.
Yes I know it would require huge changes that are politically almost impossible. Sometimes it is good to imagine a big change in order to understand the scale of the problems we currently have.
Er…the house does work on a proportional system, not on a geographical one.
http://www.nationalatlas.gov/mld/cgd109p.html
Constitution 101.
I believe KH was referring to something like 2 or more parties getting representation in proportion to their votes received, so the house could include people from the green party, the teabaggers, and who knows what other parties might form and win house seats.
Wikipedia is not always the most accurate, but it is the easiest source of info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_represe...
Err. Err Jason…This post is talking about Minnesota Senate Districts, not US Congressional Districts. Reading 101
I tend to agree that the "winner take all" mentality is a big part of what has created the terrible political tone in DC during the past couple decades.
Devil is in the details, but would be interested in hearing more about proportionate representation. Also, our population has increased significantly in the past several decades. Should we really still have 535 members of Congress, or should that number increase to give us a Congressperson - Voter ratio closer to what it was a century ago?
Not to rain on the "redistricting is everything parade", but the reality is if one party did have control, they couldn't really make the districts smaller or bigger. They could just help/hurt incumbents. If the DFL controlled everything and put a lot of Republicans in the same districts, I won't really care. Any jerrymandering by the legisature would result in a pretty quick shutdown in court. Regardless of who is in control.
As you know Kendal, I'm with you on this. Why the hell come out of the box with concessions? Pogey has no where to negotiate on this now and it will go to the courts as it has done over and over in the past.
The last redistricting commission had three parties at the table. You want a voice? Get a minimum amount of voters to support your party ideals.
While we don't have Gerrymandering in the classic sense here, no one with an ounce of sanity or fairness can look at the Sixth CD and say it wasn't done in the spirit in Gerrymandering. Washington County and Stearns or Benton County are worlds apart but, they lean to the Right so they drew a district that runs first ring suburban to exurban to rural. It was a gift the Republicans. Time to make it right. The old Sixth used to include Brooklyn Park and Brooklyn Center instead of the St Cloud area. That's the difference between a Patty Wetterling losing to Michelle Bachman.
The Republicans have been proposing to put Minneapolis and Saint Paul propers into one district and making the Eight District more straight across the top of the state, thus giving them a real shot at Central Minnesota. Leaving the burbs mostly unchanged and adjust the First and Second CD's, the Republicans would have a super majority in the House with only the combined Mpls/StP and possibly the new Eighth remaining in DFL hands.
Who cares? Just as long as te DFL can look like we're trying to be less partisan on the most partisan issue, maybe we'll then get Dan's vote or a pat on the head by the voters for attempting to be fair.
Pogey, STFU, and let this process work itself out.
Shocking as this might sound to some, a model can be found just to our south - Iowa. They use a non-partisan commission to create their districts. With generally good results. Granted, Minnesota is not Iowa, but I for one am tired of listening to legislators make statements like "we'll work out a plan" when they never do, and the map ends up being drawn by a group of judges. Go with the Iowa-style commission and lets see if it works better. For those interested in seeing what other state's congressional districts look like, and some of them are amazing, use the link below.
http://www.nationalatlas.gov/printable/congress.h...
Iowa's is so successful because you dont have to ever break up a single county and the population is much more evenly spread out than most other states.
I'm goipng to break my personal rule against "me, too" posts to say I agree with you completely on this. Iowa's system is successful because political considerations are not allowed to come into play.
That Iowa is a fairly "easy" state in which to draw new lines, to me, should not be used as a rationale to dismiss the idea of using a non-partisan commission to draw our lines. The good software can map it down to individual precincts in urban areas. In non-metro Minnesota, that is not a concern at all where typically county, municipal, and sometimes township borders form the district lines.
This is an absolutely terrible idea! When you are a Democrat, there is no such thing as "fair" redistritcting unless we are in charge of it because the geography of where the Democratic strength is, as in any state, confied to the big cities. All you have to do is draw a circle around around a major city, which gives you generally something like a D+30 seat and then you are left with tons of open space to create several R+5 seats, which are just strong enough for any GOPer to win. There is a reason there are several D+30 or greater and not a single R+30 or greater. Kerry won 3/8 CD's in MN and IIRC, Obama won fewer CD's than Bush did while winning the EV and popular vote by much larger margins.That is not coincidental, that is systematic.
Also, the idea Randy gives at the top to stipulate in law to only break up cities and counties when absolutely necessary, well, why? I can understand cities but why counties? County lines are so arbitrary as is and the counties in the metro area should never have to follow such a stipulation. Look at Anoka county, Fridley and East Bethel are worlds apart! We need to be following communities of interest instead of lines set up 150 years ago. And sometimes, preserving communities of interest can get downright ugly looking, as exampled by the picture you provide Jeff. That's good ole NC-3 and right next door is NC-1 which is a black majority seat. It had nothing to do with political gerrymandering but was to allow the African-Americans of NE North Carolina black representation.
I mentioned not breaking up counties more for congressional districts than legislative districts. The Sixth District is an abomination in many ways.
This is the main difference we need to be drawing between ugly looking districts, those that are so due to preserving communities of interest like NC-1 and NC-3 and those which are done for purely political reasoning, such as FL-22 or our map which was done to create more competitive districts. And what is very obvious is that any "fair" redistricting board will disregard communities of interest and instead aims at creating pretty looking, compact or competitive districts. Who cares if a district looks like a hot mess, they are just arbitrary lines! What we need to care about is the motivation behind having said hot messes.
There are some safeguards, such as Jeff saying that the proposed map would need to be voted on, but wait until we lose these majorities some day, "fair" redistricting, as I've explained, naturally favors the GOP and Im sure they'll love some of the maps a "fair" board would come up with.
Sorry for the extremely long post and putting fair in quotes because doing that comes off a litle childish, but redistricting MN is something I obviously know extremely well and probably better than just about anyone in the state. I am a regular over at Swing State Project and it is our favorite topic; we are even having a contest using Dave's Redistricting App to redistrict NY. I've got a night of a whole lot of nothing planned so now Im going to whip out a 7 and 8 seat map for what I think a "fair" board will be naturally inclined to do. Put MSP into one district to make it as compact as possible being step one.
You are correct. It is common in Europe and other democracies. It is about being able to represent people based on ideas not geography.
Israel is a good example of this concept. Who would have ever thought you'd want to emulate those socialist Europeans KH.
Well then you're looking at a constitutional amendment. Get cracking.
Proportional representation and federalism can get messy. Good luck.