His look must appeal to the witness protection program folks in Blackhawk, California
I was watching the local news last night and was kind of shocked to see the Republican House member Richard Pombo. The guy was an out-and-out dolt but apparently in a “safe” district and nearly impossible to unseat because of gerrymandering. I then looked at the shape of the ridiculous 11th District.
Check out this district where none of the constituents have anything in common. And the group is carefully chosen from 4 separate counties. This is California corruption at its finest. And the result? This guy Pombo. He wears wife-beaters. Looks like a refugee from the Sopranos cast. And he sounds like a teenage boy when he tries to talk. Yet he is odds-on favorite to win re-election in this ludicrous district. Of course Gerrymandering only works because the voters let it work by voting without thought. A good way to end all this is to eschew party affiliation and become an independent. The whole country suffers from this phenomenon. You see the result. IN California it is extreme.
From the excellent Wikipedia entry on Gerrymandering:
In an unusual occurrence in 2000, for example, the two dominant parties in the state of California cooperatively redrew both state and federal legislative districts to preserve the status quo, ensuring the electoral safety of the politicians from possible unpredictable voting by the electorate. This move proved completely effective, as no State or Federal legislative office changed party in the 2004 election, with 53 congressional, 20 state senate, and 80 state assembly seats potentially at risk.
And what’s this image all about?
yes, gerrymandering is absolutely toxic to representative democracy. and there seems to be no effective way to combat it. supposed “non-partisan” panels that are set up to draw districts are quickly subverted to partisan aims. And it is not strictly a Dems do it, Republicans do it thing – sometimes the two parties join hands to make safe seats for each other.
solutions:
(1) at large districts. you live in a state with five Congressmen, you get five votes. you can cast them all for one person, or spread them around. this dilutes geographical representation, to be sure, and is unlikely in the extreme. but it can be done without amending the Constitution.
(2) term limits. it is the power of the incumbency combined with gerrymandered districts that prevents turnover. this is less likely, but not impossible.
I would favor a constitutional convention to impose term limits on Congress if Congress itself votes it down.
Pombo is an ass.
Take a look at Mark Foley’s district (Florida’s 16th Congressional District http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida%27s_16th_congressional_district ). This is what you can get from gerrymandering. It may not look that bad but I know John knows some folks in Florida. I’m sure he knows that having one person serve Palm Beach, farmland along the lake, and areas on the West coast of Florida is crazy. Yet it helps keep the person in office, until they get caught and have to resign. Here is another great example from Florida, Congressional District 22 http://nationalatlas.gov/printable/images/preview/congdist/fl22_109.gif . This one is a mess running all the way up the southeast coast and jutting out wherever they thought they could find similar voters. The amazing thing is E. Clay Shaw (who has held office since 1981) might actually loose!
The GOP drove the same redistricting in Texas and New Mexico for the 2004 presidential elections. In south florida, where many of friends live, they are trying to redistrict Wilton Manors because it’s becoming too large a concentration of “non republicans”.
Folks, this is happening before your eyes. Public apathy coupled with abuse of political power is taking this country down. Nobody gives a crap until it’s too late.
Kinda like pollution – I can still see and breath, can’t I?
Kinda like the national debt – not my problem, I’ll be dead.
Kinda like separation of church and state – yeah but beer and football is cheap.
Gerrymanding sucks, we need the at-large concept mentioned by #1.
That being said, lets say we divide up a state on a pure geographic way (say a grid), where for whatever reason, each grid cell contains 51% from party A, and 49% party B. The election results in 100% reps from party A. Not as democratic as we might strive for.
Note that my example was a hypothetical one… but there have been cases where gerrymandering has given minorities representation for the first time.
Also note that drawing up districts is not easy. The american population is very mobile, and lines have to be drawn somewhere, always resulting in someone’s political gain and someone’s loss.
But the lines should NEVER be drawn by officials in power. NEVER.
What’s wife beaters?
#6
It’s this.
I’d like to petition to change the headline to “Gerrymandering killed democracy in 1812 and we’ve just been propping up the corpse since then.”
Doug –
Term limits can create problems as well. Not the least of which is what happens when you have a really good representative? I think your description of how an at-large system should work is not great either. There are a variety of ways to make this work (called proportional representation or PR) and some are better than others. What you describe probably would only lead to bloc voting. For instance, Utah is arguably the most Republican state in the union but it has one Democratic congressman because one of its districts is set up that way. Under an at-large system as you describe, Utah would probably be all Republican. The better way to do this in the US might be through
STV or single transferable vote
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Transferable_Vote
I also like the shortest splitline algorithm mentioned in the wiki.
It is a damn shame that we (justifiably) have so little faith in our government, that turning over a very important function to a computer seems like a decent solution.
#9. the thing is, nobody is indispensible. If a person can do, say, 4 terms in the HoR, he could then run for the Senate where, say, he could do 2 terms. That’s 20 years in office if his constituents want him there. That should be enough for anyone.
One of the principles that the Framers of our constitution believed in was rotation in office. They had careers in government, but held a variety of positions. Jefferson, forex, was a delegate to the Continental Congress, governor of VA, secretary of state, ambassador to France, then president. A lifetime of service, but he did not keep a death-grip on one single office. I think if the Framers knew that the power of the Federal government would be expanded to the point where its elected representatives could use it to remain in office, they would have enacted term limits in the original document.
and proportional representation actually helps minority parties – you can cast all your statewide votes for the one Democrat if you want. but it you live in a solid red district within Utah, you cast a vote for a Democrat who will likely not win. under the first alternative, your votes can make a difference.
People would benefit from knowing a little history. Saying this is how it has “always” been is never a good argument, but it often puts things in better perspective. I think there exists many more serious dangers to democracy than gerrymandering. Hey, the courts even like it.
The only dolt benefiting by gerrymander is Republican? I think not. Wait until Dem’s get control, God forbid.
Politics was much dirtier at our founding than now. Things are too public to pull as much off now, politicians are not simply nicer, they just can’t get away with as much. Power and money my friend, that’s what it’s all about. This is common to every party. If you don’t play, you can’t win. (Gee, can’t we just all get along)
I recommend Scandalmonger by William Safire http://www.bookbrowse.com/reviews/index.cfm?book_number=555
It may help understand how things were in the good old days.
If only someone would do something about gerrymandering in California. Oh wait, the governor proposed it, but the Democrats mobilized against it. What was John Dvorak saying about it at the time? Did he even vote? And to top it off, I think Democrats would pick up a few seats this election if they had followed Arnold’s proposal!
#14. Yes, I am sure Ahnold proposed the anti-gerrymandering thing due to his disinterested concern for abstract fairness.
what we need is a partisan suicide pact – an equal number of red-leaning and blue-leaning states need to de-gerrymander at the same time.
Gerrymandering has been used extensively in giving minorities greater voice during election, as well as denying them their voice. Both parties have and continue to do it. The sad thing is that the mentality that allows it also helps the two parties keep any third, or forth, party from forming. I haven’t lived in a state where they didn’t change the districts immediately after one or the other party displaced it antagonist.
It could help if we went back to the state legislatures appointing the Senators for the US Congress. This would give the states more direct representation allowing for a senators immediately recall and replacement when they fail their state or go out and embarrass their constituents.
I’m a little tired of being told to vote for a party that betrayed my beliefs just because voting for a third will help the other side. It’s time for a nationalist party, and get rid of the Globalist on both sides.
I find it hard to accept your point of view, John, when half of your post does nothing but attack how Pombo looks. Though I agree with you, gerrymandering is a very big concern – especially in California, but attacking a politician because you think a wifebeater would fit him more than a suit and tie is rubbish. Attack him because he’s a politician :p
Doug, Republicans don’t have that many seats in California, so it’s tough to say who would be helped by gerrymandering. John Dvorak clearly thinks it would help the Democrats, at least for this one seat. I don’t think Arnold particularly cares about the Republican delegation in Congress, and just threw that in with the rest of his reform agenda.
There are 3 parties when redistricting Dems Republicans and incumbents.
If you really want to save Democracy, then people should be pressing for term limits. It doesn’t matter who win the election because after 2 terms they’ve become co-opted by DC politics. It was unfortunate that the only item in Gingrich’s “Contract with America” that wasn’t implemented was Term Limits. In the 12 years of being in power they’ve become just as corrupt as the Democrats.
Gerrymandering gets a bad rap these days but it doesn’t necessary deserve it’s bad reputation. In fact, it can be a boon to democracy in some cases. A gerrymandered district that votes overwhelmingly Republican means that those votes are consolidated from areas with less Republican support. Thus a minority community can still find representation in state government even in the case it only composes, say for example, 20% of the general population of a given state.
I believe that all states should be gerrymandered into political and idealogical districts–Especially in states where a majority party has a monopoly on representation because purely geographical districting results in that party getting a slight edge in all districts.
Arnold raised the issue because he couldn’t get the permanent members of the state legislature to agree to anything. He couldn’t threaten to wage war against them because they are virtually undeafeatable after the deal they all made together.
So he felt if redistricting were out of their hands maybe a change would happen, they realized that too and almost all of them fought the proposal.
John, Pombo is from a big agri-business family. He was originally from farm country and that is how they dress outside LA and San Francisco. From what I have been able to gather he is about the dumbest of the family, so politics was a natural for him, and saved his father from having to support him the rest of his life.
Gerrymandering is good and bad. There wouldn’t be hardly any Mexican, Black or Asian districts if it weren’t for Gerrymandering. Unfortunatly, it also usually locks in one party or another(except for California, where they made their deal with the devil years ago). Gerrymandering is why out of 435 House seats up every 2 years, there usually is only 25 to 35 actual competitive seats.(this year is an anomoly)
#18. perhaps it was undue suspicion on the part of the Democrats – no doubt contributed to by Delay’s deck-stacking in TX – but the perception was that by “ungerrymandering” the House districts in CA, Arnold was trying to give the GOP a shot at them.
#22. gerrymandering helps ethnic minorities if one thinks that the way to do so is to elect people who look like them. even if that means that, by corralling them into majority-minority districts, the majority-majority politicians now are free to ignore their concerns. my personal opinion is that has not helped minorities get their issues addressed in Congress. It is becoming more and more a fallacy that white folks wont vote for minority representatives, so that justification for minority-majority districts seems to be fading.
#2: My sister-in-law apparently lives in Pombo’s district, judging from the map. I have no idea what Pombo has to do with it, but the little town she lives in is full of old hippies that haven’t grown up, alcoholics, and flakes. She’s selling her house and moving out of state soon.
yeah it gives the gop a shot just like it gives the dems a shot at gop seats. In California, that favors the Dems.
I live in this Pombo’s district and I HATE this jerk. I’m also a republican, but ever since the days of napster I’ve been voting against this slime ball and nothing ever works. People are just fucking stupid.
Back in the hay-day of Napster, everyone sent letters to their congress critters and senators. Pombo was my critter, and Feinstein (she’s up for reelection) and Boxer are my reps. All three of them wrote back not giving support to napster, fair use, or the fact that napster isn’t hurting sales of music at all. (blame WalMart for Tower records for closing shop!)
So anyway, fine. They have to cover thier legal asses while they kiss the asses of the RIAA and the MPAA. but it’s obvious they are NOT representing me anymore… since then I’ve been voting against these three twits ever since.
I’m surprised the Pombo’s opponent, Jerry McNerney, isn’t using this information in his campaign ads. He is trying to do a smear campaign but it’s really weak. Yet, Pombo’s attempt to make himself clean is just as weak. Pombo is just a fat cat wanting to get fatter.
#14 — Yeah ABCD, it’s my fault. Cripes.
One thing that might help a little would be that only the candidates’ names appear on the ballot. No other label about party affiliation or incumbency should be available at the time of casting your ballot. Not only would it prevent this nonsense of only voting based on a political party, but it would also force the voters to actually know who they plan on voting for beforehand. And if you can’t be bothered to research the candidates and their positions beforehand, I don’t believe you have any business voting at all.
The founders of the nation intended the congress to be the most up to date, dynamic and representative part of the government. Computerized gerrymandering has instead made it the most rigid , insensitive, and least representative odivision of government. I think the U.S. Supreme court should weigh in on how these computer maps have made our government less democratic but more secure for incumbants. One solution might be to rule that a voting district has to fit within the state and can only have four 90 degree corners.
They could use photo cropping software to make it work.
#23…Doug…..the courts, the justice department and all of the groups who’s livlihood depends on race or ethnicity will never allow it. They all insist that there must be minority/majority districts or the election isn’t fair.
And lets face it, most minority groups DO vote for the person who looks like them, you see it every election in California.