The California Redistricting Commission has completed it's work, drawing new Congressional, State Senate, State Assembly and Board of Equalization (whatever the hell that is or does) districts.
You'd think that might be the end of it, barring Federal or State court challenges. But no. The dumb as a rock authors of the initiative that made the Commission -- instead of the Legislature -- responsible for drawing new districts also saw fit to allow the Commission's work to be challenged by referendum in the same way that many laws passed by the Legislature can be challenged (Section 3, clause (i)).
In California anyone can attempt to get sufficient signatures (about half a million) to challenge some kinds of laws. If they succeed, the new law is put on hold or, if already in effect, temporarily undone, until an election is held. The voters may approve or reject the law by majority vote. It's a so-called people's veto -- such as is to be held in Ohio this year on SB 5, an anti-union law, and was held in Maine in 2009 to overturn its legislature's legalization of same-sex marriage.
Each of the four maps the Commission has drawn is subject to this process. Each one individually can be challenged by gathering enough signatures, and by doing so at least temporarily nullifying the map. What happens if the map is nullified? The California Supreme Court must appoint 'special masters' (sounds kinky) to draw the lines. If the voters eventually approve of the commissions' map, the Supreme Court lines goes away, replaced by the Commission's districts. If the voters reject the Commission's work, the Supreme Court-drawn lines stay in effect until the next redistricting.
Republicans think they've gotten shafted by the Commission's work, especialy with respect to Congressional and State Senate districts. They are therefore all but certain at this point to attempt to get enough signatures to force a referendum on at least the State Senate map:
California Republican Party Chairman Tom Del Beccaro said the party is backing a petition for a referendum on the June 2012 ballot to overturn the newly approved state Senate districts.
A committee called Fairness and Accountability in Redistricting is expected to submit ballot language to the attorney general's office Tuesday.
Yet they will almost certainly lose at the ballot box. A voting population that overwhelmingly approved of the intitiative that set up the Redistricting Commission is not likely to have any sympathy for sore losers.
If the Republicans are all but destined to lose, what is it they realy hope to accomplish? They hope to have the 2012 elections conducted under the Supreme Court drawn lines, which they believe will be more favorable to them than the Commission's lines. As the LA Times puts it:
If a referendum makes it to the ballot, the redistricting plan adopted Monday will be suspended and the state Supreme Court will determine districts for the 2012 election. GOP strategists say that's an easy bet.
A referendum on the challenged maps would take place in June of 2012. That's the same time that primaries would be held. Even if the voters approved of the Commission's work at that time, the Commission's lines wouldn't go into effect until after the 2012 regular elections -- because the primaries would have been conducted using the Supreme Court drawn lines.
Since no one has any idea what lines drawn by the Supreme Court's special masters would look like, and candidates are already declaring right and left their intention to run for this or that seat in 2012 now that the new districts are supposedly final, chaos is inevitable if and when the Republicans succeed in nullifying newly drawn districts for the 2012 primary and regular elections.
Sigh.