The following are preliminary findings from an upcoming report from Demos, a New York-based nonpartisan public policy organization:
1) Independent Redistricting Commissions do not automatically create more competitive districts:
A) Arizona, the only state to implement a new IRC in the last round of redistricting actually had a bigger drop-off in competitive legislative seats than California did after the last round of redistricting and has since been taken to court for ignoring the requirement to seek competitive districts.
[More after the jump]
The following are preliminary findings from an upcoming report from Demos, a New York-based nonpartisan public policy organization:
1) Independent Redistricting Commissions do not automatically create more competitive districts:
A) Arizona, the only state to implement a new IRC in the last round of redistricting actually had a bigger drop-off in competitive legislative seats than California did after the last round of redistricting and has since been taken to court for ignoring the requirement to seek competitive districts. B) Other IRC states also had mixed success at creating competitive districts, with few significantly increasing competitiveness.
Competitiveness in congressional elections has been declining for decades, as much between rounds of redistricting as immediately after them (indicating that campaign fundraising and other advantages of incumbents, increasingly politically segregated settlement patterns, and other issues may be more important causes of safe seats).
2) Competitiveness should be both highly prioritized and carefully defined.
A) The McCarthy bill, for which the Governor has indicated support, requires the IRC to seek competitive districts, but does not allow it to access any partisan registration data or voting history that would be necessary achieve it.
B) The McCarthy bill defines competitive districts as those with "a difference of no more than seven percentage points between the number of voters in each district who are registered with the two largest political parties." This definition will tend to create districts that lean Republican in a manner similar to a Republican partisan redistricting plan (because of lower turnout and higher crossover rates for registered Democrats).
C) Instead, statistical models based not only on registration data, but also recent voting patterns, should be created to predict whether a district will be competitive (predicting results in which the major parties each get 46.5-53.5% of the major party vote). Michael McDonald, hired as the competitiveness expert for Arizona's IRC, developed a highly predictive model and software that allowed it to easily be applied to draft maps, but his suggestions were ignored by the IRC, which interpreted the Constitution as considering competitiveness a lower-level priority (and according to a Maricopa Judge, did not even give it that lesser degree of weight, instead ignoring it almost completely).
3) Minority representation must be respected.
A) A three member panel comprised of retired judges is unlikely to reflect California's diversity. Retired judges are more likely to be older, white, male, and Republican than the average citizen.
B) A larger number of commissioners including some current judges or citizens would help make the panel more diverse and responsive to minority needs.
C) Compliance with the Voting Rights Act should be explicitly required and prioritized in the amendment, which the McCarthy bill does not do.
For more information, check www.demos-usa.org next week when the report will be posted.
Disclosure: The author of this comment is a policy analyst for Demos and author of the forthcoming report.