Map of kossacks who have signed onto the project.
I am a humble dailykos member, who wants to organize other dailykos members in the state of Pennsylvania. If you would like to participate, please kosmail the following:
1. Your first name
2. Your zipcode
3. Your e-mail address (optional)
For what motivated me to start this series, see DocDawg's post on North Carolina.
For my previous diaries in this series, follow the tag Dailykos-PA.
In light of the recent news that the Supreme Court upheld
Arizona's independent redistricting commission, there were
immediate calls here at Dailykos to get
similar commissions to the voters in the rest of the states.
Of course, Pennsylvania should be right at the top of that list.
Pennsylvania is one of the most gerrymandered states in the United States at both the state and federal level.
One of PA's state senators, Dailykos-endorsed Daylin Leach, even wrote about the problem of gerrymandering in the state, and how it affects polarization in Congress.
As a result, we have representation that does not represent the will of the voters (90,000 more Democrats, 13-5 Republican). We are robbed of real public debate that comes from contested political campaigns. If someone can never lose, his or her opponent (in the increasingly unlikely case that there is an opponent) can never win. So they get no money and no media attention, so there is no real campaign.
But it’s worse than that. The most pernicious consequence of gerrymandering is the literal death of our ability to govern ourselves. Government in a democracy is the result of debate, negotiation, compromise and the drive to solve problems. If I am a Congressman in a 50-50 district, my political incentive is to look reasonable, appeal to the center and pass legislation I can brag about.
But if I am in a district I can never lose to a member of the other party, my incentives are very different. I have no need to reach out to the other side or appear to be reasonable. If I can only lose in a primary to someone more ideologically pure than I am, then my incentive is to be as vociferously ideological as possible, demonize anyone who disagrees with me, and in general seem as crazy as possible to ward off a possible (for example) tea party challenge.
As Stephen Wolf notes, ballot initiatives are seemingly one of the most effective ways of getting these independent redistricting commissions passed.
Looking to the future, the initiative process provides activists with one of the most potent tools they have to fight gerrymandering. Republican-drawn states such as Florida, Michigan, Ohio, and Utah are all ripe targets for potential redistricting reform campaigns if only activists can organize and raise enough funds to compete. Reform initiatives are overwhelmingly popular when proponents have enough funds to wage a competitive campaign, as evidenced by the broad margins by which such measures passed in Arizona, California, and Florida.
Unfortunately, Pennsylvania ballot measures
only come in one variety: legislatively-referred constitutional amendment.
- legislatively-referred constitutional amendment - A constitutional amendment that appears on a state's ballot as a ballot measure because the state legislature in that state voted to put it before the voters.
This is where organizing Pennsylvania Kossacks can come into play.
Since ballot measures can only get to the voters through the legislature, we should all message our state Reps and Senators about proposing and supporting such a measure.
Furthermore, it should not be a new issue at all to our state lawmakers. A bipartisan group of state legislators came out earlier this month in favor of such reforms.
"This bipartisan effort is not about whether we need to change redistricting, but how we should do it."
What they need now is for voters to show them that we are behind such measures, and to push the talk in favor of California and Arizona-style independent redistricting commissions.
Like the bill recently proposed by Democratic State Rep. Ted Harhai.
Rep. Ted Harhai (D-Westmoreland), the bill’s sponsor, said Pennsylvanians on the redistricting commission would be randomly selected from a pool of qualified applicants, a duplicate of California’s redistricting commission.
Harhai’s plan also would use as an outline Iowa’s law that district boundaries be as compact and square as possible, with no county, city, borough or township divided unless absolutely necessary.
Whether the process is fixed through legislation or a proposed ballot initiative, the point remains that the only missing ingredient now is getting the electorate to show our support, either at the ballot box, or by mailing and contacting our state legislators.
Because of how intimately entwined gerrymandering is with the reps and sens most able to leverage the system in their favor, redistricting is a difficult area to bring major reforms. However, it is also so vitally important to the democratic process that so vitally affects our communities, at both the local and nation-wide levels.
Because of this, we cannot allow opportunities like this go by without expending our utmost powers to get such reforms passed.
And, it is issues like this that show the importance of organizing voters and citizens, at most any level possible.
Find your local state legislators. If nothing else, you can write them an e-mail, and share what you wrote in the comments.