My neighborhood is split into two different precincts and legislative districts, which means neither representative has to listen to us. They can all go forage for votes fifteen miles away. This is South Carolina so Democrats are naturally ignored. What's interesting is that they way things are set up, the Republicans in the neighborhood get ignored too. Some are suckered into believing that they have more access to the system, but of course the only access to elected officials that really work is when you can hand them a check or threaten their reelection. Here are some thoughts on the political significance of the three foot wide shallow ditch which runs through the swamp behind my house.
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A small creek runs behind my home in I'On. If you like swamps, you can step over it.
The Wando River is about a mile to the East. It is a quarter of a mile wide, sixty feet deep. Great ships ride its water.
If you asked an ordinary Republican or a Democrat where the edge of our community is, they might select the wide Wando. Only someone designing legislative districts would select the little creek behind my house. Ten years ago someone did.
My neighbors living 100' south are in the legislative district represented by Chip Limehouse (Dist. 110-R, see map). Those neighbors vote in a different precinct at Town Hall, Mount Pleasant # 4. Chip Limehouse lives in downtown Charleston and represents a district which reaches from Lockwood Blvd. downtown to Highway 41 at the bridge and beyond. I am represented by Chris Merrill (Dist. 99-R, see map) and vote at the Armory in Mount Pleasant Precinct #15. Chris Merrill represents a district which largely lies across the Wando River and reaches further across the Cooper to North Charleston, Harahan and Otranto.
I and my neighbors share the same community association. We both drink at O'Brion's Pub. We both shop at BI-LO where kids from our neighborhood work. We're zoned for the same three public schools. We drive the same roads, hear the same noise from the Port Authority and worry when the trees on Mathis Ferry Road are threatened. We have the same problems, even if the Republicans and Democrats here can't agree on the solutions. When Republican or Democratic solutions are the issue, we head to two different legislators to deal with them. Two visits, two sets of letters, two copies of the petition on which each legislator must attempt to determine which voters belong to their district.
At least we're both represented by Chip Campsen in the South Carolina Senate. But his district (see map of District) runs from Wild Dunes on the Isle of Palms to Downtown Charleston where it divides the city using a different line from the house districts and then runs up to Summerville. Large parts of Mount Pleasant aren't included in Campsen's district, which also leaves out parts of downtown.
Racial and partisan politics don't explain these districts. If the goal is merely for Republicans drawing legislative lines to elect more Republicans something less disconnected than this would accomplish that. These districts are impossible to describe in words or remember. You need a map and when you get one, they don't make any sense. Those maps are at www.scstatehouse.gov online.
I'm a Democrat. I would be happy to be represented by a Democrat if I could cleverly arrange it. That's my job as a Democratic party precinct officer. A district with that sole objective would look worse than these. Computers make that possible. That is a bad thing. Getting Democrats elected should be accomplished by making the political process work, just like Republicans.
These districts defy even making sure that elected Republicans are accountable to Republican voters. Campsen's district crosses and divides at least six municipal boundaries, the boundary between Charleston and Berkeley Counties, and two school districts.
I've been trying to persuade Chip Campsen to be a liberal since he sat next to me in Charlie Randall's Constitutional Law class at the USC School of Law in 1982. He's been trying to get me to take up weights at the gym approximately as long. Chip's a smart guy, but he's not smart enough to deal with six municipal governments and keep in touch with the over 90 people on the city and town councils running them, as well as staff. He can't go mingle with the voters at six different high school football games on a Friday evening in fall. That is what effective political representatives have to do.
These existing districts were drawn based on crude information from the 2000 census, before GPS and computers transformed voter information. Political consultants, who advise our legislators on reapportionment, had to make do with input from legislators, precinct election returns and census tract based detail. Limited detail restricted district complexity.
The districts being drawn now will originate in powerful new computer software armed with detailed information about campaign phone banking responses, individual household demographic data and party primary participation. I can map for race, primary, yard signs displayed and who said they would vote for Linda Ketner. I could plot a twisted line though the neighborhood which puts 85 percent of the Democrats there on one side, while selectively orphaning Democratic opposition.
Computers can do that to the entire state at a level of prickly complexity which exceeds what I could do in my own neighborhood with my head, comparing millions of options statewide. If you told someone you planned to vote for Huckabee in the 2008 Republican Presidential Primary, it is in a computer somewhere. So is who you sent a check to. What now looks like a crazy quilt or puzzle pieces may be turned into something which looks like the floor of a kindergarten classroom after lunch during flu season or a Jackson Pollack splatter painting. What is bad now, would get worse.
On Thursday, April 14 at 5 p.m. there will be a meeting in Dorchester County Council Chambers, in Summerville to receive input on the shape of House Districts. No such meeting has been planned for Mount Pleasant. On April 14, I and my neighbors will ask for one precinct and set of legislative districts for our neighborhood, which will hopefully have borders related to how we live and who we know. Perhaps you should do the same for your neighborhood.
That's what functional representative government requires. It must begin with districts and precincts which respect the borders of community and geography.