Redstate

before getting too giddy about Arnold's popularity in California...

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c...&type=printable

. . . of these proposals notwithstanding, they each seem like good ideas on their own merits thereby proving the maxim "good policy is good politics."

First, the link doesn't work which is humorous to me.

Second, I mentioned his sliding popularity despite the fact that this is only one poll.  You are free to bet against him, but I've seen true leadership carry the day in too many struggles to believe he will fail.  There is a chance, but I wouldn't bet on it.

There are a lot of people who don't vote based on a particular ideological worldview, a position on a particular issue (or set of issues), or because of a vested interest who will vote for someone they disagree with because they respect them.

Cut and pasted a concantenated link....

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/06/21/MNG56DBUNC1.DTL&
amp;type=printable

I'm not really Anti-Arnold. But of the proposals you mentioned several seem to be more about political grandstanding than sound public policy.

How exactly does he plan to change the tenure system?  I don't like in Cali but it is my understanding that tenure is a collevtive bargaining agreement and not a legal right.  Is this not so in Cali?

You say he has a hands of social approach but then you mention parental notification laws.  

The gerrymandering proposal also seems to be more about grandstanding than anything else.  Offering up ideas that will never see the light of day may give him points but it doesn't, IMO, suggest strong leadership.

The employee's consent on union dues is sure to wow the Republicans he was already going to have vote for him but a lot of people will see that as a purely partisan move to take support away from the Democrats.  In a strongly Democratic state I don't see this going over well.

And I'm at a total loss why it's better to shift the responsibility for this from a bunch of elected goons to a bunch of unelected goons.

I make one request.  Read the whole article I link to before writing your objections.

"You say he has a hands of social approach but then you mention parental notification laws."

He hasn't even endorsed that proposition despite polls showing 70+% of CA voters supporting it.  Read the article for the details.

Well I responding to your points and not Dupont's but ok.  

I thought I made it clear that 3 proposals were from GOV Schwarzenegger and the others were on the same ballot but were not eminating from his office.  If that wasn't clear, that's my poor writing.  

Arnold's fall in the polls has really had me scratching my head. A number of the propositions he supports also seem to have popular support. He might me making some political mistakes that are making him less effective in Sacramento, but I can see that causing the huge swing. Calling the special election seems to be unpopular, but I can't imagine that really causing such a huge swing.

However, to me, three things stick out from the article and provide some explanation:

(1) The poll doesn't seem to historically matter:

Besides Davis, the only governors to fall below Schwarzenegger's current 37 percent approval were Pete Wilson, at 33 percent in September 1992 and May 1993, and Pat Brown, at 35 percent in October 1961. Despite those low numbers, both won re-election.

There is something wrong with a poll if its predictive ability is this poor.

(2) Neither the article or the poll give any proof of why Arnold's popularity would be dropping so dramatically. There are a couple throw away lines that guess it is a result of his confrontation with nurses, teachers, and the like, but this is nothing more than poor guessing. Either the Field Poll ppl did a great disservice by not asking why or the Chronicle did by not reporting it.

(3) In comparison to other politicians and political bodies in CA, Arnold and the governorship are perceived better. Arnold's numbers appear to be low b/c all politicians' numbers are low. Democratic legislators have no ability to crow over Arnold's numbers when theirs are even lower:

The poll wasn't all roses for Maviglio's current employer, Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez, D-Los Angeles. As low as Schwarzenegger's ratings were, the Legislature was even less popular: 24 percent of the registered voters were pleased with the job it was doing, and only 5 percent said they had a great deal of confidence in the Legislature's ability to deal with the state's budget deficit.

Voters also are convinced that Schwarzenegger and the Legislature are more interested in confrontation than compromise when it comes to solving the state's problems. About one-third of those surveyed said the governor was negotiating in good faith, while 25 percent thought the Legislature was working hard to come to agreements with Schwarzenegger.

One of the great things about referendums is that legislatur's don't get to used the population's supposed support or lack of it as a reason to block a piece of legislation. It goes to the ppl themselves. Come the election, we will see what happens. Somebody is going to come up with a couple black eyes.

Well, I sure hope the anti-gerrymandering proposal makes some headway.  Its frustrating that the part of government that is supposed to be most accountable to the people is now the most static.  Competitive races also should encourage the representatives to listen to their constituents more.

I don't know how well retired judges would work out.  It would be nice just to set some geometrical guidelines for drawing districts.  A district cannot be more than twice as long as it is wide, or it can't be convex, or something like that.  Probably none of those ways would work though.  I do think that a non-partisan body working in good faith to draw reasonable boundaries that correspond to geographical and political areas would do better than we have now.

I'm at a total loss for why gerrymandering is bad. We've only been at it since the dawn of the Republic. Indeed, a quick Google of the term might yield some interesting results, were the enterprising reader to go there.

Having judges control one more aspect of our lives -- insofar as they don't already -- is bad enough. But this idiotic, patronizing belief that voters are forced to vote their registrations, and can't simply vote out of office those who do things that the voters don't like, is rather horrifying. It's like term limits: Either you believe voters are stupid sheep, or you trust them to vote their self-interests come ballot time.

There are other ideas that may be better, but I do think this is better than nothing.

Ideally (in my world), there would be an independent body that is bipartisan and must vote unanimously on boundaries that would follow certain guidelines including compactness while being disallowed to look at voter registration or voting histories of areas or homes.  They may or may not be competitive, but they would make sense.

computers changed the whole game.  It's one thing to broadly draw lines that probably give you an advantage.  But it's another to map specific streets as to choose exactly who will be voting in your election.  That abilities has done a disservice to democracy and aided the growth of the extremes at the expense of moderates.

I think most of America wants a reform that returns some more competitiveness to races and they will vote for GOV Schwarzenegger because he is responding to their wishes.  I think other politicians will follow suit and reap the rewards.  They will be doing the will of the people.

 Looking at the extreme lengths that gerrymandering has been taken to (See some Texas districts for that), I'm of the firm belief that redistricting should be done on more of a nonpartisan basis than it is now. Of course, there may be a reason Arnold wants retired judges to do it - that should be debated. But if all you're going to do is build districts to order to make incumbents darn near impervious, then why don't we just reinstall a monarchy?

FWIW, Texas' districts aren't nearly the worst in the country.  The issue over the past two years was switching a pro-Dem gerrymander into a pro-Rep gerrymander.  Before the change, Dems had a majority of Congressional seat in TX... which one might see as fishy.

IIRC, PA's are pretty bad and GA's were atrocious before the newest effort this year.  But most states (esp. big ones) have a couple really weird districts.  And CA being the biggest can do the weirdest things if it wants to.

Underlying all of the arguments against gerrymandering is the heartfelt belief that voters are too stupid to pick their own representatives; that if a politician is very very bad at his job, the voters won't pick his opponent in response; that simply all of the computer models and projections tell us a Calvinist tale of Man's Vote.

Give me a break.

If the voters aren't tossing the bums out, it's because they're comfortable with their bums. It's happened before that they gave the incumbents the toss, it'll happen again.

I still blame that one-man-one-vote garbage, and the inherent desire to perfect Man that it encouraged.

I see five reasons for Arnold's fall to 37% popularity in the polls:

• he reneged on his deal for education funding
  
• he attacked nurses, teachers, and firefighters
  
• he isn't working with the legislature on the budget
  
• he just called a special election which the voters don't want
  
• he promised to change the way things are done in Sacramento, but he has failed to do so

Initiatives have made the state pretty much ungovernable by anyone, so it's really not surprising that Arnold is suffering the same fate as Wilson and Davis.  As you pointed out, both Wilson and Davis were quite unpopular when they were re-elected, so it doesn't count Arnold out for 2006.  Wilson and Davis had weak opponents and (in Wilson's case) a wedge issue campaign and a big year for his party.

It uses the quirks of a representative system to undermine the most essential element of democracy -- rule by the ppl. But you will say that it is still rule by the ppl since they vote, but using simple voting as a measuring stick is flawed sine it doesn't get to the heart of the issue. Voting is just a mechanism that doesn't necessarily imply democracy. The proper metric is the hypthetical question "Is the state going in the direction the people want?" That gets to the heart of rule by the ppl and democracy. This include not just voting the way the electorate wishes, but also what is voted on.

Gerrymandering undermines democratic ideals in two ways:

(1) It draws line to solidify power and protect those that have the power from the ppl taking it away from them.

(2) It draws line to remove power from groups of people. If 60% of the electorate want a particlar school reform, lines can be drawn so that they are only represented by 40% of the legislative body.

If you believe in free markets, then believing in the marketplace of ideas that is the electorate should be a minor step. We put representatives in office since a direct constitutional democracy isn't logistically feasible, and the economics of time don't favor one.

It shouldn't be hard to see how carving up an electorate can turn a majority into a bunch of minorities.

You do scare me. You seem like just power hungy pro-government conservative who can't wait to bring about the Kingdom of God through human laws.

"Underlying all of the arguments against gerrymandering is the heartfelt belief that voters are too stupid to pick their own representatives"

If this is a truly popular measure (which most polls show), then it is voters who think voters are too stupid to pick their own representatives.

Or maybe it's something else.  Maybe I'd prefer to be in a district that is compact and has similar characteristics (suburb, urban, etc) instead of being in one tentacle of a sprawling district that makes no geographic, cultural, or economic sense.  That way my representative would actually represent a coherent area or place, not a blob created by a computer.

Maybe it's that I want two 80-20 districts of opposite party control turned into two 50-50 districts where each election is close and my vote may actually matter.

I don't think one has to try to "perfect man" to recognize that the lack of competitiveness is higher now than ever before and that computer-generated districts are part of the cause.

The Economist has a good run down on the problem that I find convincing:

The other great blot on American democracy--redistricting--has already made a nonsense of elections to Congress. Despite all the hoopla about the 50:50 nation, no more than around 30 seats of the 435 in the House of Representatives are competitive (see article). In 2002, four out of five congressmen won their races by more than 20 points. This is because most states allow their politicians to determine the boundaries. The result is gerrymandering on a grotesque scale, with incumbents stitching up safe seats by drawing absurd districts that look like doughnuts, sandwiches and Rorschach tests.

This is not just unfair; it puts people off voting (why bother in those 400 districts where the result is a foregone conclusion?) and it drives politics to the extremes. With no chance of being unseated by the other party, a congressman's only threat is the partisans in the primary; so Republicans become ever more conservative and Democrats ever more left-wing.

As with so many of the other abuses in American politics, it need not be that way. Just as some states have bought good voting machines, others have redrawn their electoral boundaries in a sensible way. Iowa, for instance, allows an independent commission to set them. Redistricting can be fixed--and it should be. America's devotion to the principle of democracy is admirable--but the principle could be far better honoured in the practice.

I'm waiting for another poll or two before I buy the sub-40 rating.  He's slid a bit, but I'm not sure how far.

A stat I read a few months ago where House incumbents were re-elected over 90% of the time.  IMO, that is troubling.

The incumbent has a number of inherent advantages to the challenger.  I really don't think we should give them MORE by allowing gerrymandering.

I'm not sure I would want judges to do it.  Honestly I think the most reasonable group to do it is the Census Bureau.   They could devise a basic formula that would likely apply in all but the most unique cases.

If this is a truly popular measure (which most polls show), then it is voters who think voters are too stupid to pick their own representatives.

Yup. Sorta like how voters didn't think they should be entitled to the full range of political speech. I'm not saying voters are never stupid, I'm saying that the rationale for this silliness is the belief that voters are basically easily led children.

Or maybe it's something else.  Maybe I'd prefer to be in a district that is compact and has similar characteristics (suburb, urban, etc) instead of being in one tentacle of a sprawling district that makes no geographic, cultural, or economic sense.  That way my representative would actually represent a coherent area or place, not a blob created by a computer.

I presume you're not saying that your district ceased to exist in the real world once it was gerrymandered, but rather that you prefer your arbitrary district to someone else's arbitrary district. Different tastes, one supposes. Doesn't seem to go to the discussion.

I don't think one has to try to "perfect man" to recognize that the lack of competitiveness is higher now than ever before and that computer-generated districts are part of the cause.

I know I'm a wild-eyed ideologue on this, but is it barely, just barely possible that no one except newspaper editors and political junkies -- which is to say, the only people who live for political excitement -- is actually upset with their current representation? Because, if they were, they might, oh, I'm out on a limb, I know, vote for someone else?

Just a thought.

The Field Poll is the gold standard in California, with an excellent record for accuracy.  We have a long and proud history of hating our government, even when its ineffectiveness is our own fault!

 and public redistricting fight, was all.

I presume you're not saying that your district ceased to exist in the real world once it was gerrymandered, but rather that you prefer your arbitrary district to someone else's arbitrary district. Different tastes, one supposes. Doesn't seem to go to the discussion

that it isn't being done arbitrarily.   Gerrymandering is the WILLFUL structuring of districts to maximize the tenure of your party's congresscritters.  

Do you believe that most voters choose their incumbent 9 out of 10 times because the incumbent has done such a bang up job?  Or is it because most voters have only a passing interest in who their Representative is and generally vote purely on Party lines?

If you were to talk outside of your office and ask 20 people to name who their House Representative is how many do you think would actually know?

I'm not questioning their ability.  But 1 in 20 polls is an outlier.  I'll wait for corroboration on this one since the swing was so big.  He may be in the 40s, but I would be surprised with another sub-40 reading.

Even now.

In order:

It uses the quirks of a representative system to undermine the most essential element of democracy -- rule by the ppl. But you will say that it is still rule by the ppl since they vote, but using simple voting as a measuring stick is flawed sine it doesn't get to the heart of the issue. Voting is just a mechanism that doesn't necessarily imply democracy. The proper metric is the hypthetical question "Is the state going in the direction the people want?" That gets to the heart of rule by the ppl and democracy. This include not just voting the way the electorate wishes, but also what is voted on.

This is silly. Your argument could be paraphrased as, It's not really democracy just because people get to pick their representatives; they must also have the government go as they wish, which is somehow not the same as the direction produced by the electoral winners they chose.

That's inane. You're either demanding literal, direct democracy -- which really isn't an issue here -- so that The People can toss up every issue at their beck and call and have their say on it (and this really defeats the point of electing representatives, but moving on); or that we create candidates who are perfectly responsive to the majority whims and wants of their electorate, instead of just having to face them again every two years.

And what you're really saying is that the voters can't figure out that the guy they put in office two years ago isn't addressing their concerns, or is doing so incorrectly, and so the dumb sheep will re-elect the bum.

I'm a conservative. I have a low opinion of human beings. But frankly, yours is insulting.

Gerrymandering undermines democratic ideals in two ways:

(1) It draws line to solidify power and protect those that have the power from the ppl taking it away from them.

(2) It draws line to remove power from groups of people. If 60% of the electorate want a particlar school reform, lines can be drawn so that they are only represented by 40% of the legislative body.

(1) Unless you're saying that elected representatives send out bloody, well-armed enforcers, or have eliminated the ballot box, this is silly hyperbole. They can still vote against the incumbent.

(2) No, sadly, they can't do this. What you really mean is that they can be diluted into districts in which their view is in the minority, so that those districts in which their view is the majority view become the minority.

Well, funny me, I thought part of representative democracy was convincing your fellow citizens to vote your way. If you can't succeed at that, your issue probably wasn't going to win anyway. And the elected representatives who'd cut districts based on an issue rather than on party affiliation haven't been built yet.

If you believe in free markets, then believing in the marketplace of ideas that is the electorate should be a minor step. We put representatives in office since a direct constitutional democracy isn't logistically feasible, and the economics of time don't favor one.

I like puppies, too.

This is the sort of grandstanding rhetoric that invariably means you have no real oomph behind your point. Unless you're suggesting that gerrymandering produces a police state -- please let me know if that's where you're going -- then the "marketplace of ideas" is doing quite fine, thanks. Just because it's not the old Taiwanese Parliament doesn't mean that the issues aren't being thrashed out; rather, it's just barely possible that folks are pleased with how things are, or at the very least, aren't disturbed enough to care. You may wish to lead the Volk into a brighter, glorious future, but the way I figure it, if it ain't broke, don't activate the Law of Unintended consequences. The lack of hue and cry from the electorate suggests to me it ain't broke.

It shouldn't be hard to see how carving up an electorate can turn a majority into a bunch of minorities.

"Coalition politics."

You do scare me. You seem like just power hungy pro-government conservative who can't wait to bring about the Kingdom of God through human laws.

And you seem like a panicky cretin with no reading comprehension, a miserable opinion of human beings, and the determination to Do It For Their Own Good Whether They Want It or Not. Since you've called me a theocrat, I now get to call you a Communist.

Tag.

If they upset with the current system, might the dumb sheep actually care about who their representative is, or -- I know, it sounds hard, but it can be done -- vote on a (gasp!) split ticket?

Gerrymandering is arbitrary and willful. These two things are not mutually exclusive.

Yeah, all those seem like possible candidates, but I'm nore sure if conventional wisdom is very useful here. I don't think attacking underperforming teachers isn't necessrily hurting him. It might be in a benign drop in approval ratings, as in they would rather Arnold not be so agressive against teachers, but they are not going to vote him out for it.

Initiatives are currently the only thing keeping the state in line. They are a last resort when the govt keeps screwing up and going in the wrong direction. These are a blunt tool, but sometimes the only choice. I think the special election is probably hurting Arnold since that has a definitive negative monetary impact on the state, but I can't imagine how just some random talk could really drive down approval and hurt Arnold's chance at reelection.

Basically, I would just like better information instead of having to make all these guesses.

How is it accurate? By what measure? If you use reelection as a metric, Field Poll's approval measure doesn't seem to be very accurate.

I don't know what you are talking about insanity. I laid out what I had to say in a calm and rational post.

That's inane. You're either demanding literal, direct democracy -- which really isn't an issue here -- so that The People can toss up every issue at their beck and call and have their say on it (and this really defeats the point of electing representatives, but moving on); or that we create candidates who are perfectly responsive to the majority whims and wants of their electorate, instead of just having to face them again every two years.

Huh? I said that representatives are a method of implementing democracy, but that democracy at its core is still rule by the ppl. Direct or representative, democracy is based on the same ideas. This was important b/c you need a metric by which to determine if something is helpful or hindering democracy. Merely voting isn't a strong enough criteria (cf Iran). Gerrymandering fails on this test b/c it is used to draw the government away from the will of the people, or at least make the journey less efficient.

And what you're really saying is that the voters can't figure out that the guy they put in office two years ago isn't addressing their concerns, or is doing so incorrectly, and so the dumb sheep will re-elect the bum.

If you can't see how it is possible to divide up the electorate to make a majority turn into many small minorities, you're a fool. Just look at how the electoral college has this effected in an unintended manner. Bush won the electoral college in 2000, but lost the popular vote. This wasn't even planned by somebody drawing the lines, but a popular majority was turned into an electoral minority b/c of the way lines are drawn. It isn't hard to see how this also applies to legislative gerrymandering, but far worse since it can be planned. It isn't about ppl not voting for who they want, but about their voting power being manipulated.

(1) Unless you're saying that elected representatives send out bloody, well-armed enforcers, or have eliminated the ballot box, this is silly hyperbole. They can still vote against the incumbent.

Yes, they can, but gerrymandering makes it so that the majority don't always get what they want or the minorities doesn't get addequate representation.

This was exactly my point when I said th voting isn't enough to ensure democracy. Voting can be manipulated by the way lines are drawn. Voting is a means to rule of the ppl, and not a end of itself. If you draw lines that reduce the power of certain classes of voters, you have subverted the electorate.

(2) No, sadly, they can't do this. What you really mean is that they can be diluted into districts in which their view is in the minority, so that those districts in which their view is the majority view become the minority.

Everytime the president (or anybody) wins a 2-way election with less than majority support, you are shown how the choice of division effects the outcome of an election.

Here are two simple test:

(1) What is the smallest popular vote needed to win a presidential election? It is well below 50%.

(2) Imagine a country with 121 ppl. You want to divide this into 11 states of 11 people, where each state will have one electoral vote similar to the US. If you are allowed to draw the state lines in any way you want, how little support do you need to win? (Hint: It's less than 30%.)

Either one should show you how dividing lines are important to the outcome.

You solution to gerrymandering is "coalition politics"? How moronic. That's not a solution at all. Coalition poltics is for when a majority decision cannot be found, whereas gerrymandering is used to prevent these majorities from having power.

I still blame that one-man-one-vote garbage, and the inherent desire to perfect Man that it encouraged.

Huh? No blacks and poor people for you?

Candidate L wants to go left, and candidate R wants to go right. The country has nine people, three in each of her three states: A, B, and C. Five people want to go left to they vote for L, while four want to go right and they vote for candidate R.

The lines are draw to two of each of R's supporters are in states A and B. A and B both go 2-to-1 for R, and C goes 3-to-0 for L. B's minority wins and he's elected the presidency even with popular 4-to-5 minority.

The thing is that these four don't just want to go to the right, but they want to go really far to the right. They will keep R in power for a while. However, in the beginning of this example, the electorate as a whole wanted to move a little left. Democracy in the majoritarian sense (the test I gave in the other example) doesn't exist very strongly in this country. The country is being ruled by a small minority.

If you believe that the electorate is an excellent policy weighing machine, and they they tend to make good aggregate decisions, then this should be a tragedy since the will of the people is essentially going ignored.

"The country is being ruled by a small minority."

The President is the first since 1988 to receive 50% of the popular vote.  The Senate (representing the states) is understating Republican strength if you take the 30 (2000) or 31 (2004) states that voted for Bush as a metric of support for Republican Senators meaning there should be 60-62 Rs.  And the House matches the 51%-48% popular vote pretty well.

That being said, the system is not majoritarian in structure.  It has checks on the big states and through multiple brances and veto points.  However, right now, a small majority is in power in the two houses of Congress and the Presidency.

way, way out of line.  Consider this your warning.  If you're calling someone racist you better have something good on them.  Do it again and you are no longer welcome here.

Because that (computers) seems to be exactly the problem to me.

I'd be interested to see what your position is based on.  I just have a vague impression based on various media accounts that I have not bothered to bookmark or critically review.

I could just read the rest of this thread.

Their polling does very well compared with election results.  Popularity is, of course, not the same as electoral support.  Davis and Wilson got alot of votes from people who did not approve of the job they were doing.

Initiatives (including Proposition 13) which mandate requirements on taxes and on spending have tied the government's hands on the budget.  Getting 2/3 approval on a budget makes it really ugly and it makes it impossible to hold legislators accountable, since they are always all to blame.

II don't know how well retired judges would work out.  It would be nice just to set some geometrical guidelines for drawing districts.

Actually the text of the redistricting propostion (see pages 7-8) does specify that in drawing the district lines the judges must give priority to municipal/county boundaries and geographic compactness, and prohibits the use of party registration or voting data.

I agree that using retired judges isn't the most important change, and writing the redistricting criteria into the constitution is the primary benefit of the proposition.  I think though the retired judges are more likely to obey the law on redistricting criteria, than would be the case when the legislators can decide who their voters will be.

but just wanted to remind potential responders up front that I'm not a Republican and never paid attention to you guys before '04 so don't grind me into a pulp if this topic is taboo.

But...am I the only here that thinks repealing the 17th Amendment is a step in the right direction?  /ducks

Sorry if this strays too far off topic.

Well now I'm much more excited about the reform!

Although I'm not one of those.

repealing the 17th amendment would be good because it would return a little bit of federalism, and give states (through their legislatures) more say in federal matters. But it won't happen, people now expect to directly vote on their senators.

And your point is? That you don't like either of them? So. Both still were necessary at the time and passed b/c the govt didn't want to fix the problem. That they made it harder to govern? Of course. Putting limits on government usually does.

Re: Prop 13

My grandmother who has always been a deep blue Dem, subscribes to Mother Jones and all that commie junk, even voted for Prop 13 b/c Sancramento wouldn't do anything to halt the tax increases that were evicting ppl from their homes since they couldn't pay the the increased property taxes.

With Prop 13 on the ballot it wasn't a choice between some ideal tax policy, but between Prop 13 and a world without Prop 13. While not perfect -- and there are many changes some would have liked -- the proposition was still better than doing nothing.

Prop 13 kept the state livable, b/c government wouldn't. I certainly wouldn't have grown up there if it didn't pass. There were other reasons, but this is what pulled even the poor and true blue into it.

Re: budget requirement

Really too much for me to get into right now. It dates back to 1933 and has changed many times. Far too much for such an off topic discussion.

But I still contend that at the time, these propositions were needed. Of course there is going to be contradictory props passed later, b/c things need to change. This is going to happen with any legislation regardless of it is passed by referendum or assembly.

. . . in general to behind any issue where the other side can portray you as taking away someone's "rights."  For better or worse people probably prefer to vote directly for their Senator rather than indirectly through their State legislature.  

Truth be told, I'm for the current system of direct elections as it provides one more check on a parliamentary system.  That a State could have a divided legislature, two Senators from different parties, or legislature from one Party and Senators from the other appeals to me in that it shows more of the nuance and diversity of opinion that can be held in one State.

I implied that any retreat from the "one man one vote" dogma harms minorities and poor. Land or education requirements have both been around. You are the one improperly infering from my post and accusing me of calling somebody a racists.

it's a big loser, and some (don't remember how many) states just wrote laws so that the way the states would choose their senators was through a direct vote anyways.

just poor wording, because I got the same meaning from it. It did surprise me.

The point of the example was to show how a minority can be shut out. It wasn't meant to be applied to current government composition, but on a level involving individual issues, not entire politicians.

Think of an election being a lot of many tiny elections for each issue and trait, and the voters decide who wins each smaller election and preferentially aggregates all that information into a single vote.

I did an example with just one issue, but I could do a two issue example to show how votes on an issue or party can be subverted by the way lines are. Then I could do a three issue example, four issue, and on and on. The same forces are involved, it is just a more complex picture. If Thomas is wrong on the simplified level, he is wrong on the more complex level.

That being said, the system is not majoritarian in structure.  It has checks on the big states and through multiple brances and veto points.

Those checks and balances says nothing about it not being a majoritarian system w.r.t. the population, just w.r.t. the legislator. These multiple layers of checks and balances recognizes that legislators will be anti-democratic and give many opportunities for somebody to step in and rectify that. Hopefully that means that the anti-democratic forces will be punished by the electorate and those more in tune with the ppl will be rewarded. In the case of gerrymandering, this mechanism is broken.

Since with politicians you get a basket of policy ideas and leadership traits, this isn't always very clear cut.

I don't think one has to try to "perfect man" to recognize that the lack of competitiveness is higher now than ever before and that computer-generated districts are part of the cause.

Get rid of the computer-generated districts, and you will end up with computer-generated politicians... plastic people created by consultants and handlers perfectly matched to the demographics and psychographics of the district.

Don't we have enough blow-dried empty suits already? I'd take Conyers over one of those guys.

Talk about really cementing political power in a small ruling class. It is already bad now, but this would make it even worse. The problem is that the government is too insulted from public opinion, and this would only make it worse.

Better solution. Amend the Constitution to include a national referendum process that allows a law or part of a law passed by Congress to be challenged by the public. Many of the worst laws and budgets would be shot down, plus it would be a constant threat to legislators to not try and add crap that nobody wants to legislation.

I misread you... it being a hypothetical.  My bad.

Thomas just seem to think that the electorate can always vote around gerrymandering without any cost. That is emphatically wrong.

Amend the Constitution to include a national referendum process that allows a law or part of a law passed by Congress to be challenged by the public.

That's so last century. Let's have an up-to-date solution. How about we make all the CongressCritters wear little devices that administer electric shocks when activated. People sitting at home watching C-SPAN could zap whoever was talking by pushing a button on the remote. "And before I conclude, may I further say oww!  OWWW! OWWWWW! OK, OK, I'll shut up."

If politicians would up being terribly boring and perfectly representing the ppl, I would consider it an overwhelming success.

Pols aren't elected to take strong, controversial, and unpopular stands. They are there to do what we want, not treat us like children incapable of making these tough decisions.

democratic involvement is a good thing.  I think the devolution of federalism since 1913 is a pretty strong argument that that premise is flawed.  The reason for having two houses is that they should represent different constituencies--one the people; the other the states.  It was envisioned as a check against the tyranny of the majority.  

Referendum democracy would be a trip further away from the Founding Fathers.  It might be inevitable but I'd never agree it's preferrable.  What's beyond that?  Abolish the states altogether and have true direct democracy?  If so, I'll be the one curled up in the corner with my Schumpeter waiting for the arrival of the Social Democrats.

Democratic involvement and federalism are orthogonal, so that is irrelevant.

The notion of state has changed drastically since the country was founded. The senate's ability to slow legislation down is still needed, but the idea that the state's need power to counteract the population is outdated.

The states used to hold certain interests, but now those interests are spread over many states and metropolitan areas are similar across all states. There is no longer a coherent notion of a state's interest that is any different than other states.

The agreement was to get small states to join the union. Now that that is sealed and delivered and with the chaning notion of state, there doesn't seem to be a reason any longer to continue with that tradition. Small states are not going to leave the union, and they have too much in common with larger states.

The Bill of Rights is the check against majoritarian power. It protects all the basics. Beyond that, guarding against the tyrany of the majority by definition creates a tyrany of the minority. There is no reason, for instance, that a minority should hold back free trade agreements against the wishes of the majority.

Referendum democracy would be a trip further away from the Founding Fathers.

They are not secular saints. We shold prefer an originalist reading of the Constitution not because the Founding Fathers were always right, but because it makes the document meaningless and destroys its power. Amending a living Constitution doesn't provide anything since a court can simply reinterpret what was written.

The Founding Fathers may have had some reservations against the unwashed masses, but we shouldn't make the same mistake. I trust my life more to the aggregative views of the electorate than to any group of politicians. Being American Indian, you would think I would wouldn't, but politicians can do far more damage. You only need to bribe a few of them, but you would need to bribe millions of voters.

What's beyond that?  Abolish the states altogether and have true direct democracy?

Direcy democracy doesn't work b/c of logistic problems. You could never have everybody vote on everything, and you wouldn't want to either. Elections for politicians require tremendous expenditures of time and effort for voters. Asking ppl to do that constantly would be too much. Representatives are economically more efficient: we give up getting the best possible decisions made in return of good enough decisions with much less effort.

A national referendum is a way to integrate the two methods more effectively. It provides the low cost, good enough decision making for most things, except for important issues that can then be brought up to the people for a more comprehensive evaluation.

Sadly, the ppl that tend to not like this idea the most tend to also be the best educated, just like economic socialism. And it happens for the same reasons. Economic planning is supported by those that want to circumvent the market b/c it is nothing more than the aggregated views of the public, and they think thay can do better by using their intellect to plan the economy instead. Those wanting to plan the rest of the nation seem to have the same motivation: they dont' trust the aggregated view of the public, so they want to plan it for them. Elections are no different than a free market.

The one-man one-vote silliness is only tangentially related to minority voting rights, at least as a matter of jurisprudence. It was actually a Court-imposed attempt to undo Party-rigged gerrymandering -- yes, during the Civil Rights era -- an attempt that had been batting around in legal circles for decades before the Civil Rights movement began in earnest.

My problem with that line of jurisprudence is that it led to so many of the problems we have now: There must be almost an identical number of people in each voting district, etc. That led to computer mapping, neighborhood splitting on a scale never seen before, and some of the very problems you're so up in arms about, like seats so gerrymandered incumbents aren't often challenged.

The law of unintended consequences at work.

I'm the grandson of a sharecropper, idiot. I'm not opposed to making land and a certain age prerequisites for voting, because those people have more of a stake in society; and if you've ever been in the South, you'll know that sweeps in plenty of folks well below the poverty line (and black people, too! Seriously!). But my preference for social stake isn't because I hate anyone, but rather because I think democracy ultimately becomes a race to see which group gets the most from plundering other groups.

Any other inanities, or do you have something constructive to add? I'm not holding my breath.

There is no other reasonable interpretation of your words.

I wonder if the proposal at least wouldn't take the guys with a stake in the redistricting out of the equation.

Although I agree that there isn't any proof a retired judge will be any more or less biased than the guys in the legislature, but at least they wouldn't be redistricting to protect their own positions.

Or maybe it's something else.  Maybe I'd prefer to be in a district that is compact and has similar characteristics (suburb, urban, etc) instead of being in one tentacle of a sprawling district that makes no geographic, cultural, or economic sense.  That way my representative would actually represent a coherent area or place, not a blob created by a computer.

It isn't so much the party advantage in redistricting that bothers me (in some states you aren't going to be able to avoid that anyway given the distribution of the voters) but the snaking weird blobs, that are barely even recognizable as a district.  Personally I would just rather see them divide the state into a recognizable grid than the blotch/blob technique we have now.

They'd be districting to protect their preferences, or worse. This has all the silliness of the Progressive movement about it: Hand the decision making over to unelected "experts" who aren't accountable, to decide what's good for the People (whether they like it or not).

Then ten years later introduce a referendum process to undo the whole thing.

is a great idea.

I think the main benefit of the retired judges, is that they do not have a personal stake in how the districts are redrawn.  They may of course carry their own bias, so "who" is chosen is important, but a good balanced panel, I don't see doing any worse than the state legislature.

Greetings from California. There is a measure on the November ballot here that is potentially more important than anything Arnold put on it. It's the "paycheck protection" measure, that would require public employee unions to get written permission each year from each member before using any of their union dues for political purposes. Since up to 40% of union households in CA are Republican, this would result in a huge cut in funds for the unions to use to buy politicans in Sacramento. People like me, a civil service employee who is forced to pay dues to SEIU will NOT give permission. This has the potential to completely remake politics here.

I forgot to put this in the comment. This morning's SF Chronicle shows that the paycheck protection measure is approved by 57% of the public as of this morning.

Democratic involvement and federalism are orthogonal, so that is irrelevant.

I think the 17th is proof enough against this reasoning.  Federalism suffered to further democracy so I don't see how you can say they are "orthogonal."

The states used to hold certain interests, but now those interests are spread over many states and metropolitan areas are similar across all states. There is no longer a coherent notion of a state's interest that is any different than other states.

So abolishing states would be a logical next step.  

As for the Senate being a construct to pander to the small states I'd suggest reading this.  

As to the rest, Schumpeter nailed it.  Capitalist societies that are democratic will inevitably evolve into socialist states.  The proliferation of social democratic parties abroad is proof enough of that as well as the progressive decades(1900-1940) of the U.S and the plight of fiscal conservatives/libertarians today.

Elections are nothing like a free market.  People who wish to not take part in a free market are entirely free to abstain.  People in the minority in an election are powerless to negate the wishes of the majority.  Anything the majority wants the majority gets.

I don't trust the aggregated views of the citizenry nor do I wish to dictate to them what they should do.  I just think there should be atleast one part of the legislative branch that isn't directly answerable to the people.  It's not because I'm an elitist(which I freely admit) but because, like the people in the debate linked above, I believe there should be a check against majoritarianism.  Liberal democracy does not necessarily equate to representative democracy.