What to Do about the Radical Dumb-Heads Running American Government? — Redistrict by Less Partisan Committee — the New York Times’ Adam Magourney Used California as an Example of How this Might Work

21 October 2013

Two traits are sabotaging American politics — one of these could potentially be fixed, with subsequent influence on the other

The two traits are the torrent of money and partisan election districting. The latter could be fixed in places that have an amenable state constitution and the public will to do so.

For example, Adam Magourney’s New York Times article tried to account for California’s newly found success in delivering noticeably more effective governance:

Before Washington, California was the national symbol of partisan paralysis and government dysfunction.

But in the past month, California has been the stage for a series of celebrations of unlikely legislative success — a parade of bill signings that offered a contrast between the shutdown in Washington and an acrimony-free California Legislature that enacted laws dealing with subjects including school financing, immigration, gun control and abortion.

Lawmakers came into office this year representing districts whose lines were drawn by a nonpartisan commission, rather than under the more calculating eye of political leaders.

This is the first Legislature chosen under an election system where the top two finishers in a nonpartisan primary run against each other, regardless of party affiliations, an effort to prod candidates to appeal to a wider ideological swath of the electorate.

And California voters approved last year an initiative to ease stringent term limits, which had produced a Statehouse filled with inexperienced legislators looking over the horizon to the next election. Lawmakers can now serve 12 years in either the Assembly or the Senate.

However, notice the essential requirement — a state initiative system

California makes frequent use of an (often money-dominated) popular initiative election system:

(a) Proposition 11 in 2008 was responsible for the potentially beneficial change in imposing less overtly partisan districting with its establishment of a California Citizens Redistricting Commission.

See here for the Wikipedia overview.

(b) Proposition 14 in 2010 required that the top two primary candidates, regardless of their Party affiliation, face all the district’s voters (also regardless of affiliation) in a run-off election. This a nonpartisan blanket or open primary system.

In short, allegedly ordinary people in California got to put two reform-oriented items on the ballot that, if passed, were inevitably going to unseat accepted ways of doing political business in the state.

The net result has been that candidates can drift toward the political center, without having to worry about being successfully “primaried” by money-supported opponents, chosen from the lunatic fringe.

The moral? — A hint of hope?

Maybe, but be cautious.

California benefits from two characteristics:

(i) having sizeable and diverse demographic groups — most of which are not comprised of Neo-Confederate crazies

and

(ii) a mix of social and economic problems that will not wait for our nation’s politicized Adam Henrys to fix.

Note

Adam Henry is cop talk for the letters, A and H.

Whether similar conditions of comparative social sanity can be created in other states, and on the national stage, remains to be seen.

PeteFree.com

What to Do about the Radical Dumb-Heads Running American Government? — Redistrict by Less Partisan Committee — the New York Times’ Adam Magourney Used California as an Example of How this Might Work