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Sat Jul 01, 2006 at 02:04 PM CDT
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(Kathi Thomas is running for State Senate in SD-25, covering all of Hays county among others. - promoted by Damon McCullar)
Redistricting is all in the news now. According to the Supreme Court, it is apparently fine to redistrict for no other reason than political, so the precedent set by the Republicans & Tom Delay in Texas could be something that will be an expensive nightmare every time power changes in any state…or, we could have a nonpartisan redistricting panel, as they do in Iowa. http://www.fairvote.org/redistricting/reports/remanual/ia.htm
The way it works in Iowa is this: “The legislature has the final responsibility for enacting both congressional and state legislative district plans, but the nonpartisan Legislative Services Bureau has initial responsibility. It must develop up to three plans that can be accepted or rejected by the legislature. The plans are criteria-driven, meaning that the bureau draws districts based on clear, measurable criteria.
The four criteria, in descending order of importance are: 1) population equality; 2) contiguity; 3) unity of counties and cities (maintaining county lines and “nesting” house districts within senate districts and senate districts within congressional districts); and 4) compactness. A five-member commission consisting of four civilian members chosen by each caucus in the legislature, and a fifth chairperson chosen by the commission, is responsible for advising the bureau, but only upon their request. If the legislature does not approve the first three plans by the bureau, it must itself approve a plan by September 1st, or the state Supreme Court will take responsibility for the state districts. The Governor has veto power over both plans.”
According to Gov. Vlisack, they just load this information into a computer, and the maps come out- there is no gerrymandering. He says this nonpartisan bureau has resulted in very competitive districts- both their house and senate are very nearly evenly divided by party-meaning that most governing comes from the center, or moderates, rather than by the far right or far left. That means that the government actually represents the views of the majority of their citizens. |
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My opponent, Jeff Wentworth, has filed a similar bill for several sessions, and I think it is basically a good bill. The problem comes with his commitment to actually passing this bill. I think he probably really does believe in it, however, the one time he really had the opportunity to hold some feet to the fire and get it passed in both houses was during the “redistricting wars”- when they were down to needing every single vote to get it passed- especially after the very honorable Sen. Ratliff refused to vote for it because he believed it was bad for his constituents. At that point, if Jeff Wentworth really wanted this passed, he could have played a little hardball, and told the Republican “leadership” they would only get his vote if he then got this bill passed in the House and Senate so that we never had to go through this again, but he didn’t, he just voted with his party to do their version of gerrymandering.
I testified at many of those redistricting hearings- once at the House’s and 5 or 6 times at the Senate hearings, and I spoke with Sen. Wentworth about the redistricting process. He told me about his plan, and I was willing to work to support it, til he voted lock-step with Tom Delay’s redistricting plan, which hurt so many rural counties and diluted minority votes all over the place, and then voted to fine his Democratic Senate colleagues when they left the state in an attempt to defeat Tom Delay’s plan. At that point, I began seriously questioning his commitment to this plan. Since he did not fight for the bill when he truly had the best chance ever of actually passing it, I’ll leave you to decide for yourself about his commitment. (When he told me about his bill, it was done almost with an air of resignation- as if it was “yes, I’ve written this bill, but it has no chance of ever passing no matter who is in charge, but I’ll just keep filing it anyway.”)
I do support such a bill, and I will work to get it passed when I’ve been elected as senator. Consider the millions of dollars that was wasted for all the special sessions to get this current Delay plan passed. Now consider what the Supreme Court mandated changes are going to do to so many great congressional candidates who have been campaigning so hard these past 2 years. Of course, the gerrymandering that was done that diluted the Latino vote needs to be repaired, but the repercussions may be hurtful to some good candidates elsewhere. By passing this nonpartisan bureau, we can eliminate the wasted time and money – and create truly competitive districts, which, while maybe not great for the politicians, will be MUCH better for the constituents!
The bottom line is, do people want someone who will simply write a nonpartisan redistricting committee bill, or someone who will actually work with colleagues in both houses to get it passed? |
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