Restoring power to the people
Published October 23, 2013
by Chris Fitzsimon
The folks at the North Carolina Coalition for Lobbying and Government Reform (of which NC Policy Watch is a member) are on a tour of the state these days, renewing their call for a long overdue independent redistricting process to draw legislative and congressional district lines more fairly.
They couldn’t have picked a better time. One of the few silver linings of the absurd federal government shutdown is that it has focused attention again on the ridiculous way we currently draw political districts in North Carolina.
Polls show that voters in the state and across the nation overwhelmingly opposed the shutdown and believe that Republicans in Congress were primarily responsible for it. Yet the majority of Republicans in the U.S. House and six members of North Carolina’s congressional delegation voted against legislation that ended the shutdown and prevented the United States from defaulting on its debts.
Those lawmakers are not worried at all about losing their seats in the 2014 general election. Their district lines were drawn in a way that makes it virtually impossible for them to lose to a Democratic opponent next November.
Their political worry is a Republican challenger from the right, someone who will accuse them of not being conservative enough because they did not cater to the fringe of their party that makes up a significant part of the Republican base.
More people in North Carolina in 2012 voted for Democrats for Congress than voted for Republicans, yet there are nine Republicans in the state’s House delegation and just four Democrats. The state was almost evenly split in votes for the General Assembly, yet Republicans won supermajorities in the House and Senate.
The supermajorities did not come from the will of the voters, but from the skill of the folks who drew the precise districts that divided communities and neighborhoods and city blocks to maximize partisan advantage.
The result is a Congress and General Assembly that do not reflect the will of the voters in a relatively evenly divided state.
And Republicans did not break any new ground when they drew the maps in 2011. Democrats did the same thing every ten years when they were in control of the redistricting pen and there were elections where Democrats maintained control of the General Assembly even though they received a minority of the statewide vote.
Republicans just had newer, better technology and could be more precise in their gerrymandering.
Ending the practice of politicians choosing their voters by turning over the redistricting responsibilities to an independent process is not a new idea either. It has been around for a while and leaders of both political parties have supported it, but never at the same time.
Virtually all the current state House and Senate Republican leaders sponsored legislation for redistricting reform while they were in the minority and Democrats resisted.
Now most Democrats support the concept, and some Republicans are balking, though it’s worth noting that the House passed reform legislation in 2011. The Senate never considered it.
The North Carolina Coalition for Lobbying and Government Reform is keeping the pressure on and has members from the across the political and ideological spectrum. The struggle has always been to get the public to focus on an issue that often seems arcane and only interesting to political insiders.
It’s not arcane anymore. Not after a small group of members of the U.S. House of Representatives in iron clad safe districts held the country hostage and shut the government down and don’t have to worry about their political opposition holding them accountable for it in a general election.
Democracy works best when elected officials are accountable to the voters, not protected by surgically drawn district lines.
Both political parties have benefitted from their cynical gerrymandering of the lines that have thwarted or at least diminished the will of the electorate. Let’s hope the Coalition succeeds soon in changing the system and restoring power to the people, where it belongs.
Chris Fitzsimon is Executive Director of NC Policy Watch
October 23, 2013 at 9:02 am
TP Wohlford says:
Ole Fitz hates it when "the people" say "no" to higher taxes, higher deficits, higher debts, and bigger government programs. When such people elect Congressmen and state legislators and governors and such who actually do what they said they were gonna do, people like Fitz go nuts.
Beware of anyone making a claim that includes "the people". Cause inevitably, they're trying for money and power, at the expense of "the people."
October 23, 2013 at 10:17 am
Norm Kelly says:
Once again we have a liberal saying the same thing often enough, loud enough, and in enough places to attempt to convince people that their lie is actually the truth. The FACT is that the federal government has enough monthly income to follow the LAW. The LAW says that the US must pay it's debts first, then other obligations. So, if this administration were to follow this law, like they haven't followed other laws they don't like, the country would NOT have defaulted. This is a FACT that liberals simply do NOT want the average voter to know. And it appears, most of the Democrat voters in the country already do believe this lie.
So, the redistricting issue has come up once again. Little wonder. Liberals will try to get their base stirred up about this issue claiming that Republicans were able to redistrict in an attempt to minimize minority voters. Or some other such racial prejudice. And too many of the liberal base will believe it. But what's the solution? Chris suggests an independent committee be in charge of all redistricting. A committee made up of whom? People chosen by politicians? People who have their own bias? Some group of lawyers? Well, the least desirable would be a group of lawyers. Most of the elected officials in Washington and probably Raliegh are lawyers. We can see how terribly they have screwed up the federal government. We certainly don't need lawyers screwing up the districting process. Show me something that lawyers control that ain't screwed up and I might be willing to support a group of them getting involved in redistricting.
Of course, no one on this committee would be a volunteer. Not with the time commitment required. Not with the lawsuits that would result. These people would have to be paid. Who would pay them? The politicians? That would guarantee an unbiased plan for sure! Would the paid committee be evenly divided between Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, TEA party, tree-huggers (or whatever other group comes out of the woodwork or calls themselves)?
It seems that Chris and I actually agree on something. Don't tell anyone. It will ruin my reputation. Some small group of elected representatives in Washington, in apparently iron clad safe districts, did hold the country hostage. A small group of representatives in Washington did force a government shutdown. That same small group of safe representatives haven't passed a budget on schedule in what, 5 years? They are called the Democrats in the Senate. They and Mr. Obama were so unwilling to negotiate on a single item that they refused to look at any of the spending bills passed by the House. When the do-nothing Senate finally passed a budget bill, it turns out it was even bigger than any prior proposal approved by the House and/or rejected by the Senate. So once again, the liberal plan put our country in a worse economic position than we were in previously. And the Senate-forced shutdown cost the country more than it would have if they hadn't been so insistent on a shutdown.
Perhaps the Republicans will learn something from this Democrat-caused debacle. When the opposition refuses to negotiate, scream it loudly from every rooftop possible. Get on every talk show possible and state the facts. When the liberal-loving media host makes false claims about the issue(s), the Republican will have to shutdown the host and continue to state the facts. As in the case of the most recent shutdown. How many people in the country know that the Republicans in the House attempted to avert the shutdown by funding the general government? Based on CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, N&O reporting, I'm willing to bet that virtually none of the liberal voters have any clue that it was the Democrats in the Senate & White House who forced the government shutdown. And people like Chris are willing to continue repeating the mistruths. Regardless of the facts, liberals will continue to mislead their constituents in the hope that most of them will simply suck down the kool-aid and ignore anything else, any other reporting. Perhaps this time it worked. But people are beginning to wake up and realize that too many lies are coming from Washington. The misleading (that's liberal speak for 'lies') is getting too obvious for even liberal voters to ignore. Liberals in the media, like Chirs, are finding smaller and smaller audiences to take their line of 'stuff'.
'Democracy works best'. A Representative Republic works best when power, control, responsibility is at the most local level practical. Liberalism/socialism works best when power is removed from the local level and concentrated in a central organization. That's why in socialist countries the government is referred to as the 'central planners'. Because all the power to plan anything is concentrated in the central government. Can any liberal, including Chris, show us any socialist country in the world that is as prosperous as the US? Can any liberal show us a socialist country in the world where people can move out of poverty into the 'rich' class as easily as they can in the US? Can any liberal show us a socialist country in the world where central planning has actually benefited the people, instead of just the central planners?
Redistricting must happen at the state level. Except for extremely minor monitoring from the central planners, every state must be allowed to handle redistricting the way the state wants to handle it. Remember, it was the liberals who came up with the idea that forcing a convoluted, meandering district that contained virtually only black people was the right thing to do so that a black person would be forced to represent a black district. In the liberal mind its right to force a black district, rather than have districts drawn along logical lines. Like county lines, perhaps. Like lines that follow major roads, perhaps. But, no, liberals want the ability to force certain people into certain districts in the name of 'fairness'. But it's their idea of fairness, not actual fairness.
Power to the people is only possible when power is at the local level. Central planning is not the local level, and therefore not the power of the people. Selective thinking on the part of liberals.
Who is John Galt?
October 23, 2013 at 10:23 am
Richard Bunce says:
NO humans, use just a computer algorithm that creates districts of equal numbers of persons and either optimized for the most compact districts or equal area size districts. ONLY inputs would be number of districts to be drawn, land area of to draw districts within, distribution of persons within that land area, and MAYBE County lines to keep from carving up existing local government boundaries. ABSOLUTELY NO information about the persons in the districts... no age, sex, marital status, religion, political party affiliation, ethnicity, "race"... NOTHING.
