U.S. House member Heath Shuler (D-N.C.) has introduced HR 453, to require states to use “bipartisan” commissions to draw U.S. House district boundaries. The text of the bill is not yet available, but the press release says the bill requires “the minority and majority leaders” of each state’s legislature to appoint an equal number of members of these commissions. One wonders how the bill would apply to Vermont, a state in which three political parties are represented in the legislature and each of the three parties has its own legislative leaders. One also wonders how the bill would apply to Nebraska, which has a non-partisan legislature. Thanks to Rick Hasen for this news.
Also, U.S. House member Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) has re-introduced his bill to require the states to have a redistricting process that is open to public scrutiny. This year it is HR 419. He introduced the same bill last year.
The best solution I’ve seen on this is something called the “shortest splitline algorithmâ
http://rangevoting.org/GerryExec.html
It is not perfect (see their example for Colorado), but would certainly be a fair starting point or baseline.
2 more joke fraud bills dead on arrival.
Donkeys had their chance for bipartisan stuff in 09-10.
ANTI-Democracy gerrymanders control MOST in the U.S.A.
Democracy ONLY in States have voter petitions for const. amdts and laws.
P.R. and App.V.
The self-serving nature of Shuler’s bill is obvious. He is a Democrat in a district which has traditionally elected Republicans, and the Republicans just won control of the state legislature. It is hardly difficult to predict that redistricting will work against his re-election in 2012.
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Bi-partisan *is* partisan. *Non*-partisan should be the goal, of course. . . .
I’m glad you mentioned Nebraska in the context. In my opinion, Washington State and California raise the same issue in a more complex form.
For example, in spite of having non-partisan elections for state legislature, California has laws on the books governing the internal organization of the legislature that give specific roles to the “majority party” and “minority party”. If members of the legislature are no longer elected as representatives of political parties, what do these rules mean?
These rules have always had the problems that someday there might not be a “majority party” and/or there might be more than one “minority party”. Prop. 14 adds a new layer of ambiguity to their meaning.
# 6 The regime that takes office after the first top 2 primary elections in CA for the legislature will have to clean up a whole lot of messes.
Any 24/7 U.S.A. District Court — Bankruptcy division ready for a CA regime filing — before such time above ???
See the 1989 Eu case — public stuff versus internal party hack clubby stuff in the parties.
The Nebraska thing isn’t an issue. Just because they don’t list their party affiliation doesn’t mean everyone doesn’t know what party they’re in. Could just do it by what they’re registered as just fine.
This sounds like a good idea to me.
Major AREA fixation in ALL gerrymander stuff — semi-Stone Age stuff.
This is OUR TRIBE area. Everybody else stay out.
Thus the Stone Age so-called thinking of each party hack gerrymander district winner.
P.R. and App.V.
For the clueless much of the free world NOW has P.R. — and thus regard gerrymander area regimes as now super-primitive — the U.S.A., U.K., Canada, India, etc. etc.