A Michigan group called “Voters Not Politicians” will soon start to circulate a state constitutional initiative, to set up a redistricting commission for drawing U.S. House and state legislative district boundaries. See this story. Thanks to Thomas Jones for the link.
There are issues with the proposal — for example, whether the “non-partisan” design of the commission will mean supporters of the Titanic Two can participate but alternative parties will find it harder to qualify genuine supporters. Look at the sponsor group’s post about who’ll be on the commission — the fourth requirement in particular:
http://www.votersnotpoliticians.com/icrc_why_who?utm_campaign=icrcwho_712&utm_medium=email&utm_source=votersnotpoliticians
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Applicants must:
– Submit a completed application, resume, and two supporting letters of recommendation.
– Be a registered voter in Michigan.
– Identify the party (if any) that they affiliate themselves with, to ensure a balanced commission.
– Not be, or be closely related to, a current or former (in the past 6 years) political insider, including a candidate for partisan office, elected official to a partisan office, registered lobbyist, and party officer.
– Not be otherwise disqualified from office or convicted of a felony in the last ten years.
Additionally, Commissioners will be ineligible to hold a partisan elective office in Michigan for five years after serving on the Commission. This includes offices at the state, county, city, village, or township level.
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How many active members of any alternative party in the state are not (and haven’t been for six years!) party officers or candidates on some level, or close relatives of same? Michigan Libertarians may have to be extra-careful on this; now that they’re in the primaries, they’re expected to elect precinct delegates who hold county conventions to elect county delegates to the state convention. I’m sure all those folks will be “elected officials to a partisan office” (and any losers if there are competitive races in heavily Libertarian precincts will still be “candidates for partisan office”). If I were drafting the law to exclude folks, I might even slip election inspectors into the definition of “party officers” — after all, they have to declare their party affiliation and avoid entanglement with any other party. That’s why I officially resigned my residual position as Democratic precinct delegate in 2001 so I could sign up to be a Green “election inspector” — not that I’ve gotten many chances to serve as a poll-worker since then.
(And if we did find some Greens who hadn’t yet done anything officially Green to disqualify themselves, once they served on this commission they’d be banned from being a candidate for anything partisan for five more years. Not a big deal to some, but maybe it would be to others — especially our younger BernExit members, perhaps.)
More about the process described by VNP: the commission of 13 will be randomly selected from among a pool of 200 (100 “volunteer” and 100 “recruited” applicants, no matter how many people apply each way), that pool to be geographically and demographically balanced by “widely accepted statistical weighting methods” but with no word on who will do that balancing and selecting of the 200. (“Lies, damned lies, and statistics”, anyone?) Maybe it’ll be the Michigan equivalent of the “non-partisan state agency” picked by the legislators in HR3057.
Oh, yeah — and if people are going to be picked randomly, why do they need to submit not only an application form (which I would expect covers the geographic and demographic information wanted for the pool-weighting process) but a resume and two letters of recommendation?
Truly non-partisan redistricting (including county board apportionment) would be a good thing. Whether or not this proposal qualifies as truly non-partisan . . . well, the jury’s still out, at best.
The scheme is a copy/version of the CA gerrymander commission with more rigged single member gerrymander districts — taken over by Donkey agents claiming to be nonpartisan.
NO need for any commissions.
P.R. and nonpartisan App.V.
What is really bizarre is that the proposed language does not appear to be online anywhere.
If the Bureau of Elections is reviewing the form of the petition, can’t the public comment on the review?
The petition will likely show up shortly on
http://www.michigan.gov/sos/0,4670,7-127-1633_41221-410927–,00.html
The New Age CA Donkey controlled gerrymander commission is at
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayText.xhtml?lawCode=CONS&division=&title=&part=&chapter=&article=XXI
Seen one scheme – seen them all.