Redistricting Does Need a Change, Just Not This One

There’s not much argument over whether legislators should be drawing their own districts. They should not be. That’s a given.

The real argument is over whether Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s alternative, Proposition 77, is the right one. Or is it too convoluted and kind of goofy? Does it overreach? Is it less of a reform than a power grab?

It sort of looks that way.

The aim of Prop. 77 is on target: Take redistricting away from the Legislature.

But then what? That’s the dispute.

Traditionally, after every decennial census, the Legislature in California -- as in most states -- redraws legislative and congressional districts based on the new population data.

That’s a clear conflict of interest. The legislative majority -- Democrat for 42 of the last 46 years -- always draws the lines to maintain its power.

The 2001 gerrymandering was bipartisan, but particularly self-serving. Democrats and Republicans conspired to draw lines designed to preserve the status quo. Democrats assured themselves of a legislative majority through this decade. Republicans granted President Bush’s wish to protect California’s 20 GOP House seats, and thus the party’s control of Congress.

The outcomes were so rigged that, in the 2004 elections, not one congressional or legislative seat changed parties in California, out of 153 elections.

That’s an indefensible system. And it further erodes the public’s confidence in our political institutions.

So under pressure, even Democratic lawmakers are pledging to strip themselves of their redistricting power. Very few politicians still are arguing that the Legislature should keep drawing its own maps.

“There’s a lot of merit to taking this out of the hands of the Legislature,” says Senate leader Don Perata (D-Oakland). “But [Prop. 77] is a joke....

“Our commitment, if 77 goes down, is to fashion a bipartisan solution in a thoughtful way and put it on the ballot next year. This can be done.”

Schwarzenegger’s proposal would hand over redistricting to a panel of three retired judges, state or federal.

But there’s a lot of Rube Goldberg gadgetry. Basically, the state Judicial Council and legislative leaders would team up to select potential panel members and the final three would be drawn out of a hat.

District lines could not cross city and county borders unless necessary for nonpolitical reasons. That’s good. But “communities of interest” -- ethnic and socioeconomic groups -- could be splintered into different districts and their power dissipated. That’s not good.

This is the most goofy thing: After the redistricting is adopted by the judges -- and while candidates are running in the new districts -- the entire plan must be placed on the statewide ballot for voter approval.

Redding residents would be deciding whether to approve a district in Redlands. San Francisco voters would be signing off on political lines in San Diego.

Why? Because it polls well.

“It’s the single most popular part of the initiative,” says Ted Costa, a longtime political activist who crafted Prop. 77, which Schwarzenegger adopted. “Ask people if they want to vote on things, they want to vote on things. ‘You want to vote on the technicality of nuclear power?’ ‘Oh yes, we want to vote on that, bring it on.’ ”

But political analyst Tony Quinn, a former redistricting advisor for GOP legislators, asserts that “a vote of the people is entirely unnecessary and is ripe for games-playing and abuse” by politicians and special interests.

Quinn also objects to including federal judges on the panel. “You want a bunch of retired libs from the 9th Circuit?” he asks. “You want a judge who believes schoolchildren shouldn’t recite the Pledge of Allegiance?”

Bruce Cain, director of the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley, is Quinn’s Democratic counterpart as a former legislative redistricting consultant. Like Quinn, Cain doesn’t think lawmakers should draw the lines.

But neither should judges, he says, because they’re political creatures with old partisan loyalties and, moreover, they tend to operate secretly.

He’d prefer that an independent citizens commission do the redistricting -- patterned after an Arizona system and proposed in a pending bill by Sen. Alan Lowenthal (D-Long Beach).

Additionally, Prop. 77 overreaches by not waiting for the next census in 2010 to redistrict. It requires a politically disruptive, mid-decade shake-up of districts for the 2006 elections. That’s logistically impossible. Conceivably 2008 could work, but by then the population data would be ancient.

Proponents -- Republicans -- contend that the system is broken and needs to be fixed now. Why wait?

Opponents -- Democrats -- smell a power grab: It’s about Schwarzenegger using “reform” to revive Republicans in the Legislature.

One Republican isn’t buying Prop. 77: Rep. John Doolittle of Roseville. He sees a national Democratic plot to take redistricting away from Republican legislatures across America and recapture Congress.

Moreover, he believes Republicans would lose four seats in California with a mid-decade redistricting.

“Schwarzenegger is frustrated with the Legislature,” Doolittle says, “but we can’t risk the Republican majority in Congress to solve his problems.”

Silicon Valley entrepreneur Steve Poizner, a Republican running for state insurance commissioner, was named by Schwarzenegger last week to head his Prop. 77 campaign. Polls show the measure losing badly.

“No question,” Poizner asserts, “entrenched politicians are behind the effort to keep redistricting the way it is.”

Not the way it is. But not how Schwarzenegger wants it.

George Skelton writes Monday and Thursday. Reach him at george.skelton@latimes.com.