LA Times: CALIFORNIA - Slow Down and Strike a Deal

[Wilms]

CALIFORNIA
Slow Down and Strike a Deal

March 27, 2005

By Tony Quinn, Tony Quinn was on the Legislature's redistricting staff in 1971 and 1981 and was an expert witness in a court challenge to the districts passed in 2001. He is co-editor of the California Target Book.


Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's desire to put retired judges in charge of legislative redistricting and have them immediately redraw the lines is commendable. It can't be healthy for democracy that not a single California legislator or member of Congress lost in the 2004 elections. And who can blame Schwarzenegger for impatience, because if he's reelected, he'll be out of office in 2010, two years before the next scheduled redistricting.

Still, he should wait. Majority Democrats say they are willing to give up their gerrymandering ways if the governor abandons his initiative quest for a mid-decade redistricting. Schwarzenegger should take the deal, for two reasons.

First, he probably can't get his new political map when he wants it. His office dillydallied last fall and didn't develop a redistricting reform plan of its own, so it's stuck with one that would be on a November special-election ballot at the earliest.

That's too late to affect the June 2006 elections. For a June election, courts have made it clear that candidates and county election officials need to know the districts by the end of January. The November-January time frame is simply too short for retired judges to be appointed, new districts to be drawn, public hearings to be conducted, precinct lines to be redrawn if necessary and the final map to be pre-cleared by the U.S. Department of Justice under the Voting Rights Act.

-snip/plenty more-

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/sunday/commentary/la-op-redistrict27mar27,0,3877419.story?coll=la-sunday-commentary