Our View: Electoral districts reform fails

Under the guise of reform, California's electoral districts soon will be transformed. This time, redrawing state Senate and Assembly, Board of Equalization and congressional districts was supposed to rise above politics. So much for reform.

California got gerrymandering by a different name. New boundaries were shaped by determined, self-serving interests of different political players. Instead of two political parties, reform created a battleground for myriad special interests to create districts to serve their interests. It's the same old song, this time sung in a disparate cacophony.

The new districts are gerrymandered by lofty-sounding "communities of interest," which are as self-seeking as Republicans and Democrats, who used to redraw boundaries. If anything, politics ratcheted up. Innumerable COI's pleaded, pressured and whined for niches to be carved to assure them of winning, or at least wielding clout.

Columnist Steven Greenhut points out the new redistricting commission was designed "to devise new ethnic-oriented gerrymanders beyond what's required by the federal Voting Rights Act." One commissioner was bold enough to complain that "the commission failed to fulfill its mandate to strictly apply constitutional criteria and consistently applied race and 'community of interest' criteria and sought to diminish dissenting viewpoints."

Columnist Dan Walters notes the commission, established to stop politicians drawing districts to benefit themselves, "gerrymandered another way." Commissioners "labored hard to meet demands from other self-identified COIs, such as gays, lesbians, environmentalists and Jews, and assumed that its duty was to separate the poor from the rich. Everyone else — those not seeking special treatment — was merely filler to equalize district populations."

Redistricting remains political. It shouldn't be. Politics should begin after boundaries are drawn, otherwise political interests always will seek advantage. When one gains, another loses.

We've proposed repeatedly to have computers draw lines based solely on population. To draw the boundaries for 40 state Senate Districts, for example, begin at the northern border and move south until 1⁄40 of the population is included. Then draw a line from east to west. Then repeat the procedure. Obviously, how to configure the computer is another subjective decision. But it's far less meddlesome than countless ethnic, religious, business, labor or other interests micromanaging by lobbying allegedly "independent" commissioners, who can be tied to aggressive political groups.