Check out George Skelton in the L.A. Times today:
SACRAMENTO — California’s system for choosing legislators is badly broken. And only voters can fix it.
The problem: “Closed” primaries combined with districts drawn for party protection. Together, they’re adding up to legislative extremism. Toss in term limits and it’s a formula for producing ambitious amateurs who are radical or reactionary.
Legislators of both parties conspired last year to gerrymander legislative and congressional districts in their own interests. They redrew lines to preserve the political status quo for a decade in all but a handful of the 173 districts.
Seats became either safely Republican or safely Democrat — mostly the latter because Democrats control Sacramento. It means practically every election is decided in the primary.
Republican incumbents must guard against a primary challenge from their right. Democrats watch their left. The middle is ignored.
“The fear of being ‘primaried’ is driving decision-making in Sacramento,” South laments.
“They have no idea how you get a budget passed. You’ve got Democrats petrified about cutting spending because it’ll tick off a special interest they’ll need to support them…. You’ve got Republicans sitting there … scared to death they’ll get ‘primaried’ by some anti-taxer.”
The solution: Take the decennial redistricting away from the Legislature and place it in the hands of an independent commission, perhaps appointed by the state Supreme Court. Voters previously have rejected such ballot proposals, buying Democratic demagoguery about “politicizing the courts.”
South supports the independent idea: “Ten years ago I wouldn’t have said that. But this [redistricting] was just a joke and so damaging to the political system, I would favor almost any alternative.”
Well, duuuuh. So would I.
But let’s not forget to repeal term limits while we’re at it.
Justa wild idea here. Extend the term to six years. Limit of one term per customer.
Lotta problems with this, but it reduces (I’m tempted to say eliminates) the problem of legislation driven by those who must appease someone in order to get reelected.
I don’ think this is the solution, but it does have something to recommend it and I’d like to see if it sparks someone brighter than me into a better suggestion.
>> Justa wild idea here. Extend the term to six years. Limit of one term per customer.
>> Lotta problems with this, but it reduces (I’m tempted to say eliminates) the problem of legislation driven by those who must appease someone in order to get reelected.
A fair number of countries have a system like that for certain offices and the appeasment merely moves to the front-end and the institutions.
I don’t think that term limits solve significant problems, but they don’t cause any either. So, the deciding point comes down to the symbolism around a elective office as a career and a political class.
The problem with term limits is the shift in power between the staff, electeds, and lobbyists…the electeds barely get chance to figure out the more complex issues and stop being snowed by staff and lobbying, and they’re gone.
So I’m not a huge fan of terming folks out.
On the other hand, it provides some leavening yeast to the political classes…
A.L.
Redistrict by a computer program that simply picks a random precinct for a starting location, adds the closest precincts until it has the right population, then moves on to define the next district. Of course, this totally politics-free and objective approach will never be implemented as long as politicians are in control…
Could it be forced upon them by a constitutional amendment initiative?