Redistricting Again
July 29, 2003
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Posted by Aubrey Turner
So it appears that the Democrats have taken their ball and run off to New Mexico in a huff. Quite frankly, I hope this little stunt backfires on them, but that remains to be seen. I find it quite fascinating to watch them, though. Their complaints hold little water with me and my sympathy quotient towards them is in the negative range. It seems to me that they have little to complain about, since they did the same thing with redistricting when they were in power.
But it got me to thinking about the law and programming. In some ways, the law (and in Texas, the state constitution) is the set of programming instructions (code) that is used to run the government and society. The problem in this case is that the code allows for the system to be compromised by the operators. What we need is a set of code that specifies how the districts are to be mapped that the users can’t game. Specifically, we should gore everyone’s oxen and come up with a system that creates districts strictly on the basis of population and does so in a way that can’t be gerrymandered.
What I’m getting at is that we should encode a specific algorithm for districts into the law (or most likely in the constitution, given the odd way that Texas is run). This algorithm would provide the set of steps needed to map the state into a set of districts that each had an equal number of people, regardless of current or past political affiliations or racial breakdown.
Of course all the special interest groups would come out wailing that we’re disenfranchising minority voters or some similar nonsense. Frankly, I don’t care because this modern day segregation crap is starting to get on my nerves. We’re all Texans and it’s about damn time that we started remembering that. Racial politics is the politics of segregation and discrimination and it’s high time to consign that crap to the trash pile where it belongs.
Categories: Politics
I’ve been thinking about this lately, too, and here’s what I came up with:
1. All districts must be equal in population, using the US Census data, within 1% of the average of all districts. (That is to say, if the average is 1,345,038 people per district, no district may be larger than 1,358,488 people, nor smaller than 1,331,587 people.
2. The sum of the lengths of all inter-district boundaries must be a minima, except that the boundaries can be adjusted to match existing geographical or political boundaries.
3. No redistricting plan passed by the legislature can be challenged in court, except on a violation of either or both of the first two points, and then only if the plan passed by less than a 2/3 vote. The court’s sole discretion would be to declare the plan invalid and require the legislature to re-address the issue.
4. Failure of the legislature to pass a redistricting plan within one year of the need originally arising, would result in the legislature being disbanded, a special election called, and the former members of the legislature being ineligible to stand for re-election.
This would create a process whereby the legislature’s ability to play partisan politics over this issue would be reduced, the court’s ability to declare a solution would be reduced, and the people would be given the final appeal should the process break down. (At the very least, the idiots not doing their job would get thrown out.)
Jeff,
Excellent ideas, except for 4.) which would never make it into law.
If you automate the process almost completely, then the ability to meddle disappears.
This is Texas; have you seen our Constitution? #4 would obviously have to be enacted by amendment, which is a referendum process – but then so would the other 3.
The whole idea is not to give the minority party an out that says, “If we don’t vote for a plan, we get to keep the (presumably unnaturally favorable) districts we have now.”