Rum, Romanism and Rebellion

Last week, Jan Brewer raised hackles because of what she called fraudulent tactics on the part of petition passers. Apparently, she alleges, some folks passing a petition to change the composition of the Arizona Redistricting Commission used “bait and switch” tactics. This left me to wonder, where was Brewer when the anti-gay marriage and PAN petitioners were using similar tactics? Supporters of the initiative say that Brewer is exagerating the extent of the problem and that the few petition passers that engaged in such activity have been fired.

Of course, this led to GOP Mahout Randy Pullen sending out a release. He lauded Brewer for slapping down this, his words, “Democrat front group.” To Randy, Brewer’s job is just to go after Democrats, I guess.

The funny thing is, the group that is running the petitions  counts former legislator Roberta Voss, a Republican, as their treasurer. The group also boasts of other Republicans as supporters.

The initiative is funded by Jim Pederson, who funded the last successful redistricting initiative. Pederson’s money helped fund the State Democratic party and merely speaking his name causes uncontrollable tics and convulsions in many Republican activists the way no name besides “George Soros“ does.

Pederson’s last redistricting initiative passed in 2000, and it created the current system. Before it passed, the legislature redrew the lines every ten years. This resulted in few competitive districts as legislative incumbents sought to give themselves fewer headaches at election time. The idea of the initiative was to take the redistricting out of the hands of the legislature and give it to a commission that would have as one of its goals creating competitive districts.

It didn’t work out the way supporters intended. The commission created fewer competitive districts than existed previously. I attended the meeting of the commission after the map was revealed, and many of us asked about the lack of competitive districts. Commissioners complained that we even brought up the issue, although I think few voters supported the initiative so that the same results could come from a different group of people.

So what does this initiative actually do? Well, first off, it directs the commissioners to give more consideration for making competitive districts. Admitedly, we will not have 30 competitive districts. But, even with considerations like the Voting Rights Act and keeping communities of interest together, there should be room for considerably more than the three or four competitive districts we have now.

Also, the initiative increases the size of the commission from five members to nine. The size of the commission limited its diversity. For example, one knock against the current commission is that it includes no Hispanics. Not the best idea, given how our redistricting process is under Justice Department scrutiny because of worries about Hispanic representation. A larger commission would mean more of a chance to include people from minority communities as well as increase the geographic diversity of the commission.

The current members of the committee are appointed by the caucus leaders in the House and Senate. This new commission would have its members instead appointed by a vote of the caucuses.

The most interesting thing to me is a provision to have the Supreme Court appoint a special master to handle disputes about redistricting. Despite the map being finalized by the commission for the 2002 election, the map was changed several times due to lawsuits winding its way through the courts. This was costly to the state ($6 million, it is estimated), and left candidates, activists and voters wondering what district they would be in one election to the next. The idea behind the special master would be to streamline this process so that disputes could be resolved quickly.

Ted Downing and Mark Osterloh announced their own redistricting initiative at a meeting last week that I missed. What I am hearing about it (randomly drawn disticts) leaves me less than enthused, but I will check up on the details and report them back to you.