Two Lumps and a String
When the California Legislature redraws the lines of legislative districts after each census, the state Constitution demands that "the geographical integrity of any city, county or city and county, or of any geographical region shall be respected to the extent possible." In other words, districts should be "compact."
California's adherence to this constitutional rule is laughable. Look at the 14th State Senate District, as drafted in 2001. As the incumbent, Republican Chuck Poochigian of Fresno, described it in a newspaper column, the Central Valley district contains all or parts of six counties. "However, the lines carefully remove portions of Fresno and skirt around the more populous areas of Modesto, Manteca, Tracy and Stockton." This was done to excise Democratic voters from the district to make it a safe Republican seat. The California Target Book, an authoritative guide to state elections, said, "The redistricting mapmakers kept the incumbent's home base of Fresno, but little else when creating the new seat."
Another constitutional requirement is that districts must be contiguous -- no lump of district here, another over there, separated by another district. The 46th Congressional District is a good example of creatively skirting this rule. The district stretches along the coast from Palos Verdes Estates nearly to Newport Beach in Orange County. Essentially, there are two lumps connected in the middle by a string of coast that picks up as little of Long Beach as possible. Tony Quinn, a longtime redistricting expert and coauthor of the Target Book, says the common joke is that the 46th "is only contiguous at low tide."
These two districts are hardly rarities among California's Assembly, state Senate and congressional districts. Poochigian's even looks "compact" compared with others. Such districts were drawn this way by incumbent legislators to protect themselves, to assure that Democrats will be elected in some districts and Republicans in others. The people might like politicians to get along with their opponents, but not in divvying up the spoils. The drawing of crooked district lines by lawmakers is the ultimate conflict of interest, one that needs to end. An independent commission should draw the lines, not the Legislature itself. Poochigian, although he was not badly treated by the flawed system, is the author of one of several proposed constitutional amendments to create such an independent redistricting commission, which Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is also championing.
