The discussion, which was co-presented by Arizona State University, took place at a newly opened lounge at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, where the crowd squeezed together cordially on bleachers, benches, and even folding chairs.

Art Hamilton, who spent 26 years in the state legislature, 18 of them as Democratic leader, noted his displeasure with the current state of affairs in his state. “The ultimate affront,” recalled Hamilton, “was when a friend of mine, the just-past speaker of the Mississippi House of Representatives, told me he was glad we were in the news because it made him feel better about Mississippi.”

One especially controversial move by Arizona was to pass SB 1070, an anti-illegal-immigration law that was widely seen as the most stringent in the nation. Did this make Arizona the leader of a parade? Absolutely, said Jennifer Steen, a professor of political science at Arizona State University. “In a sense, Arizona is a model, because we made the first strike,” Steen said. “Other legislatures would be crazy not to look at what transpired in Arizona. … They can look to our experience here and see what was the fallout and watch the litigation unfold and see how that goes.”

Hamilton agreed that Arizona was leading the parade. “We are marching smartly into the 18th century,” Hamilton said. “We’ve mastered becoming a place that practices the politics of subtraction and division, and not addition and multiplication.”

Part of this division, the panelists agreed, was due to the recession. But part of it was also due to a demographic powder keg. “We have what demographers call gray versus brown,” explained author Tom Zoellner, a fifth-generation Arizonan whose latest book, A Safeway in Arizona: What the Gabrielle Giffords Shooting Tells Us About the Grand Canyon State and Life in America, will be released at the end of the year. “We have a younger Latino population and an aging Anglo population. … So what you have is groups of people with two very different sets of life priorities and not much familiarity with each other.”

Of course, immigration enforcement hasn’t been the only area in which Arizona has taken an edgier stance than in most places. Guns, too, are tolerated to an unusual–perhaps even unique–extent. “Guns are in all sorts of places here,” said Lacey. “I don’t believe any of the panelists are packing, but some of you in the audience may be.”

“There’s a particularly strong view of guns entangled with this idea of liberty and independence from the federal government,” said Zoellner. “I think it’s facile to call it conservatism, but our brand of it tends be heavily flavored with a libertarian streak.” Such libertarianism, in Zoellner’s view, has tended to “reinforce some of the more solitary aspects of our nature.” In fact, one important aspect of the Gabrielle Giffords shooting early this year was the “role that simple loneliness played in [Jared Lee Loughner’s] life–that he could essentially go slowly mad in public over four years.”

Lacey asked Hamilton to draw on his time in the legislature to psychoanalyze the current leading lights of Arizona politics.

“I would suggest psycho without the analyzing,” Hamilton quipped. He observed that Republican State Senator Russell Pearce, noted for sponsoring SB 1070, and Sheriff Joe Arpaio, famous for cracking down hard on illegal immigration and placing prisoners in a tent city, are the leaders who political figures from out-of-state want to see when they come visiting. “People are really trying to tap into that very ugly, divided sentiment that seems to be so prevalent in the country.”

This divided sentiment preoccupied Zoellner as he started his latest writing project. “I almost did not recognize my hometown in 2010,” he said. “There was something so nasty in the oxygen, something I hadn’t seen before.” And, while Jared Lee Loughner was clearly insane, Zoellner also felt that Loughner’s actions were partly the fruit of the current political climate. “I think social context plays a part in how we act,” he said. “I think this did not happen in a vacuum.”

Hamilton noted that the debate has shifted far enough to the right that notable conservatives from the past no longer pass muster with today’s Arizonans on the right. Even Barry Goldwater is viewed as not conservative enough, while former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor gets treated as if “she’s some kind of crazy liberal person,” just for coming back to Arizona to press for more “civility and comity and fairness and just good old common sense in the political arena.”

This shift is in part the result of structural changes. Term limits, said Hamilton, have been a major problem. And public financing of campaigns has made it easier for a lot of extreme and unvetted candidates to pursue higher office. “There’s no screening process. There’s no quality control,” said Steen, “when it’s so easy to qualify for public office.”

When the floor was opened to questions, one of the topics to arise was immigration and the costs of SB 1070. Were there statistics on the economic effects? Not yet, said Steen. “I’m dying to see them, too.”

Ultimately, said Zoellner, Arizona “does become a crystallization of many of the discontents” of today. Whether Arizona will prove able to address them in a workable manner is what those on all sides of the political spectrum are now waiting to see.

Watch full video here.
See more photos here.
Read expert opinions on whether Arizona is a microcosm of U.S. politics here.

*Photos by Felipe Ruiz Acosta.

The post Radical State appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

“For most normal people, ‘redistricting’ is the most boring word in the English language,” Schnur told the Los Angeles Times last week. “But for members of Congress and state legislators, it’s a cause for full-out panic. … This is musical chairs with switchblades.”

While Schnur stuck by the second part of his statement, he apologized for the first part. After all, Angelenos packed the auditorium and an overflow room at the Museum of Contemporary Art downtown to hear a panel of redistricting experts discuss the topic in depth.

And the panel turned out to be anything but boring, with sharp disagreements and witty quips flying between Levinson and Schnur, plus California Common Cause executive director Kathay Feng, Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) national redistricting coordinator Steven Ochoa and California political expert Joe Mathews.

How We Got Here

The panelists spent a few minutes at the beginning of the program discussing the changes to California’s redistricting process over time and how they’ve affected state politics. Feng’s organization helped write Prop. 11 and Prop. 20, the two laws that combined to create the California Citizens Redistricting Commission, which released its draft redistricting maps last week.

Feng said the need for change was obvious when she worked for the Asian Pacific American Legal Center in the 1990s, trying to help disenfranchised groups have their collective voice heard in Sacramento. She and her staff organized large groups of people to testify in front of the legislature about the need to keep their communities together in redistricting, only to see the politicians nod politely, then head into another room to make decisions themselves. As a result, Asian-American neighborhoods were carved up into two and three pieces, limiting the communities’ influence in the capitol.

“We were part of a dog and pony sideshow, and the real thing was happening behind closed doors without any public participation.”

With the creation of the Citizens Redistricting Commission, Feng said, at least groups know their voices will be heard. The commission held 23 hearings around the state before releasing their draft maps and will hold others before the final product is certified in August.

Schnur agreed that politicians should not be allowed to draw their own districts, comparing that notion to letting a teenager set his curfew. He added that no redistricting effort can make every political race competitive, but that if it makes for a dozen more tight races moderates will benefit.

“Not only has the passage of Prop. 11 eliminated the conflict of interest that legislators face, but as a happy ramification what we will see is an increasing number of centrists in the California state legislature and California state senate,” he said.

Not a Silver Bullet

Ochoa and Mathews took the other side of the issue, arguing that the new redistricting system will not work (for different reasons). Ochoa, whose organization campaigned against Prop. 11 and Prop. 20, said neither redistricting system works.

“At this point in time it looks like we traded one disenfranchising system for another,” he said. “As a person of color working for an organization that tries to empower a traditionally disenfranchised community nationally, redistricting is an opportunity to give voice to the voiceless.”

Ochoa was extremely disappointed in the draft maps: Latinos comprised 90 percent of California’s population growth in the last decade, but the draft map does not add any Latino “opportunity districts,” a prospect he suggested might not be in compliance with the federal Voting Rights Act.

“There are no gains in this first draft, and it’s very, very frustrating,” he said.

Matthews was the least optimistic member of panel about the prospects of redistricting, saying it’s like “giving aspirin to someone with gangrene. It’s fine. It’s brushing your teeth when you have two broken legs.”

Matthews said that the numbers show the new draft maps would not make the vast majority of districts any more competitive and thus not do anything to alleviate the partisan gridlock in Sacramento.

“We’d go from situation in which more than 90 percent of legislative races don’t matter to a situation in which more than 80 percent of legislative races don’t matter,” he said.

Where We Go From Here

Their disagreements notwithstanding, the four panelists were unanimous in saying the Citizens Redistricting Commission and the new district maps can’t solve all the problems that face California. Feng emphasized that the commission still has much work to do – it must prove it is responsive to citizens and make some changes to the map before it is certified in August.

Ochoa said that the state needs to make a bigger priority of the Voting Rights Act, the 1965 law that outlawed discriminatory voting practices and is a major factor in any redistricting effort. He agreed with Feng that minority communities must have districts in which they are the dominant population groups in order to ensure representation at the local, state and federal levels.

Mathews countered that no redistricting effort can bring true change to California’s broken political system; only deeper reforms can do that. The state needs to get to the point where “there is real competition everywhere, everyone’s vote matters,” he said.

Schnur sought to bridge the two sides, agreeing with Mathews that the potential benefits of redistricting are limited but that it’s a good start.

“Politics is dirty and it’s messy and its difficult but what redistricting does is … it can’t make change happen, but it can at least create an environment where it can happen,” he concluded.

For event photos, please click here.
For full video, please click here.

*Photos by Aaron Salcido.

The post Debating California’s New Boundaries appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Competitive Elections Will Produce More Confidence in the System

Redistricting affects constituents in a number of important ways. Perhaps the most important effect of redistricting is that it lays the foundation for whether a given district will have competitive elections. Research tells us that competitive elections tend to encourage representatives to be more responsive to their constituents, which is an essential component of a healthy representative democracy.

Competitive elections also result in higher voter turnout and generate more public dialogue about issues facing society. Redistricting also influences the types of candidates who run in elections and therefore the choices that constituents have.

We have seen instances throughout our country’s history where redistricting schemes have marginalized minority groups and disfavored one party or the other. To the extent this does not happen, constituents will feel that their vote and political views matter.

Another important factor in whether redistricting affects constituents is whether the public has confidence in the redistricting process itself. The partisan gerrymander that characterized the 2001 process fed the public’s cynicism towards our governmental system and elected leaders. The new redistricting commission should help insulate the process from political manipulation and instill more integrity in the redistricting process. This should, in turn, strengthen the public’s confidence in the political system.

Jeffrey Cummins is a political scientist at California State University, Fresno. His teaching and research areas focus on American politics and public policy.

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It Won’t–Unless You’re a Government Employee or Felon

The pithy answer is: not much.

Redistricting affects incumbent politicians immediately; they now must run for reelection amongst unfamiliar voters. While this makes incumbents somewhat less safe, it scares them and makes them raise more money and campaign harder. And they won all these previous elections for a reason: they’re good at it. However, for two groups of incumbents, of either party, the repercussions are more dire: incumbents paired into districts together and incumbents who now live in a district almost certain to go to the opposing party are certain (or close to certain) to lose.

Redistricting also affects potential candidates. Mayors, state assemblymen or any potential entrant who had been thinking of running now have new lines. This may be good, if it puts your “natural voters” into your district, or bad, if those “natural voters” are now in your neighboring district.

How will redistricting affect constituents’ lives, though? Californians are still going to be represented at all levels by someone who represents a large number of people. Both Republicans and Democrats will help their constituents with ombudsman-like services. The “visualizations” released so far suggest Democratic gains generally. Nationally, Democrats stand to lose a few seats due to redistricting, despite pickups in California. In the state legislature, it remains to be seen if these potential gains will materialize or be enough to get to a two-thirds majority for the Democrats. That might affect constituents: tax rates, office hours at government offices, prison inmate releases, and state services like education would be likely to change. But, at the end of the day, “government is a sideshow in the circus of life.” Unless they’re a government employee or felon, most of those changes are likely to be fairly minor in the grand scheme of things for most people.

Matthew G. Jarvis is a political scientist at California State University, Fullerton. He has published articles on voting technology and his research interests include congressional elections, veto politics, and campaign finance.

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Distribution of Political Power Could Shift

Ask the average person on the street how she feels about redistricting, and the answer is likely to be: “huh?” Most people are unaware of what redistricting is, and a description of the Rube Goldberg machine created by Proposition 11 that produced the redistricting commission that produced the maps is likely to cause more eyes to glaze over.

The process of drawing district lines does matter to constituents, whether they are aware of it or not. Redistricting determines whether races for Congress and the state legislature will be competitive or not; whether minority voters will get a fair opportunity to elect candidates of their choice; and how much power each political party will have in government.

Before Prop. 11, the redistricting process in California was left to politicians. When they could, they drew districts to protect themselves from competition and to promote their party. When they could not agree (as when there was a Democratic legislature and a Republican government), the courts came in and drew the plans.

Now, with Prop. 11, we are embarking on a new experiment to see what a group of citizens can do if given the task to draw district lines. Whatever the Commission decides, some people will grumble, and any plan the Commission comes up with will almost certainly be challenged by someone in court.

This is a high-stakes issue for political insiders. And while the public might think that drawing district maps is about as exciting as watching paint dry, in fact the decision could affect the distribution of political power in California and even Congress for the next decade.

Richard L. Hasen is a visiting professor at UC Irvine School of Law and a William H. Hannon Distinguished Professor of Law at Loyola Law School. He co-authored Election Law, Fourth Edition and writes for his blog electionlawblog.org.

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Like Past Reforms, It Won’t Work the Way Voters Intended

The core principle of democracy is that the voters choose their elected officials. In California these days, developments in redistricting technology and practice has made it so that elected officials choose their voters instead. The disturbing result has been a near total absence of competitive state legislative districts on Election Day. So it’s easy to understand why Californians supported the ballot proposition giving a citizens commission the power to draw district lines.

Don’t be surprised, however, if the new method of legislative districting doesn’t do much to improve California voters’ unhappiness with politics.

Californians have a long history of populist-inspired reform. In 1911, the state constitution was amended to create the ballot initiative process, enabling voters to directly enact legislation without having to go through the legislature, which was thought to be under the thumb of railroad companies. In 1990, Californians used this mechanism of direct democracy to institute term limits to lessen the power of incumbency and once again return power to the people.

These structural reform efforts have been undermined by unintended consequences. The millions of dollars it takes to get a measure on the ballot and then run a campaign makes direct democracy a valuable resource for moneyed interests. Term limits, meanwhile, have shifted power away from the legislative branch and towards administrative agencies, as inexperienced lawmakers are forced to rely on the greater expertise of relatively unaccountable bureaucrats. That Californians are still seeking major changes to the political system–like citizen-based districting–indicates that those previous efforts haven’t had their desired effect. And that’s the rub for California’s latest populist reform. Whether or not the citizens commission really empowers voters will depend largely on a set of consequences that no one can reliably predict. The only sure thing is that the new districting process won’t work the way voters intended.

Adam Winkler is professor of law at University of California at Los Angeles School of Law. He is currently writing a book on guns and the right to bear arms.

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Ideally, Communities Of Interest Will Be Better Served

Redistricting will affect constituents in ways that impact their quality of life and their position as members of a democratic society structured to serve their preferred political, economic and cultural interests. The redrawing of district lines is an area of political decision-making that has allowed governors, state legislatures and local officeholders to exercise their influence by drawing politically and personally advantageous districts rather than those that are in constituents’ best interests. Lines drawn as partisan and/or personal safe districts are susceptible to negative impacts on constituents who share common interests around, for example, distribution of school taxes or environmental sustainability policies.

For redistricting to affect constituents positively, district lines should be based on criteria that facilitate fair representation like “communities-of-interest.” Definitive definitions of communities-of-interests are elusive, ranging anywhere from economic to ethnic commonalities, but acquiesce in the communities-of-interest direction by drafters of district lines will be superior to lines drawn on partisan or personal considerations. Contiguous and geographical considerations are embedded in communities-of-interest consideration because populations of like interest tend to be near one another.

Generally, representatives from districts drawn with a majority or dominant community interest in mind will be responsive and sensitive to the constituent’s when advancing and/or supporting legislation, whether or not it corresponds to their partisan or personal preferences. Representatives elected and/or re-elected in districts drawn on a community-of-interest basis and then drift away from their constituent’s wishes risk defeat in the next election. As the size of a community-of-interest population (such as working class or environmental sustainability) increases, the probability that a candidate sensitive to those interests will be elected also increases. However, healthy voter turnout for elections is critical to making this work. Carefully drawn lines with the constituent’s interests as the primary objective enhances fairness in political representation and the one-person-one-vote philosophy.

Gregory Freeland is a political scientist at California Lutheran University specializing in American and comparative politics.

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Ethnic Politics May Prevent True Change

My short answer is “it depends, but the outcome of redistricting could be dramatic, and while it is likely to improve the districts over the current ones, it is not likely to improve them as much as it could.” All right, that’s not so short.

It depends, obviously, because until the Citizens Redistricting Commission (CRC) releases its proposed districts, and they are modified or accepted or rejected, who can say confidently what the influence of the new districts will be? It could be dramatic, because the location of electoral district boundaries can have such a profound influence on who gets elected (in election systems like ours). It is likely to result in improved districts, because almost any change to redistricting that takes it away from partisan legislators is likely to produce more democratic and competitive districts–one of California’s most critical needs, in my opinion. Having partisan legislators make their own districts is way too much like having the fox watch the hen house (and it’s fairly unusual for democratic electoral systems elsewhere in the world).

That said, I suspect the current redistricting effort may not improve our districts as much as it could because of various pressures that will likely distract the CRC from producing optimally competitive and balanced districts. Besides the standard partisan pressures that continually beset what is supposed to be an independent process, the pressures to “represent” particular ethnic and racial groups in the way districts are drawn is exaggerated in California. The intent of the Voting Rights Act is just (especially considering our country’s history) and approximate ethnic and racial representativeness seems appropriate, but partisan competitiveness and competent representation are most essential in the end, whatever the ethnicity of the elected official. The notion that a Chinese American, for instance, has to vote for a Chinese-American candidate or that her best interests are necessarily served by a Chinese-American representative seems wrong and even insulting.

Daniel R. Montello is a psychologist and geographer at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Montello has edited several books and is the co-author of An Introduction to Scientific Research Methods in Geography.

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Minority Communities Will Get Better Representation

Redistricting affects the quality of your elected representation. If your community is placed in a district whose other residents have dramatically different needs and concerns, then the needs and concerns of your community have to compete for the attention of the district’s representative. In contrast, where populations share common interests and needs, known as “communities of interest,” are grouped in the same district, the district’s representative can devote more attention to, and thus be more responsive to, those shared interests and needs.

Redistricting also affects the ability of racial minority populations to elect preferred candidates of choice. Although led by an African-American president, our nation still has not entered a “post-racial” era as some may believe. In many areas of the country, including some parts of California, candidates preferred by minority voters still do not receive support from non-minority voters.

Where these patterns of racially polarized voting persist, minority voters, by definition, will tend to see their preferred candidates consistently defeated election after election, unless they are placed in districts where they constitute a majority or near-majority of the district’s population. In certain instances, federal civil rights legislation (the Voting Rights Act of 1965) requires such “majority-minority” districts to be drawn, thereby providing racial minorities with an equal opportunity to elect their preferred candidates despite the persistence of racially polarized voting.

On June 10, the California Citizens Redistricting Commission released draft maps for new state and federal districts. These maps can be looked at through multiple lenses, but the two impacts described above are particularly important to ask questions about–how well do the maps promote quality representation for one’s community and how well do they comply with federal laws protecting the civil rights of racial minorities?

Eugene Lee is Voting Rights Project Director at the Asian Pacific American Legal Center, which advocates for civil rights, provides legal services and education and builds coalitions to positively influence and impact Asian Pacific Americans.

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Lack of Time and Funding Will Produce Shallow Results

In 2000 and 2001, I served as the vice-chair of the San Diego City Council Redistricting Commission–for the first time in the city’s history, an independent commission was established that had the sole authority to create the new districts–and that experience might shed some light on what could happen with this year’s state redistricting process. In the end, our San Diego plan was seen as excellent and fair and there were no lawsuits or referendums to challenge the districts. In my opinion, however, the redistricting plan we created did not differ all that much from previous redistricting plans because of the constraints–a lack of time and funding–faced by the commission.

My concern for the state redistricting is that if the commissioners face similar constraints, they may not be able to engage in the kind of in-depth analysis and discussion that can take advantage of the commissioners’ skills and experience to produce an independent and well-researched plan. Also, while I understand the reasons why voters wanted to place congressional redistricting under the commission this year, I wonder if that extra task is going to hamper efforts by adding to the already complex job of redistricting, exacerbated by the unforeseen problems of implementing the first independent commission.

One basic issue is that neighborhoods are extremely diverse in terms of factors such as economic background, race, issues considered important to residents, etc. There is not one “correct” or “best” way to create a map, but many different ways based on how factors are analyzed and balanced to meet redistricting criteria. For example, there are many areas in the state in which racial minorities share the same neighborhoods and/or live in adjacent communities. When should these groups be separated or placed in the same district? Or, what happens when residents supply conflicting public testimony about what constitutes a community of interest in their neighborhoods?

From my perspective, here are some of the constraints we faced in San Diego and what the state commissioners might consider:

How do the commissioners take into consideration the Voting Rights Act and the protection of minority interests, while also considering the number of Supreme Court decisions which have limited the use of race in redistricting? In the San Diego case, we had one city attorney advising us. Professional and conscientious, she worked hard to supply us with information and analysis. But as a city employee, I believe that one of her major duties was to protect the city from a lawsuit. It would have been useful to have input from an independent attorney(s) to get additional analysis.

Also, to consider the interests of groups normally disenfranchised by politics and redistricting, such as those that are low income, immigrants and racial minorities, additional analysis looking at legal, political and other factors would have been useful.

We had in-house staff helping us with the mapping software and outside consultants to help us consider the range of criteria we had to consider. I felt that we needed more time and funds to do more analysis and research.

Public testimony is a crucial way for understanding communities of interest and we held more than 50 public meetings–many more than was required–because we wanted to hear from residents, especially those who ordinarily did not participate in the redistricting process. Regarding the latter group, this did not happen. In my opinion, we were naïve to think that those that are usually excluded or disenfranchised by politics would suddenly feel included and empowered and attend the hearings. Again, this places added weight on the analysis of data that can examine the situation of those that are often ignored or disenfranchised by redistricting.

Leland Saito is a sociologist at the University of Southern California. He is the author of The Politics of Exclusion: The Failure of Race-Neutral Policies In Urban America.

*Photo courtesy of tolkien1914.

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