About this Blog
Direct democracy -- the Switzerland-inspired system of initiatives, referenda and recalls that allows voters to make and repeal laws in 24 states -- is poorly understood. It isn’t even very direct. Direct democracy has become blockbuster democracy: a half-billion-dollar international industry of signature gatherers, consultants, and election lawyers who use ballot measures less as a method of making law and more as a tool of mega-communications to boost some politicians, hurt others, and supplement lobbying campaigns.
Blockbuster democracy is a decentralized business that practices wide-open politics. This blog aims to provide a center of news, analysis and conversation for and about the industry. We will report from blockbuster democracy’s capital -- California -- but we’ll monitor ballot measures from across the country and around the globe.
Your Blogger: Joe Mathews is an
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Laura Richardson, Poster Child For Redistricting Reform, Except....
California Congresswoman Laura Richardson would make the perfect poster child for the campaign for an initiative reforming redistricting. Her life and finances are a mess. The latest is that her home in Sacramento has been declared a "public nuisance." Her continued presence in Congress is an embarassment. But she'll win re-election easily, because there's no real competition in California. (Note to conspiracy theorists: her write-in opponent, Peter Mathews, has the same last name as your blogger, but we don't know each other and are not related).
I, for one, can't wait to see the Prop 11 campaign broadcast commercials with Richardson's story, an example of the lack of accountability that California's gerrymander promotes. We could see the houses she's lost to foreclosure, the bills she's left unpaid, the car she abandoned in a repair shop. It's going to be perfect....
Except there is not going to be such an ad.
Why? Because members of Congress are not covered by that redistricting reform initiative, scheduled for this November's California ballot.
Why is that? Well, to prevent leading members of Congress such as Nancy Pelosi from opposing the initiative.
How has that worked out? Pelosi and other Congressional Democrats are opposing the measure.
To quote Dark Helmet in Spaceballs, "evil will always triumph because good is dumb."
Matthews claims that
Matthews claims that Congress is not covered by Prop 11. That's not true. Although the state legislature will draw the Congressional districts under Prop 11, the legislature will be required to use the new rules contained in Prop 11. That means no more closed doos meetings to draw the maps or to confer with lobbyists, and it means no more gerrymandering.
But don't take a bloggers word for it. Go to www.yesprop11.org. Read the initiative for yourself.
Prop 11 is good for voters.
Misleading
Yes, there is a line in the initiative that says the Legislature must follow four criteria in how it handles redistricting. But as the poster above surely knows, that's beside the point. The point of the initiative is to take the power to draw legislative districts out of the hands of the legislature. But it specifically does not cover Congress. It leaves that to the legislature. If you believe this criteria will prevent the legislature from holding closed door meetings or conferring with lobbyists (much less "no more gerrymandering"), I have some low-performing mortgages to sell you. Joe Mathews Irvine senior fellow, New America Foundation www.newamerica.net/blog/blockbuster-democracy/
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