Redistricting

Last month, I wrote in the Los Angeles Times about how Gov. Schwarzenegger's pursuit of education cuts as part of his budget proposal was undermining his efforts to achieve redistricting and budget reforms. A new poll from the Public Policy Institute of California offers more evidence. His stance on education is so unpopular -- only a quarter of Californians approve of his handling of education -- that it's dragging down his overall popularity (to 41 percent in the poll). Schwarzenegger is leading the way in offering reforms, but if he doesn't drop the education cuts -- and he has the opportunity to do just that with his revised budget proposal later this month, his low popularity will poison those reform ideas and end his last chance to make major changes in how the state governs itself.

Rick Claussen, consultant to the redistricting initiative in California, reports that the final count of sigs, after last night's turn-in, is just under 1.2 million. With those numbers -- nearly twice as many as the number of required valid signatures -- the initiative should have no trouble qualifying for the November ballot.

With a per signature price increase to $2.25 and other measures already qualifying, the redistricting initiative, backed by Gov. Schwarzenegger, had a very good week on the streets of California. So good that signature gatherers were told over the weekend to do a "final turn in" of their signatures by tonight. This also suggests there was a ton of hoarding going on two weeks ago--that is, gatherers were holding back signatures in hopes that the price would go up. Rick Claussen, consultant to the effort, says this morning that the sponsors expect to have more than 1.1 million signatures by the end of this week--more than a week earlier than the previous plan. In fact, with redistricting off the street, there is little paying work left in California at the moment. Many of the top gatherers and coordinators are leaving to work on initiatives in other states.

Governor Schwarzenegger has used ballot measures more often than any political figure in American history. He has spent more $25 million on his political career, most of that on ballot initiatives (and to the TV ads and signature gathering such campaigns require). He's kicked in more than $1 million into a new redistricting initiative which has little chance of passing. (CORRECTION: This $1.25 million donation comes not from personal funds--but from one of his political committees).This begs a question: is the blockbuster democracy industry taking advantage of the wealthy governor?

Just got my hands on a new book with an interesting new argument that has relevance for California's ongoing battle over redistricting reform.

In The Big Sort, Bill Bishop, a reporter in Texas, argues that Americans have sorted themselves into homogeneous communities, enclaves full of people with similar backgrounds, education and politics. If he's right, and he has a mountain of demographic evidence, redistricting reforms of the type offered in Gov. Schwarzenegger's current ballot initiative are likely to do very little to give us the kind of bipartisan politics and competitive elections California reformers seek.

It may be that, once again, it's time for California and reformers across the country to think bigger if they want political change. And it may simply be impossible to change politics by changing legislative districts. The real trick is to increase the quantity and quality of voter engagement, and to change the culture and make-up of communities. For its civic health, America needs more than redistricting, though that's the reform we're being fed over and over in the largest state. Tackling polarization is a big job, and hard to do by ballot initiative -- or to contemplate in a short blog post.

Rick Claussen, the consultant and initiative expert who has been brought in to help qualify the current redistricting initiative in California, got in touch this week. Claussen, who works from the Sacramento suburbs, is one of the grown-ups in the direct democracy business and has one of its strongest records, particularly in winning "yes" campaigns, which are much more difficult than "no" campaigns. He worked on previous Schwarzenegger ballot campaigns in 2004 and 2005, and he expressed confidence by email that the redistricting measure will qualify in time for the November ballot.

Claussen says the initiative is on track to hit its target of 1.1 million signatures the first week of May; signatures will be submitted the week of May 12. That number of signatures is nearly twice the 694,354 legally required to make the ballot. But in the initiative business, it is standard operating procedure to submit hundreds of thousands more signatures than legally required -- in large part to speed up the qualification process. When more signatures than required are submitted, county elections officials -- who do the counting in California -- can count using "random sampling" techniques, rather than by going through every signature. If the random sample shows that the number of valid signatures is greater than 110 percent of the legally required number (and a validity rate of 70 percent is considered good in this business), then the initiative automatically qualifies for the ballot. This makes things much faster.

If Californians see the petition circulators outside their grocery stores smiling this week, you'll know the reason: Gov. Schwarzenegger. The Sacramento Bee's Capitol Alert is first to report that the governor has kicked in another $700,000 to the redistricting initiative. As reported here first Sunday, the per-signature price paid to gatherers goes up, from $2 to $2.25 this week, making it the best-paying of the three major measures still on the street.

This continues Schwarzenegger's pattern of putting his money where his mouth is. For all of the criticism he's received for his more than $100 million in fundraising since launching his political career in 2003, Schwarzenegger has been the number one donor to his own career -- more than $25 million -- and most of that money has been spent not on his own election but on ballot measures to advance his agenda. Governing has never been so expensive in California.

Here's an up-to-the-minute report from the streets of California: Gov. Schwarzenegger's redistricting ballot initiative appears to be struggling to attract enough signatures on the street, but it's unclear if the problem is lack of voter interest, hoarding by signature gatherers expecting a price increase, or some combination of the two.

This weekend, gatherers were told to turn in the current petitions they have for redistricting, three gatherers told me this afternoon. Signatures on these are worth $2 per signature. The idea behind the turn-in is to fight hoarding. (Unless you issue new versions of a petition -- either with a different letter on the sheet or in a different color paper, gatherers will hold onto signatures until sponsors raise the per-signature price) A new version of the redistricting petition -- same initiative but different color paper -- will be issued this week. Signatures on that new version will be paying $2.25 a signature, the gatherers have been told. The price increase suggests that the redistricting initiative is still seriously short of signatures, and time is running short to get the measure qualified for the November ballot.

In contrast, the anti-same sex marriage initiative appears to have enough signatures, according to gatherers. Sponsors of that initiative have ordered a "final turn in" for tonight. Those sigs are worth $1.40 or $1.50 per signature. Initiatives on victims rights ($2) and alternative fuels ($1.90) continue to circulate.

DEPARTMENT OF MOON HOWLING: The Las Vegas Review & Journal takes a long look at one of the country's more important signature firms, National Voter Outreach and its CEO Rick Arnold. I've interviewed Arnold in his Carson City home, and found him to be one of the more thoughtful people in the petition trade, critical of its problems and clear-eyed about its limitations. This story is built heavily around criticism from the liberal/progressive Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, which is quick to lable signature gathering as corrupt (at least in cases where it opposes the cause in question). There is a "shocked, shocked" quality to this criticism. The signature gathering business has plenty of problem workers, many of them poorly trained folks who, for lifestyle reasons, have taken a job that usually pays them in cash. But BISC and other critics invariably propopse to criminalize the process of gathering signatures, as in Oklahoma. In supporting these restrictions, liberals are hurting themselves, by establishing precedents restricting political speech that can be used by their political opponents. And such restrictions don't stop direct democracy. They merely slow it down, adding to the costs (and thus the influence of interest groups) that progressives love to denounce. The more you regulate, the more firms like National Voter Outreach will benefit.

Given the last several years' experience, redistricting supporters should take this with a Mt. Wilson of salt, but California Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez says he's working with Republicans on a package of constitutional reforms -- redistricting, a term limits extension, and a fundraising ban during certain parts of the legislative calendar -- that could go on the November ballot. Legislative leaders have had several chances in recent chances to support redistricting -- including last year, when they might have gained more support for a term limits extension if they had paired with redistricting -- but couldn't do it. A redistricting ballot initiative, backed by the governor and good government groups, is on the street gathering signatures, and Democrats have been criticizing it. One wonders if this isn't a trial balloon designed to hurt that measure.