Redistricting

UPDATED 4/16 WITH NEW FIGURES: This should be the first of what I hope will become a regular feature on the blog: reports on the opaque California signature market, with actual figures on how much initiative sponsors are paying gatherers for each signature they collect. The per-signature amount is crucial information -- but little known -- because it determines the priorities of the individual signature gatherers. You pay more, they'll put your petition on top of their clipboards. High signature prices, however, also can be a sign that an initiative is weak. Sponsors have to pay more because their initiative has little time to qualify or involves a complicated subject that is hard to explain in a grocery store parking lot.

Here's my rundown on per-signature costs gleaned from a weekend of talking with signature gatherers in Southern California. I'm not specifying exactly where I talked to gatherers to protect their anonymity. I'd like to do this not only for California but also for other states. I'd love to hear from signature gatherers around the country.

Here's my look at how Schwarzenegger's proposed budget cuts, especially on education, are getting in the way of his push for budget reform and a redistricting ballot initiative that appears headed for the November ballot in California.

For a man who spent $70 million getting elected mayor of New York (and contemplated dropping $500 million of his own cash on a presidential campaign), billionaire Michael Bloomberg's gift of $250,000 to the redistricting ballot initiative backed by Gov. Schwarzenegger amounts to little more than loose change from the Gracie Mansion sofa (Except it wouldn't be Gracie--Bloomberg doesn't live at the official mayoral residence). But it's a nice endorsement for the initiative campaign and the governor, who needs to portray his redistricting proposal as truly bipartisan. Bloomberg is a former Democrat, former Republican, and current independent (Note to Californians: independent is New Yorkese for "Decline to State"). Democrats are already noting that Bloomberg's own redistricting efforts in New York differed in content from the California initiative.

The LA Clippers don't win much. But to call one genre of ballot measures -- reapportionment initiatives -- the Clippers of initiatives is an insult... to the Clippers.

Or to put it another way. Such measures lose. Always. Dozens of such initiatives have been filed in California in the past 15 years. How many have been approved by voteres? Zero.

But Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and former state Controller Steve Westly are trying again. The two teamed up in 2004 to convince voters to pass Propositions 57 and 58, companion measures to refinance the state's debt and to establish a balanced budget requirement in the state constitution. The measures won, but the initiatives have failed to live up to Schwarzenegger's promise that they would fix the state budget "once and for all." Now they want to prevent a repeat of the "bipartisan gerrymander" the Golden State saw when new district lines were drawn seven years ago.

That gerrymander ended competition between the parties.Instead, the state was carved up into seats that were safe for Democrats and Republicans. Swing districts were eliminated. Democrats liked it because it locked in their majorities; Republicans embraced it because it prevented further losses. In 2004, not a single one of the 153 legislative and congressional seats changed hands from one party to another.