what is up with common cause backikng ah-nold's prop 77?

Statement of Chellie Pingree, President of Common Cause Endorsing Proposition 77: The Voter Empowerment Act
http://www.commoncause.org/site/apps/nl/content3.asp?c=dkLNK1MQIwG&b=693843&content_id={26A10689-C388-4BA4-BFED-CE9C6D6EAADA}¬oc=1

this makes no common sense to me.

Some of us are real Democrats yet are very torn by the need for elector reform.

But many of us also see this proposition as NOT being the solution to address this need constructively, and actually causing more damage than good. As I said before, if we want to have better control over who we elect here, I think a better effort would be to champion clean elections laws, which would do far more to get politicians that answer to us (instead of special interests) than trying to "magically" redraw district laws so that they will. There's no magic formula that will make district lines give us politicians be more answerable to us. If you redraw them, you might get a new rep (maybe a worse one than before), and THAT politician will be entrenched like the old one, since now the voter demographics favor him being in charge. Then we have to find some other way to get redistricting done again (with the redistricting logic) so that we can get rid of him? Than we do it all over again. Anyone see anything wrong with this equation? It DOESN'T solve the fundamental problem in the equation. It should be that these politicians should be made more answerable to residents NO MATTER HOW the district lines are drawn, which is what will give them more power to throw them out if they don't serve us then with a more active and empowered voting populace.

My obsession is "Why do we need such big Districts"

NY has 150,000/District. Most of the states are clustered around 125,000-150,000/District (Florida, NY, Texas, Ohio, MI) and 60,000-70,000/District.

With term limits and so many silly ass propositions -- no wonder our Legislature is a joke.

But even in NY - my assemblyman "walked the precincts" and knew the people.

And, when I lived in PA - my assembly member used to "hold court" at the local Giant Eagle, and Poli's and Golifty's.

Can't do that in California.

Prop 77 won't cure it.

What we need is an Assmebly big enough to give us the "small, compact" districts of Baker v. Carr.