Schumer warns against nonpartisan redistricting

Sen. Chuck Schumer, thanking voters on the Upper West Side yesterday for his win, cautioned against the independent redistricting mechanism that former Mayor Ed Koch has made his cause this campaign cycle:

He seemed worried about what might happen if Democrats and Republicans might be forced to run against each other in district lines revamped by the liberation from partisan control.

Redistricting is looming large with the census projections showing New York likely to lose up to two seats in Congress, and now possibly as many as seven new Republican members of the House heading to Washington from New York next year, pending recounts.

“Bottom line is that one thing you have to be careful at the congressional level — I can’t comment on the state and local levels — is you don’t want to lose all that seniority if other states are not doing it,” Schumer said.

He also made clear he's not interested in returning to his old seat at the DSCC.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/maggiehaberman/1110/Schumer_warns_against_nonpartisan_redistricting_.html?showall

See "unilateral disarmament"

made an issue THIS season?
On edit: must be a quote that Politico used - now I have to go to their site to read it...ick...

is the worst way in the world to do it in a democracy. Except for all the others. At least we get to have them compete over who they want in their districts and get to vote on it. A non-elected board of any kind is going to be advancing the agenda of the people who appoint them. Just like elected reps are advancing the agenda of people in their district.

But we can provide strict guidelines that limit gerrymandering.

If precincts can petition to be in certain districts, or if the pols pick precincts like choosing softball teams, that might be more democratic, but rules on drawing districts are just another hamper on elected systems.

The only bad thing I can find with gerrymandered systems is that the minority are saddled with precincts that they might not want. But any system that lets the representatives choose their constituents or the constituents choose their representatives is superior to the non-democratic alternative.

Perhaps one legislative house where the reps choose their constituents and the other where the constituents choose which "district" they vote in?

It would be at the cost of minority gerrymandered districts, so there would be less African American representation in the House.

The issue is minority districts are overwhelmingly Democratic. This is good in that it means a fairly large number of minorities will be elected to the House of Representatives at all times, but it is bad because by consolidating so much of our vote in a smaller number of districts we can not compete for as many seats as we should be able to based on actual, overall generic ballot opinion.

The way things are gerrymandered now, Republicans have an automatic advantage in the House. In the Senate where the only boundaries are state lines this issue obviously doesn't hurt us and you can even kind of see that in the way this election played out. In these Senate races, where all that matters is the popular vote across the entire state, we did much better than many forecast.

It would be at the cost of minority gerrymandered districts

Can't do that without getting rid of the Voting Rights Act... and that would be a contentious issue. This is actually one of the few dividing points between democrats in general and minority democrats that rears it's ugly head about once a decade.

You laid out the rationale quite well. Thanks.

The way things are gerrymandered now, Republicans have an automatic advantage in the House.

The majority of House districts nationwide were drawn by democrats or were originally drawn by us and have only been tweaked in more recent decades by bipartisan (read "incumbent protecting") agreements. I can't remember the last time that republicans controlled a plurality of partisan-drawn districts. It is, in fact, the very reason that (until a week ago) we had so many state legislatures in the South even though we haven't really been the majority there for decades (except occasionally by the illusion of registration advantage).

The simple fact of the matter is that Democrats tend to live closer together and are far more likely to live in urban areas. When we draw districts to our advantage, they're made up of portions of the city and portions of the suburbs that are balanced so that the overwhelming D majority in town outweighs the smaller R majority in the suburb. No impartial line-drawing is going to give you the same result. You're going to get a nice pretty line drawn around the city with an 80% D majority (possibly retaining that minority-majority we're concerned about) and a bunch of "wasted" votes.

In these Senate races, where all that matters is the popular vote across the entire state, we did much better than many forecast.

Not really "much" better. (6-8 was the most common forecast), but somewhat better. That's largely illusion, however, since every single D House seat was up for election and fewer than 1/3 of our Senate seats were (and they were in less-red states than the nation as a whole). If the same results were extrapolated across the Senate, we would be looking at a filibuster-proof Republican majority right now.

That's the wisdom of the Founding Fathers' design. They didn't want the gusting winds of the moment to sweep through the entire legislature. They set the House to be more responsive to the fickle nature of the electorate, but only 1/3 of the Senate each time. If the voters retain the same mindset for six straight years? More power to them. If it's this hot/cold cycle they've been running, the Senate buffers that.