LA Times reports some good news:
Fed up, and urged on by do-gooder organizations like Common Cause, California voters in 2008 passed Proposition 11, taking redistricting away from lawmakers and handing responsibility for drawing legislative boundaries to an independent citizens commission.
Two years later, voters passed Proposition 20, which gave the commission power to draw the state’s congressional lines as well.…
But injecting competition into California’s moribund House races has been the rare election reform that has worked just as reformers said it would.
“I’m proud of it,” said Kathay Feng, a longtime champion of more politically representative districts who was instrumental in passing the redistricting measure as head of California Common Cause. She was especially proud, she said, of the 14 commissioners who set aside partisanship and ignored the personal interests of incumbent lawmakers in drawing new lines that stood up to repeated legal challenges.
California has even become a model for other states, said Feng, who also oversees redistricting reform efforts nationwide for Common Cause, a political watchdog group.
Voters in Colorado, Michigan, Missouri and Utah will consider ballot measures in November that would take redistricting away from self-interested lawmakers and place it in the hands of an independent commission. Earlier this year, Ohio voters passed a similar proposal.
(click here to continue reading It’s not just Trump — California voters can thank themselves for the state’s relevancy in this November’s midterm election.)
Hmm. Gerrymandering is certainly a foot on the neck of true democracy, especially as practiced by modern political operatives. We as a nation would be well served if more states removed the ability of politicians to create their own districts.