By Chris Jerdonek
Published October 9th 2003 in Davis Enterprise
To the editor:
Re: "Thomson may run for Senate," 9/30/03. The
state redistricting process is a questionable system. Every
decade a small group of legislators handpicks the voters who will
elect them the next time around. This results in a bunch of
safe districts that effectively strips voters of any
choice. Democracy gets short-circuited.
This time
around it also unplugged the political futures of at least five
women in the assembly, including Helen Thomson. Redistricting
is inherently partisan and subjective, no matter who draws the
lines.
The solution is to adopt the system used by most of
the world's democracies: proportional representation.
First districts are combined to form large, multi-member
districts. This is similar to how five at-large councilmembers
represent Davis. Then the representatives in each district are
elected proportionally.
With large districts, specific
boundary lines are not as affected by tampering. And with a
proportional system, elections award voters with real choices and a
greater chance of representation.
Multi-member districts also
increase representation for women. In the United States, with
its single-member districts, only 14% of Congressional
representatives are women. That's abysmal compared to the
25-45% realized by many countries using proportional
representation.
Our state representatives should sponsor
legislation to form multi- member districts. In the meantime,
they should co-sponsor SCA 14 which would implement both
non-partisan redistricting and instant runoff voting.
The
students of UC Davis got it right last year after their landslide
vote of 67%. They now use proportional representation to elect
their Senate and instant runoff voting to their elect executive
officers. That's the way it should be done.
Chris
Jerdonek
Election Day '09 was a roller-coaster for election reformers. Instant runoff voting had a great night in Minnesota, where St. Paul voters chose to implement IRV for its city elections, and Minneapolis voters used IRV for the first time—with local media touting it as a big success. As the Star-Tribune noted in endorsing IRV for St. Paul, Tuesday’s elections give the Twin Cities a chance to show the whole state of Minnesota the benefits of adopting IRV. There were disappointments in Lowell and Pierce County too, but high-profile multi-candidate races in New Jersey and New York keep policymakers focused on ways to reform elections; the Baltimore Sun and Miami Herald were among many newspapers publishing commentary from FairVote board member and former presidential candidate John Anderson on how IRV can mitigate the problems of plurality elections.