By Juan Reardon
Published August 19th 2006 in Contra Costa Times
Every 10 years there is a sort of "partisan cleansing" of the voters by moving the district boundaries around. The party with the current majority in the state Assembly, the Democratic Party, looks after its safe districts, and the Republicans keep theirs.
The governor's proposed alternative was introduced in the hope that a panel of friendly judges would help the GOP gain some of the secured Democratic districts.
I suggest we expand our democratic participation and give the voters a chance to be represented in Washington by a Californian for whom we want to vote for regardless of where we live.
Let's eliminate all together the use of "districts elections" for our California's national representation, and start a system that elects members to the U.S. Congress based on proportional representation.
Statewide primaries will select lists of candidates within each party. Statewide general elections will assign to each party the number of seats proportional to the number of votes the party receives in the statewide election.
It works in most civilized nations of the world. It might even reinvigorate the discussion within the political parties about the platform that voters really want and limit the corrupting influence of money.
Juan Reardon
Richmond
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.