California Redistricting Commission - How Not To Redistrict

Critics of legislative gerrymandering in California love to point to California's 23d Congressional District as an example of redistricting gone wild:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger refers to it as the "ribbon of shame," a congressional district that stretches in a reed-thin line 200 miles along the California coast from Oxnard to the Monterey County line. Voters there refer to it as "the district that disappears at high tide."

Democratic lawmakers drew it that way to make sure one of their own won every election. The party has held the seat throughout the decade -- since the last redistricting gave Democrats a big edge in voter registration there.

Critics of that 2001 remapping have cited the coastal ribbon as Exhibit A -- the reason, they say, that Californians were right to strip elected officials of the power to choose their voters and give the task of determining political boundaries to a citizens commission.

As the new Citizens Redistricting Commission begins its work next month, members say, the 23rd Congressional District will be a good reminder of what not to do.

"It's been used as an example of how absurd the process is," said Peter Yao, the commission's chairman. "It does not allow people to choose the candidate. They are forced to go with the party's choice."

Not to impugn the good Mr. Yao, or the writer of the article quoted above, but looking at a Congressional District and deciding it needs redistricting because it "looks funny" is a damned fool way to go about redrawing District lines.

Here's a map of CA23:

Looking at on a flat, featureless map, it does look pretty funny. That is, until you realize that the majority of the District is bounded on the northern and eastern sides by some fairly rugged mountains. Along the coast, you have coastal and military families that share little in common, economically, with the agricultural economy of adjacent CA24. As Wikipedia puts it:

Paradoxically, it is also an example of the preservation of the common interests of voters. If the district was distributed among the adjacent inland districts it could be argued that there would be less effective representation of coastal interests, particularly with regards to fisheries, tourism, development, and offshore oil drilling.

Thus, redistricting because the shape of a District somehow offends someone's delicate sensibilities completely ignores social and economic realities that helped generate the District boundaries in the first place. Let's hope that once Yao and Company get down to Commission business, they can look past their initial prejudices and pay attention to the people.