From the Mercury-News: What’s next? Redistricting
Emboldened by the success of his recall initiative, anti-tax crusader Ted Costa said Tuesday he plans to go back to the voters with a ballot measure to break incumbents’ grip on California’s Legislature and congressional delegation.
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The details of Costa’s 2004 initiative are still under discussion, but in general, he said it would take the redistricting process out of the hands of party leaders. Instead, all legislators and outside interest groups, such as the League of Conservation Voters, would be invited to submit redistricting plans to a panel of retired judges appointed by a court yet to be determined. The judges would choose the best plan based on a new set of guidelines designed to discourage gerrymandering.
Rather than transferring the task from one body of men to another, my apportionment reform would ask the People to choose among a number of purely algorithmic approaches. The three most popular algorithms would then be applied to the three sets of seats to be assigned, in order of their size. (California has 80 seats in the state Assembly, 53 in Congress, and 40 in the state Senate.)