Let the People Choose

California takes a step toward nonpartisan redistricting.

AHALF-CENTURY ago, an East German communist demanded that the people exhibit more confidence in their rulers. "Would it not be easier," the poet Bertolt Brecht responded, "for the government to dissolve the people and elect another?" Though aimed at a long-ago Stalinist, Brecht's gibe comes alarmingly close to describing how legislators in many states keep themselves in power. Instead of competing for office in electoral districts drawn to reflect relatively objective factors, they use sophisticated computer programs to rig safe districts stocked with their own party sympathizers -- in effect, electing the people they represent. The result is gridlocked, perpetually reelected legislatures in which incumbent Democrats and Republicans attack each other without compromise, secure in the knowledge that the only risk they face is a primary challenge from an even more committed partisan. And, partly because many polarized legislatures draw up congressional districts the same way they design legislative ones, Congress has become a gerrymandered partisan sandbox, too.

Nowhere is the problem more acute than in the nation's largest state, California, whose 80 assembly members and 40 state senators have proved chronically unable to agree on solutions to myriad fiscal and environmental issues. But on Tuesday, California's voters narrowly approved a ballot proposal to take redistricting away from the legislature and give the power to a 14-member commission made up of five Democrats, five Republicans and four members affiliated with neither party. The measure, backed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R), the League of Women Voters, California Common Cause and hundreds of other individuals and organizations -- but regrettably opposed by California's Democratic Party, which currently controls the legislature -- has succeeded where many previous attempts, including a 2005 ballot measure that would have put retired state judges in charge of redistricting, have failed.

To be sure, the new measure creates a complicated process. After the 2010 Census, citizens will apply for positions on the commission; after the state auditor and a panel of judges weed out political insiders, leaders of the legislature will have a chance to knock out a few of the picks, at which point the state auditor will come back to make the final selection. Still, the new group will have to create districts that follow city and county boundaries as much as possible. It might not be a revolution of competitive districting, but it could be a definite improvement -- in that a handful of new, more moderate districts will emerge amid the deep red and deep blue splotches that make up California's current map.

We are not normally in favor of government by referendum. But in this particular context, there was no alternative to an end-run around the people's ostensible representatives. And so we congratulate Golden State voters for taking a step in the direction of saner politics, which, if it works, could inspire similar change elsewhere.