On Jan 13, 2004, at 6:13 PM, Anthony Duff wrote:
This use of "independent" commissions is probably very difficult to create if you don't have anything like it already. However, it can work. I think that the most important factor is that the various electoral commissions require their employees to not have any affiliation with any political party, and that in their work they must conduct themselves so as to not be seen to have political opinions.
For the record, our California governor (Arnold) is proposing something along those lines, of having non-partisan judges draw district boundaries. Unfortunately, since judge usually start out with some party affiliation before they actually run as judges, its not always clear you can get real non-partisanality in a place as polarized as California.
In the US (Utah), I was shocked at how openly and unashamedly the controling republicans gerrymandered the district boundaries. Is this sort of thing particular to America?
Well, we invented the word gerrymandering, to our shame. I fear it is one of those structural problems that's hard to change once people latch onto it, as the people who need to fix it as the very beneficiaries of gerrymandering. I would be interested in hearing if anyone else ever had such problems, and whether they were able to change it.
-- Ernie P.
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