David Brauer writes a number of great ideas about how redistricting ought to go next round.
I am intrigued and think they should be on the table. > I still like my binding arbitration idea. Set up a political panel...and one > made up of those with no history of party involvement. Let a three-judge > panel chosen by the state Supreme Court (or some non-Minneapolis > judiciary) pick one or the other plan, but not both. That forces both > groups to draw reasonable plans, because an extreme one is less likely > to be chosen. > snip > > Get rid of that junk and set a mathematical compactness standard - it's > easy to do these days. But I am not sure if thatwould solve all the problems. The biggest problem I see today is that the commission and its decisions are so removed from any elected body there seems to be no where for the citizens to hold them accountable. They are all appointed by an appointed body. So what we have is a very very partisan group with very very little democracy influenceing it. That is why I think it is a problem that the council is powerless. Because then so are we. I am not sure what the answer is...but I hope we find a better one in the course of the next ten years. Now back to David's comments on my earlier post. He makes good points about the downtown ward not being much different to how it has been inthe past. I don't really disagree, but I still contend that having some other wards representing parts of downtown offers advantages, both to downtown and to the city at large. Even the downtown council was opposed to a downtown ward. I think David may have misunderstood my point about the 25% "minority" population downtown. > > Two things: > > 1. Are you saying shelter residents shouldn't count? No, of course not. But I am suggesting that to imagine they will have much influence and impact is being unrealistic. I don't expect many meetings to be set up with a council member, much voter registration efforts etc. to empower such transient voters especially when their total number is so low. It would seem that this would only put more pressure on the 7th ward council member to listen and work with the mostly white and mostly wealthy people who also happen to be those registered and likely to vote. This is also an old trick of partison redistricting IMHO. Make sure that the folks you do not want to have a voice are sliced into such small groups that they have no hope of electing anyone. And when they do have large enough numbers to influence an election pack as many as you can into one ward. Basically this happened in ward 5. That took Green strong holds, kept them together, cut off the DFL favoring downtown voters and exchanged them for about half of the Green heavy voters from the 3rd Ward on the north side, thus packing a Green 5th ward, and making it harder for a Green to win in the surrounding wards...i.e. making 4, 3, and 7 safe DFL wards. (although it appears that 7 may have been set up to create a republican or independence "opportunity" ward.) I am a little confused by David's last point. > 2. Consider that the finagling went in other directions: for example, > the 4th ward is 49 percent minority but the next-door 5th is 82 percent. > Although the 4th has a higher base percentage of minorities, if you're > making the case for packing, look northwest as well as east into > Downtown. It seems the 4th was basically unchanged keeping it safe for the status quo. The 3rd and 7th are what were changed to pack the 5th as I explained a few days ago. In the end, though, despite all these rantings, I am disappointed that we even have to get into all this when certainly energy would be better put into making positive change to our city working on problems and issues of the day - housing. police, cleaner air, land and water and a better transit system. Let's hope that we can use the lessons from this to take the time needed to make sure we have the tools to do a better job next time redistricting comes around. Cam Gordon Seward, Ward 2 914 Franklin Terrace Minneapolis, MN 55406-1101 612.332-6210, 296-0579, 339-2452 _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
