Something for the locals - Fair Districts in Massachusetts!

Fair Districts for Fair Elections

Understanding the Fair Districts Issue

Why is Common Cause Massachusetts Campaigning for Redistricting Reform?

The legislature has too much power over redistricting, the process of drawing electoral district maps every ten years following the census. Time and time again, those in power draw the lines to protect themselves and to eliminate meaningful electoral competition along the way. The voters, therefore, don't really choose their politicians. The politicians choose us. This is nothing short of democracy on its head. We need to restore democracy to our elections by transferring the power to draw districts from self-interested politicians to an independent commission with strict standards for fairness.

This fall Common Cause is embarking on a large-scale signature collection drive to get the Fair Districts Constitutional Amendment on the ballot. Signing the petition will bring us one step closer to this important reform.

A Slew of Bad Examples in the Bay State

Massachusetts has long been a leading practitioner of drawing funny shaped districts for political gain which is known as "Gerrymandering." After all, it started here almost 200 years ago when Governor Elbridge Gerry pushed to create one district with such wiggly borders that it reminded people of a salamander. At the time, this was seen as such an egregious abuse of power that the people voted Gerry out of office the next year!

But the original gerrymander (as seen on the right) was far from the last in Massachusetts or the rest of the country. The practice continues to this day. Some, like Gerry's, are only one town wide in many places and zigzag from north to south. Others cut towns slice communities into tiny pieces. Today, the ability of legislators to ensure their easy re-election gets more sophisticated with each census. Software has reached the stage where a powerful few can enter the attributes of their ideal districts and get the desired results- down to the last house- in a few seconds. These districts don't always look like salamanders, but they're just as gerrymandered.

Take a look at the Gerrymandering Hall of Fame for some of the worst current districts in Massachusetts.

The 2001 map that the House of Representatives drew for Boston's districts demonstrated racial bias and gerymandered districts. While communities of color had grown to the point that they now represent a majority of the capital's population, the House's plan decreased the number of districts with Boston's minority communities losing one Representative district instead of gaining one. It accomplished this by concentrating minority voters in some districts and grabbing parts of the suburbs and placing them into several others. For this violation of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, a federal 3-judge panel threw the plan out and ordered the House to comply with the law. In the court's words, the House, "sacrificed racial fairness to the voters on the altar of incumbency protection." In the end, the judges also cast serious doubt on then-Speaker Thomas Finneran's assertions that he had nothing to do with it. Now Boston has new districts, the former Speaker is at the center of a federal perjury probe, and five million Massachusetts taxpayer dollars were spent to defending this indefensible plan.

A Major Blow to Competition

When legislators are busy shifting lines to eliminate potential competitors, electoral competition suffers. And the last thing Massachusetts needs is less electoral competition. Our state is almost dead last in the Union in terms of how often voters have more than one choice of candidates to send to Beacon Hill. Once in office, nearly seven in ten House members don't even face a challenge in the next election. No state Senator has been defeated in 4 consecutive election cycles. Combined with the problem of big money in politics, bad redistricting practices are knocking the wind out of healthy democracy. Read more about the loss of competition in Massachusetts elections.

CC/MA Proposes a Better System

Today, several states have successfully adopted reforms that make the process fairer and more transparent. Cutting politics and partisanship away as much as possible, these states have turned to independent redistricting commissions to draw their electoral districts. Iowa's commission draws the district lines and then the legislature votes up or down on the commission's plans. Arizona's commission controls the process from start to finish. While some states have better commissions than others, the results are clear: States that conduct redistricting through independent commissions end up with fewer gerrymanders and greater electoral competition.

Eleven states drew new districts in the last census cycle with a commission rather than the legislature, and in the 2002 elections their average rate of contested districts was over 70 per cent. In the other states, maps drawn by the state legislature generated a paltry 50 per cent competition rate. Here in Massachusetts our competition rate is closer to 30%. Little Iowa, with only five seats in the U.S. House, had more closely contested Congressional elections than California, New York, and Illinois combined!

In Massachusetts, an independent redistricting commission would be guided by strict requirements to:

• Keep towns and city neighborhoods together.

• Practice non-partisan redistricting.

• Prevent redistricting from intentionally protecting or harming any candidate.

• Foster competition by treating incumbents like any other candidate and creating opportunities for local elected officials to "move up".

• Protect the voting rights of minority communities.

• Require a public process and public input.

I'm a registered voter in this Commonwealth, and despite our stellar record nationally, local elections often leave a lot to be desired, with many candidates for office running unopposed! Our Big-D Democratic machine is as ponderous and invincible as the Big-R Republican machine is in other states and nationally. If you vote in Massachusetts too, you owe it to yourself to check out this website and sign the petition.

Request and sign an official Fair Districts initiative petition.