Party that put redistricting on the ballot decides it didn’t work out for them after all.

by Brian Leubitz

Arnold Schwarzenegger was at the center of many of the so-called “good government reforms” of the past decade. The same is true of the redistricting initiatives.  Our former Republican governor was all about the commission, and how it is going to make our districts more fair and competitive.  Now, the competitive thing was something of a joke anyway, as we have already self-sorted to such a degree that it would be nearly impossible to draw more than 25% of districts competitive even if that was your main goal.

But other Republicans besides the Governator weren’ts always as excited about the commission. They had managed to hold off irrelevancy by getting some pretty rigged districts to allow them to maintain their super-minority 1/3+ in both legislative chambers.  

It turns out that the maps we got from the commission were not to the Republicans liking. Very not to their liking.  And with some cash from Mercury Insurance CEO George Joseph, the CRP managed to get what looks to be enough signatures to put the Senate map to a referendum on the June ballot.  Here’s their press release.

The question of the districts for next year now goes to the courts, as they will now have to determine which maps we vote on during the June primary.  They can either opt to go with the commission’s maps or have a special master draw up a new Senate map.  I’m sure you will be hearing something about this fairly soon, as candidates, elections officials, and activists are all needing to get an idea for what Senate district they are in.

So, thanks for that CRP, confusion and chaos, the hallmarks of a good Republican party.

UPDATE: Given the amount of signatures that the CRP folks turned in, checking the signatures is going to take a long time.  They only turned in just over 700K signatures, and given standard validity rates, they will be around 103-107% of the target.  According to California law, that means a more timely “full count.”

With the minimum valid signatures for a referendum being 504,760, the Senate redistricting referendum would need a projected 555,236 valid signatures (110% of the number required) to quickly qualify.

But Gilliard said in an email this afternoon that he believes the final valid signature tally won’t be above 520,000 (103% of the required number) and could be as low as 518,000 (103% of the required number). That would mean a full count… and much longer for the final verdict to be rendered.

And here’s where we come back to the legal fight.

The original plaintiff, Orange County GOP activist Julie Vandermost, is also the proponent of the referendum. Vandermost’s lawsuit, rejected on October 26 by the California Supreme Court, asserted that the existence of a redistricting referendum, under the process laid out by Proposition 11 and Proposition 20, compels the Court to draw interim Senate districts for 2012. (CapNotes)

So, we’re talking about this measure possibly qualifying after the date that candidates can formally announce their bids for the district.  Given those considerations, does anybody think that the Court could do anything but temporarily pick maps that already exist? And since using the old maps would violate the whole one man, one vote thing, what other maps are available to use for a June primary other than the commission maps?

Now, if the referendum does indeed kill the maps in June, the Court will need to draw up new maps.  Whether the CRP will like those anymore is anybody’s guess.  That being said, it seems quite unlikely that the electorate will really over turn maps drawn by an independent commission based upon what is likely to be seen as Republican partisan BS.  The June primary will be pretty awful for Democrats, but Republicans will probably have already selected their nominee. Even in these partisan conditions is a partisan argument really going to carry the day?

But, be prepared for “they’re going to raise your taxes” ads threatening the end of the Republican veto.