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That link is rather optimistic. Don't get me wrong, I prefer random districts to gerrymandered. However I don't think gerrymandering is the cause of the proble

• rprasad 14y ago
  Gerrymandering = a political party draws the borders of the district to give itself an overwhelming majority such that no challenger from another party has a serious chance of winning in the election. Thus, an open primary is useless without ending gerrymandering: voters in the gerrymandered district would have the choice between multiple candidates from multiple parties, but the voters have been selected to choose candidates of Party Z. Candidates of Party Z may split the vote in the primary, against a candidate from Party A who takes the plurality (say, 40%, or all non-gerried votes). However, this challenger would lose to the winning Party Z candidate in the election. In states with open primaries but no gerrymandering restrictions, the districts are generally designed such that the party out-of-power does not have the vote in any particular district to carry a plurality in the primary. Generally, this is accomplished by gerrying all of the minority party's voters into a single district where that party has an obscence supermajority.
• alexqgb 14y ago
  I'm sorry, but this really isn't an either / or proposition. The real bone of contention isn't one technical change or another. It's the vote itself. Its power has been steadily eroded, leaving the electorate with less and less control over their representatives, and by extension, their government. That's the macro problem. Seeing myriad election rules from this perspective underscores why it's a mistake to argue for one partial reform (open primaries) over another (non-partisan redistricting) when really, you should be seeking to increase the power of the vote; an effort that demands both - and more. California's example is especially instructive because the approach that we took was the comprehensive one. Outlawing gerrymandering and closed primaries took place at the same time. Again, of the two initiatives the politicians fought gerrymandering much harder, which should indicate which was seen as the more painful reform (for them). But the larger point wasn't that Californians were blaming a scapegoat for the intolerable level of political dysfunction. It's that they clearly identified wildly out-of-control legislators as the heart of the problem, along with key structural fixes that would shift the balance of power away from these idiots, and place it in the the hands of the voters. Because that's what this is about: taking power away from legislators and making them properly dependent on the will of the people. Gerrymandering is becoming a hot button issue because the electorate has finally woken up to its insidiousness. That's a good thing. As people work through it, it focuses thought on just how unrepresentative our Democracy has become. Once that problem crystalizes, then other related problems snap into focus (e.g. the primary system, private campaign finance, the filibuster rule) and the REAL problem - which is the systematic degradation of the vote - rises to the fore. This will be a critical development. Until it happens, defenders of the status quo will be able to play a shell game, where some other problem is THE problem ("Gerrymandering!" "No, closed primaries!"). This goes around in circles, and change is delayed. But once the overarching theme emerges, and people are focused on the vote itself, then everything that damages it gets tarred with the same black brush. That's the moment we should all be working for.