Here is a relevant portion of the Amendment:
The Commission shall consist of seven membercommissioners. On or before January 15 of the year following thecommencement of the federal census, the following offices shall eachappoint one member of the Commission: the Governor of the Commonwealth,who shall appoint a dean or professor of law or political science orgovernment at an institution of higher learning in the Commonwealth;the Attorney General of the Commonwealth, who shall appoint a retiredjustice who resides in the Commonwealth; and the Secretary of theCommonwealth, who shall appoint an expert in civil rights law who is aresident of the Commonwealth. By the same date, the House Speaker, theHouse Minority Leader, the Senate President, and the Senate MinorityLeader shall each nominate three individuals. The appointees chosen bythe Governor, Attorney General, and Secretary of the Commonwealth shallthen select one of the three nominees named by each said official.
David wrote:
A couple of reactions to Bob’s points. First: removingredistricting from the control of democratically-elected reps isindeed, in a sense, anti-democratic, but that is not necessarily a badthing. Why? Because redistricting, unlike the other examples Bob cites(tax policy, civil rights, etc.) carries no substantive contentwhatsoever. No citizen’s legal, financial, or other interests canpossibly be directly affected by redistricting – the only thing thatchanges in redistricting is the group of citizens represented by aparticular individual.
Second: the availability of the "vote the bums out" solution isprecisely the problem – the sophistication of redistricting programshas gotten to the point that, realistically, that solution no longerexists in many cases. Furthermore, again unlike any substantive issue,redistricting is a direct conflict of interest for electedrepresentatives (it determines their jobs), and therefore they arguablyshould be disqualified from participating in it under the ethicalstandards to which we expected elected officials to adhere.
Finally, I would note that I have for a long time believed that bothsingle-member districts and at-large systems are intensely problematic,and that far better solutions exist (cumulative voting among them).Unfortunately, these solutions often require constitutional changes.But at the state level, that may not be such an impossibility.
I replied:
Well, this is a constitutional amendment we are talkingabout. PS: If redistricting "carries no substantive content whatsoever"then why are we even wasting our time discussing this.
David added:
Redistricting is a meta-issue. It’s not a substantiveissue; it’s about how substantive issues get resolved. And, whilefirst-level substantive issues like tax policy should be (and are)resolved through the democratic process, it’s not obvious to me thatmeta-issues must or should be resolved in the same manner. Meta-issuesmatter a lot, but that doesn’t mean that different rules shouldn’tapply.
Naturally, since I am the one writing up this post at 3.48 AM, I get to end our discussion with my last words:
Seems pretty substantive to me … or would you say thatthe Constitution, for example, is a meta-issue and doesn’t need to bedetermined democratically.
Well, you can always sign the initiative on the theory that this is an issue which needs further discussion, unlike, say, the anti-gay marriage (or as I like to call it, anti marriage equality) petition.
who shall appoint a dean or professor of law or political science or government at an institution of higher learning in the CommonwealthI think that’s ridiculously overconstrained in some ways, underconstrained in others.What about a professor of math, applied math, or operations reserarch? These are the guys who could draw the lines in a way that could be defined as compact, a strict mathematical term. They might be more appropriate than a government professor, and certainly more appropriate than a law professor. How about a professor of geography? Some of those guys would be perfect for this job.The department in which the professor is tenured is not really relevant — what is relevant is his abilities with regard to dividing a state in to a small number of districts.Secondly, any college in the state? My first instinct is that this should be limited to public universities, for a few reasons.1. They work for the state, and therefore don’t have a special interest (their employer) who can fire them without due process.2. It would create an incentive/remind the legislature that Massachusetts has no public law school, and that this is a great disservice to potential lawers and to the population at large.
Interesting discussion, thanks for posting the wrap-up of it, Bob.I think David has it right – it’s rather a conflict of interest for the elected officials to be determining the boundries of their districts – they of course want to protect themselves from competition. I for one would like to take it out of the hands of say, Sen. Panagiotakos.
Seems to me that Bob’s claim that the commission is somehow anti-democratic is an overreaction. If anything, the commission is MORE democratic, since it widens the number of elected officials who appoint the members, instead of narrowly keeping it in the hands of legislative leaders, whose incumbent protection racket is not exactly a triumph of democracy, and whose staff — the people who really do the work — are also, well, unelected. Regarding stomv’s concern, once in place, the commissioners can call on whatever expertise they feel is required to do the job, including mathematitians and demographers.
^ The politicians can do that now too. But, likewise, a mathematician or demographer could call a law or government professor for expertise.So, given that, why limit the appointment to a dean or professor of law or political science or government at an institution of higher learning in the Commonwealth?