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Why citizen participation on redistricting?
Citizen oversight of redistricting may discourage Council misbehavior. But don't expect much change until someone takes redistricting away from Council and puts it somewhere they can't find it.
Why citizen participation on redistricting?
A heavyweight campaign--including good government group Committee of Seventy, The Daily News, NAACP and the software geniuses at Azavea--forced City Council to do something it initially really didn’t want to do: hold public meetings on the once-a-decade process of redistricting, which is the where Council districts get redrawn to reflect population changes.
Council has long shut out the public to remake districts with an eye to insuring their incumbency: districts that zip in and out block by block, picking up particular neighborhoods or allied ward leaders and cutting out others. Councilwoman Maria Quinones-Sanchez’s “snake of the seventh” district is considered the most gerrymandered in the entire United States of America.
But what exactly does public participation in redistricting consist of? Everyone agrees that redistricting should be taken out of Council’s secretive and self-interested hands. But what does the public have to offer this process?
It’s Our Money (Daily News/WHYY) says the “public should be testifying about the values they think should drive district boundaries. Is it important that your neighborhood not get split between two Council members? That police districts correspond to Council districts? Which is more important?”
I personally have no idea.
Okay, I'm exaggerating: The campaign for citizen participation is great. It can, for example, help ensure that the rights of minority voters--like, say, Latinos--are respected. But it has a lot more to do with keeping a public eye on Council to discourage shenanigans than with average citizens possessing meaningful opinions about what shape their City Council district should be.
I suspect that most Philadelphians would love to draw themselves out of their current districts--that is, if there were some place better to go.
Nation-wide, the movement to take partisan politics out of redistricting has focused on putting non-partisan expert boards in charge of the process.
Committee of Seventy says they are formulating recommendations to do something of the sort for 2021.
“A Charter change would be required, I believe,” writes Seventy President Zachary Stalberg. “Under the current rules, or any future process I can imagine, citizen input is good. But if City Council is ultimately the decider, it is extreme wishful thinking in my view to pretend that citizen participation, or even software games, will somehow make this a nonpolitical process.”
Keeping a public eye on the process is a nice first step, but it’s no panacea. Don’t expect much change until someone takes redistricting away from Council and puts it somewhere they can’t find it.
Council obviously has a conflict of interest in designating the district boundaries. If the City Charter gives Council this power, then what other ridiculous provisions does it contain? The districts are not about Council members; they are about the geographic representation of the population. The state should pre-empt Council on this, and set districts which are geographicly fair to the population.— Falls Ed
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