Fate of Mission Bay Derails San Diego Redistricting Plan

Commission Deadlocks 4-3; Five Votes Needed for Approval

by MARK GABRISH CONLAN

This is one of the things that has always bothered me

about "electoral democracy": So many of the important

decisions are all decided long before you or I get to vote

on anything, like the makeup of political districts. Once

cast in stone, these decisions are but rarely revisited,

and if you miss your chance to comment on them, that's it,

tough luck. All the political organizing work in the world

often can't undo the tilted playing field constructed from

the outset in a non-participatory, undemocratic process

beforehand.

The criteria that go into carving out political districts are

so often arbitrary and made to suit narrow constituencies

or even just single individual incumbents, it makes a mockery

of authentic participatory self-governance, which ofcourse

we don't have.

I think the best corrective available in the near future is to have

a much more truly partcipatory, direct, and representative government.

We should take many more decisions out of the hands of elected

officials and put them back in the hands of citizens and smaller,

more local organizations: town halls, community planning groups,

etc. Plus, we should political districts much smaller and make our

"representative" bodies much more representative, to cut out a

lot of the undemocratic gerrymandering inherent in "electoral

democracy."