Monday, July 14, 2008

BARACK OBAMA

Obama's Changed Tune on Redrawing District Lines

Obama's answers on redistricting, to the Midwest Democracy Network, back in November 2007:

As President, would you support federal legislation prohibiting states from redrawing valid congressional district lines more than once a decade?

OBAMA: I opposed the partisan mid-decade gerrymandering that Tom Delay engineered in Texas. I believe that mid-decade redistricting is rarely justified. There may be some exceptional cases, such as a natural disaster, that create population shifts that may warrant mid-decade redistricting. But I do not support state efforts to redraw otherwise valid congressional district lines more than once a decade.

Issue: Independent Redistricting Commissions

As President, would you support federal legislation requiring states to form diverse, transparent, and independent redistricting commissions to redraw congressional district lines?

OBAMA: I would encourage states to form such commissions.

But earlier in his career, according to the Ryan Lizza profile in The New Yorker:

One day in the spring of 2001, about a year after the loss to Rush, Obama walked into the Stratton Office Building, in Springfield, a shabby nineteen-fifties government workspace for state officials next to the regal state capitol. He went upstairs to a room that Democrats in Springfield called “the inner sanctum.” Only about ten Democratic staffers had access; entry required an elaborate ritual—fingerprint scanners and codes punched into a keypad. The room was large, and unremarkable except for an enormous printer and an array of computers with big double monitors. On the screens that spring day were detailed maps of Chicago, and Obama and a Democratic consultant named John Corrigan sat in front of a terminal to draw Obama a new district. Corrigan was the Democrat in charge of drawing all Chicago districts, and he also happened to have volunteered for Obama in the campaign against Rush...

Obama’s former district had been drawn by Republicans after the 1990 census. But, after 2000, Illinois Democrats won the right to redistrict the state. Partisan redistricting remains common in American politics, and, while it outrages a losing party, it has so far survived every legal challenge. In the new century, mapping technology has become so precise and the available demographic data so rich that politicians are able to choose the kinds of voter they want to represent, right down to individual homes...

Like every other Democratic legislator who entered the inner sanctum, Obama began working on his “ideal map.”

So, states should form diverse, transparent, and independent redistricting commissions to redraw congressional district lines. But if there's an opportunity to design an ideal district, Obama's not going to pass that up...

07/14 10:06 AMShare