Bushwhacked_ Life in George W. Bush's America Large Print - Molly Ivins [132]
Since the insane cost of political campaigns is driven primarily by the cost of television time, we suggest a clear and simple rule: “No political candidate shall be permitted to buy either time or space in any news medium. Compensatory time and space shall be provided by the media.” Who owns the airwaves?
We do.
WE ALSO SUGGEST this radical, subversive, powerful notion.
Vote. Get out and register other people to vote. The Republicans “won” the 2002 congressional elections with 15 percent of the eligible voters. Given the stakes, that’s ridiculous.
If everyone in this country who sees the corruption of legalized bribery goes out and registers one person to vote every month for the next year—and stays in touch with that person, talks to that person, keeps that person informed—then we win the next election. How do you do that? Get in touch with your county registrar, set up a card table on a Saturday morning outside a grocery store, and just talk to people. “Lost your job? Need health insurance? Child care? Try voting.”
Another major reason American politics is so dead in the water is our current system of redistricting. Redistricting, the art of drawing a district so it favors one party or another, is now so advanced there is scarcely a congressional district left in the country in which a Democrat and a Republican each have a fair chance of winning. The districts are overwhelmingly stacked in favor of one side or the other; you can barely find a dozen contested congressional races out of 435 total in any given year. Why bother to vote when the outcome is inevitable? One piece of fallout from this is the disappearing middle in politics. Washington commentators (in our opinion, the most obtuse body of nincompoops on earth) constantly deplore the lack of civility in contemporary politics. Gone are the days, they mourn, when pols could fight on the floor all day and still drink together at night, when no one ever made a permanent enemy because you might be on the same side tomorrow with your opponent of today. The commentators never seem to mention why this deplorable decline in civility has occurred. A lot of the incentive for pragmatism and compromise is lost to this increasingly polarized system of redistricting. Pols themselves, who often used to represent disparate constituencies simultaneously, no longer need to search for the win-win compromise.
But there’s a solution for this too! We are practically Miss Pollyanna Sunshine when it comes to reform. Regard—Iowa! Although square, Iowa is a splendid state. Chief among its splendors is its system of redistricting. Iowa’s electoral districts are drawn by a nonpartisan state commission: the commission uses computer programs to draw, as the law instructs, compact and contiguous districts. (During a memorable redistricting fight in the Texas Lege in the 1970s, the House birthed a map that featured districts that looked like giant chickens and others that looked like coiled snakes. A disconsolate San Antonio rep rose to complain about his new district to the chair of the redistricting committee, Delwin Jones of Lubbock. “Lookahere, Dell-win,” quoth he, “look at whut yew have done to mah district. It’s got a great big ol’ ball on the one end, and then it runs in a little-bitty ol’ strip for three hundred miles, and it’s got a great big ol’ ball on the other end. Now, Dell-win, the courts say the districts have to be com-pact and con-tiguous. Is this your idea o’ com-pact and contiguous?!” Jones contemplated the question at the front mike for some time before he at last allowed, “Wha-ell, in a ar-tistic sense, it is.”)
In Iowa the districts are drawn without regard to partisanship or incumbency. In other states, almost all districts are drawn to protect incumbents. Iowa’s system has been in place