Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Cantlon: Occupy redistricting!

In today's column Tom rightly calls foul on the efforts of Speaker Andy Tobin and Senate President Steve Pierce to subvert the will of the voters and get around the independent redistricting process. There is far too little reporting on this in the press and it really deserves much more extensive public attention.
    I spotted an interesting piece in The Atlantic today that I think adds a very significant but underappreciated point. Republicans are inspired to resist the redistricting changes because they see increasing political clout for minorities and Democrats, and from that they infer a biased process. Nate Berg reports that demographic changes over the past decade are turning the entire mountain West more Hispanic, more urban and therefore more purple. Any fair redistricting effort will naturally reflect these changes.
    If you need some sort of good news to get you through the day, you may appreciate the back half of Tom's column, but it's unrelated to his main point and feels like filler to me.