February 18, 2009
Bureau of State Audits
c/o Barbara Paget
555 Capitol Mall, Suite 300
Sacramento, CA 95814
RE: Public Comments by Kim Alexander, President and
Founder, California Voter Foundation, on the Citizens Redistricting
Commission
I am pleased to provide for the record the comments I delivered
at the public meeting held by the Bureau of State Audits on January
26, 2009, in Sacramento, California.
I appeared in my capacity as President and Founder of the California
Voter Foundation (CVF), a nonprofit, nonpartisan 501(c)(3) organization
advancing the responsible use of technology to improve the democratic
process. To that end, CVF has on its web site, among other
resources, a California Map series. This features California
political district maps we created in PDF format in 2001, as
well as maps we created in collaboration with UC Berkeley following
the 1991 redistricting process.1
My comments today focus on six topics: (1) the Applicant
Review Panel; (2) the Commission Application Process; (3) Random
Selection; 4) Transparency in and Public Access to the Process;
(5) Funding; and (6) Independent Voters.
1. The Applicant Review Panel
The authors of Proposition 11 (the Voters FIRST Act), as well
as the voters who approved the measure, gave the State Auditor
the job of making the Citizens Redistricting Commission a reality
because the Bureau of State Audits is a trustworthy agency. There
are already many people working at the Bureau who understand
the problems associated with the proper implementation of state
mandates and will welcome the opportunity to spell out in detail
how the duties of the Applicant Review Panel are to be performed. And
they will surely insist that the process be open and transparent.
I have some additional suggestions to offer about ways in which
the State Auditor can maintain the independence and integrity
of the Applicant Review Panel:
1. Set up accountability mechanisms that will insulate the
review panel from potential accusations of bias (such as
periodic public reporting of any outside income earned by
panel members as well as any partisan political activities).
2. Publish online the review panel’s credentials and
biographies.
3. Have the review panel take an oath to execute the law faithfully
and to the best of their ability. This is election-related
work, and it is not unprecedented to require key figures, such
as pollworkers, to swear an oath to uphold the state Constitution
and the laws of California.
4. Designate an ombudsman in the Office of the State Auditor,
as a person with whom concerned citizens can register complaints
about the work of the Review Panel.
2. Commission Application Process
In order to gain the legitimacy that will make it successful,
the Citizens Redistricting Commission needs to attract the most
qualified people to volunteer, and to serve as Commission members,
if they are selected. To this end, would-be applicants
must find it easy to determine their eligibility and to understand
fully what qualifies or disqualifies applicants. The following
recommendations are offered:
1. Make it easy for people to apply, making as much use
as possible of email and web forms.2
2. Publish on the appropriate page on the State Auditor’s
web site3 a clear statement of
what qualifies someone for service on the Commission, and what
is disqualifying. Having these criteria published
plainly and clearly online at the beginningof the application
process is an essential precondition for explaining later to
some applicants why they were disqualified.
3. State clearly online the restrictions that will be in place
to limit the ability of Commission members to run for office
or work in the Legislature for several years after their appointment.
4. Consider implementing a “stepped” application
process so that applicants go through several rounds in the
process (such a process could help “weed out” ineligible
applicants early on, thus saving time for both the applicants
and the review panel).
5. Make applications accessible to the public online, after
redacting sensitive, private information. Applicants
will need to be informed ahead of time that the State Auditor
will make all applications public.
6. Determine whether Commission members must file statements
of economic interest and, if so, inform applicants ahead of
time about this requirement.
7. The application form itself needs to contain enough specific
questions to permit a determination of whether applicants meet
at least a threshold test of qualification. The specific
questions must also be clearly related to the criteria for
selection set out in Proposition 11.4 The
questions must be sufficient, in other words, to permit the
review panel to narrow the full applicant pool to sixty (60)
applicants based on consideration of their analytical skill,
impartiality, and appreciation of California’s diversity. The
State Auditor, in my view, should also use the application
form to gauge applicants’ familiarity (a) with the language
and requirements of the Proposition itself; (b) with the constitutional
and legal context in which redistricting occurs; and (c) whether
the applicant has any expertise in local, regional or statewide
planning.
8. Once the application form is available in draft form, it
should be formally noticed and published for public review
and comment, in much the same way as the state’s official
Voter Information Guide is made available for public review
before it is finalized, printed, and distributed.
3. Random Selection
As you are aware, both the application review panel and the
initial eight members of the Commission must be selected through
a random selection process. In addition to being random,
this process must be transparent and verifiably random
such that any individual that is not chosen can convince themselves
that they fairly lost what is essentially a coin toss.
Another election-related process that calls for publicly-verifiable
random selection is the random selection of precincts whose ballots
must be tallied by hand to verify the accuracy of computer vote
counts.5 Random selection methods
for selecting precincts have been debated in the election community
over the past five years.
Research by computer science and public policy experts at UC
Berkeley has concluded that using a ten-sided dice is the easiest
and most transparent method for selecting the manual tally precincts.6 For
example, in Marin, San Mateo and Yolo counties, three ten-sided
dice are rolled and the digits can be read off as a three-digit
number between 000 and 999. On the contrary, using software
to conduct random selection is considered by many to be the least
transparent such process because it is exceedingly difficult
to know that the software is truly behaving in a random manner.
In addition to using a publicly verifiable source of randomness
for the random selection, some counties employ webcams so the
public can watch the selection process.
Some counties, such as Alameda County, choose a method of publicly
verifiable random selection different from the dice method above. Alameda
instead uses ten numbered ping pong balls in a rotating hopper
to choose the digits for selecting precincts. Note, however,
that pulling names or numbers out of a hat is not a good method
because it’s not easy to verify that every possible number
is in the hat and that no errant or duplicate numbers have been
included. In this case, a good option is a lottery/bingo
ball approach, where the only digits are 0-9, as mentioned above. I
understand the Fair Political Practices Commission uses a similar
method in some of its audit procedures and the California Secretary
of State conducts public random alphabet drawings to choose the
order of candidate names on ballots.
In any event, when you begin to decide on a publicly verifiable
random selection process, I urge you to seek expert input.7 Each
candidate should have the same probability of being selected,
and each candidate should be able to understand exactly how the
selection is performed and that the process is free of bias.
4. Transparency in and Public Access to the Process
The Bureau of State Audits can and should establish a standard
for transparency and ease of public access early on in the Proposition
11 implementation process, as is called for in the Voters FIRST
Act:
“The reform takes redistricting out of the partisan
battles of the Legislature and guarantees redistricting will
be debated in the open with public meetings, and all minutes
will be posted publicly on the Internet. Every aspect
of this process will be open to scrutiny by the public and
the press.” 8
And:
“(The commission) shall conduct an open and transparent
process enabling full public consideration of and comment on
the drawing of district lines.” 9
The early and explicit embrace of these objectives by the State
Auditor will set the tone for how the rest of the implementation
process unfolds. Specific steps the Bureau of State Audits
can take to advance transparency and openness includePublish
on the State Auditor’s web page for the implementation
of Proposition 11 the graphs and flowcharts included in the earlier
Legislative Analyst’s Proposition 11 ballot pamphlet analysis. This
will also help with the application process.
1. Provide links to official district maps from previous
redistricting. CVF has maps from 1991, when a panel
of independent judges drew the lines. This is a useful
basis for comparison with the gerrymandered districts yielded
by the 2001 redistricting, which can also be accessed from
the CVF web site.
2. Publish online a complete timeline for the development
of the Commission and its work.
3. Publish online the full text of Proposition 11. Rather
than link to the current online version, which is hard to read
because of the use of small, italicized font in the sample
ballot text, make a fresh version of the text available.
4. Provide parking suggestions for people interested in attending
the public meetings the Bureau is holding on the implementation
of Proposition 11. Parking in the vicinity of state buildings
is often very difficult to find, especially for people who
are not regular visitors to the chosen location.
5. Funding
The State Auditor needs to determine through a process that
is as open and transparent as possible how much money is going
to be needed for the implementation of Proposition 11, and how
this funding will be built into the development of the Governor’s
annual budget. The reliance on webcasting and the archiving
of videos as part of the implementation process, while recommended,
can be expensive. The current Governor of California supports
this reform, and that support needs to be translated into an
assurance that the funding needed to truly meet the objectives
of Proposition 11 will be requested and provided.
6. Independent Voters
Lastly, I would like to draw the Bureau’s attention to
an apparent contradiction in the text of Proposition 11 regarding
the role that independent voters are to play on the Citizens
Redistricting Commission.
The “Findings and Purpose” section of the initiative
states that this reform:
“…will give us an equal number of Democrats
and Republicans on the commission and will ensure full participation
of independent voters – whose voices are completely shut
out of the current process. In addition, this reform
requires support from Democrats, Republicans and independents
for approval of new redistricting plans.” 10
However, in a later section of the initiative, it states:
“The Citizens Redistricting Commission shall consist
of 14 members, as follows: five who are registered with
the largest political party in California based on registration,
five who are registered with the second largest political party
in California based on registration, and four who are not registered
with either of the two largest political parties in California
based on registration.” 11
Based on these criteria, the four members of the commission
who are not registered with either the Democratic Party (which
is the largest political party) or the Republican Party (the
second largest party) could be independent voters or could be
registered with one of the state’s four minor parties.
According to the most recent Report of Registration published
by the Secretary of State12, independent
voters comprise nearly 20 percent of all of the state’s
registered voters, while voters registered to qualified and unqualified
minor parties comprise only 4.3 percent of the state’s
voters. Given the fact that one in five California voters
is registered as independent, and that the stated purpose of
Proposition 11 is to give a voice to independent voters specifically
in the redistricting process, it is important that the final
selection process be designed to ensure that some of the four
slots reserved for voters not registered with either major party
will be reserved for independent voters.
I applaud the State Auditor for moving quickly to develop regulations
for the implementation of Proposition 11. Along with many
others, I particularly appreciate the decision to hold a series
of public meetings across the state. This is both a necessary
and appropriate way, in my view, to gather public input on the
further development of a reform that is both important and complex
and very much in need, therefore, of wide public discussion.
Sincerely,
Kim Alexander
President
4. Government code section 4.1, Chapter
3.2, section 8252 (d) reads: “From the
applicant pool, the Applicant Review Panel shall select
60 of the most qualified applicants….(t)hese subpools
shall be created on the basis of relevant analytical skills,
ability to be impartial, and appreciation for California’s
diverse demographics and geography.”
5. See Election Code Section 15360.
7. One of the California Voter Foundation’s
board members, Joseph Lorenzo Hall, has examined random
selection and has found that small deviations from an expert-designed
process can lead to non-uniform randomness, i.e. produce
results where some applicants might be selected more often
than others. See Hall, J. L. (2008). Research
Memorandum: On Improving the Uniformity of Randomness with
Alameda County's Random Selection Process. UC Berkeley
School of Information. Retrieved April 11, 2008, from http://josephhall.org/papers/alarand_memo.pdf.
8. Proposition 11, “Findings
and Purpose”, SEC.2 (d).
9. Article XXI, SEC. 3.3, Sec. 2(b)(1).
11. SEC.3.3, Sec.2 (c)(2).
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