California Proposition 11 (2008) - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Proposition 11 of 2008 (or the Voters FIRST Act) was a law enacted by California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

voters that placed the power to draw electoral boundaries for State Assembly and State Senate districts in a Citizens Redistricting Commission

Citizens Redistricting Commission

The Citizens Redistricting Commission is the redistricting organization for the state of California. It is responsible for determining the boundaries for the Senate, Assembly, and Board of Equalization districts in the state. The 14-member commission consists of five Democrats, five Republicans,...

, as opposed to the State Legislature. To do this the Act amended both the Constitution of California and the Government Code. The law was proposed by means of the initiative

Initiative

In political science, an initiative is a means by which a petition signed by a certain minimum number of registered voters can force a public vote...

process and was put to voters as part of the November 4, 2008 state elections

California state elections, November 2008

The California state elections, November 2008 were held on November 4, 2008 throughout California. Among the elections taking place were those for the office of President of the United States, all the seats of California's delegation to the House of Representatives, all of the seats of the State...

. In 2010, voters passed Proposition 20

California Proposition 20 (2010)

A California Congressional Redistricting Initiative, Proposition 20 was on the November 2, 2010 ballot in California. It was approved by 61.2% of voters. Election officials announced on May 5 that the proposition had collected sufficient signatures to qualify for the ballot...

which extended the Citizen Redistricting Commission's power to draw electoral boundaries to include U.S. House seats as well.

Provisions

The Act amended Article XXI of the state constitution and enacted Title 2, Division 1, Chapter 3.2 of the Government Code. These changes transfer authority for establishing Assembly, Senate, and Board of Equalization district boundaries from elected representatives to a fourteen member commission. The commission is chosen as follows:

Government auditors select sixty registered voters from an applicant pool.
Legislative leaders are permitted to reduce the pool.
Auditors then pick eight commission members by lottery, and those commissioners pick six additional members for a total of fourteen.

The commission must include five commissioners of the largest political party in California (in practice the Democrats

California Democratic Party

The California Democratic Party is the state branch of the Democratic Party in the state of California, headquartered in Sacramento. It is chaired by veteran Democratic politician and former United States Representative John L. Burton, who succeeded Art Torres in April 2009. It is the majority...

), five commissioners from the second largest party (currently the Republicans

California Republican Party

The California Republican Party is the California affiliate of the United States Republican Party. The party chairman is Tom Del Beccaro and is based in Burbank, California, a suburb of Los Angeles. The RPC also has a headquarters in Sacramento....

), and four of neither party. For approval, new district boundaries need votes from three commissioners of the largest party, three from the second largest, and three of the commissioners from neither party. The commission may hire lawyers and consultants to assist it in its work.

The state legislature retains responsibility for drawing district boundaries for California's Congressional Districts, but the Act adds additional criteria that the legislature must follow in drawing those boundaries.

Others supporting the initiative include

AARP
AARP
AARP, formerly the American Association of Retired Persons, is the United States-based non-governmental organization and interest group, founded in 1958 by Ethel Percy Andrus, PhD, a retired educator from California, and based in Washington, D.C. According to its mission statement, it is "a...
The Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce
The League of Women Voters
League of Women Voters
The League of Women Voters is an American political organization founded in 1920 by Carrie Chapman Catt during the last meeting of the National American Woman Suffrage Association approximately six months before the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution gave women the right to vote...
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger is an Austrian-American former professional bodybuilder, actor, businessman, investor, and politician. Schwarzenegger served as the 38th Governor of California from 2003 until 2011....

(Republican)
Former Governor Gray Davis
Gray Davis
Joseph Graham "Gray" Davis, Jr. is an American Democratic politician who served as California's 37th Governor from 1999 until being recalled in 2003...

(Democrat)
ACLU - Southern California
Bay Area Council
Bay Area Leadership Council
California Black Chamber of Commerce
California Democratic Council
California Democratic Council
The California Democratic Council , an unofficial umbrella organization of volunteer Democratic Clubs, was founded at conferences at Asilomar and Fresno conferences in 1952-53 by future U.S. Senator Alan Cranston, State Senator George Miller, Jr...
California Police Chiefs Association
California Republican Assembly
California Small Business Association
California Taxpayers' Association
Central California Hispanic Chamber of Commerce
National Federation of Independent Business, California
North San Diego County NAACP
Neighborhoods for Clean Elections
Santa Clara Cities Association
Silicon Valley Leadership Group
Small Business Action Committee

Newspaper Editorial boards in favor

The Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
The San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Chronicle
thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...
San Jose Mercury News
San Jose Mercury News
The San Jose Mercury News is a daily newspaper in San Jose, California. On its web site, however, it calls itself Silicon Valley Mercury News. The paper is owned by MediaNews Group...
Fresno Bee
The Torrance Daily Breeze
San Diego Union Tribune
Pasadena Now
LA Daily News
North County Times
Stockton Record
San Gabriel Valley Tribune
Santa Cruz Sentinel
Lompoc Record

Arguments in favor of Prop. 11

Notable arguments that have been made in favor of Prop. 11 include:

Under current law the legislature draws its own districts which results in 99 percent of incumbents being re-elected
The initiative will open up redistricting so that it will no longer be controlled by only the party in power.
When state legislators are in charge of drawing district boundaries, as they are currently, there is a conflict of interest such that legislators place their own self-interest ahead of the common good.
A citizen's commission created according to the dictates of Prop. 11 will be able to make independent decisions leading to legislative boundaries based on fairness and the public good and not political aspirations..
Partisan gridlock caused by the current way of drawing legislative districts has caused the legislature to underperform in its mission of serving the people of California.,
State legislative contests held in districts drawn by a Proposition 11 commission would be more competitive, leading to voters electing more moderate legislators.

Donors supporting Prop 11

As of September 24, three campaign committees supporting Prop. 11 have filed officially with the Secretary of State's office. Some donors have contributed to more than one of these committees. The largest donors altogether are:

Gov. Schwarzenegger's California Dream Team, $2,446,000.
Charles Munger Jr., son of billionaire Charles Munger, $1 million
Michael Bloomberg
Michael Bloomberg
Michael Rubens Bloomberg is the current Mayor of New York City. With a net worth of $19.5 billion in 2011, he is also the 12th-richest person in the United States...

(the mayor of New York City), $250,000.
Howard Lester (of Williams-Sonoma), $250,000.
Brian Harvey, president of Cypress Land Company, $250,000.
Reed Hastings
Reed Hastings
Wilmot Reed Hastings, Jr. is an entrepreneur and education philanthropist. He is the CEO of Netflix, and on the boards of Microsoft, Facebook, and numerous non-profit organizations.- Early life and education :...

, founder of Netflix
Netflix
Netflix, Inc., is an American provider of on-demand internet streaming media in the United States, Canada, and Latin America and flat rate DVD-by-mail in the United States. The company was established in 1997 and is headquartered in Los Gatos, California...

, $250,000
New Majority California PAC, $237,500.
Meg Whitman
Meg Whitman
Margaret Cushing "Meg" Whitman is an American business executive. She is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Hewlett-Packard. A native of Long Island, New York, she is a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Business School...

, CEO, eBay
EBay
eBay Inc. is an American internet consumer-to-consumer corporation that manages eBay.com, an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell a broad variety of goods and services worldwide...

, $200,000.
William Bloomfield, $150,000

City of Pasadena endorses

On Monday, March 10, 2008 the Pasadena City Council became the first California city to endorse the proposition.

Path to the ballot

Kimball Petition Management was paid $2,332,988 from two separate campaign committees to collect signatures to put this measure on the ballot. Signatures to qualify the measure for the California 2008 ballot measures|November 2008 ballot were submitted to election officials on May 6, 2008. On June 17, the California Secretary of State

California Secretary of State

The Secretary of State of California is the chief elections officer of that U.S. state. The Secretary of State is also responsible for the California State Archives, as well as chartering corporations. The Secretary of State is elected to four year terms, concurrent with the other constitutional...

announced that a check of the signatures had established that the measure qualifies for the ballot.,

Supporters file campaign financing complaint

In late August, supporters of Prop. 11 filed a complaint with the Fair Political Practices Commission because the California Correctional Peace Officers Association—a group that opposes Prop. 11—gave contributions totaling $577,000 to the Leadership California committee, which is a campaign committee associated with state senate leader Don Perata

Don Perata

Don Richard Perata is a California Democratic politician, who was President pro tempore of the California State Senate from 2004 to 2008. He came in second place in the November 2010 ballot for Mayor of Oakland...

. The Prop. 11 group said that it was wrong for the police officers union to give the money to the Perata committee rather than directly to the No on 11, and also alleged that the police union was trying to curry favor with Perata. Days later, the FPPC took the rare step of rejecting the complaint without conducting an investigation.,

Opposition

The official committee set up to oppose Proposition 11 was called "Citizens for Accountability; No on Proposition 11". Paul Hefner is the spokesman for the "No on 11" effort.

Opponents to Prop. 11 include

U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer
Barbara Boxer
Barbara Levy Boxer is the junior United States Senator from California . A member of the Democratic Party, she previously served in the U.S. House of Representatives ....

,
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
Nancy Pelosi
Nancy Patricia D'Alesandro Pelosi is the Minority Leader of the United States House of Representatives and served as the 60th Speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 2007 to 2011...

,
the California Democratic Party,
the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund,
the NAACP Defense Fund
the Asian-American Pacific Legal Center

Arguments against Prop. 11

Arguments that have been claimed in opposition to Prop. 11 include:

No accountability to taxpayers. Each commission member is guaranteed $300 a day, plus unlimited expenses in the form of staffing, offices, etc.
The commission created under Prop. 11 would allow politicians to hide behind the selected bureaucrats to maintain a hold on redistricting as they wish.
The overly complicated process created by Prop. 11 would make it easier to mask hidden agendas of the people behind those on the committee.
Prop. 11 offers no assurance of the same representation for communities, such as California's Hispanic community in the redistricting process.
The current version of Prop. 11 does not include congressional districts as an earlier draft did, thereby not being complete reform and creating additional detractors to the measure.
Even when commissions do create competitive districts, the people who get elected in them do not necessarily behave as political moderates."

Democrat against Democrat

Kathay Feng, the main author of the initiative, and director of California Common Cause, said in late June that since the measure qualified for the ballot and the California Democratic Party had announced its opposition, there had been an attempt to bring everybody into line and to encourage those in support of the measure to oppose it.

Donations to opposition campaign

As of September 24, the opposition committee, "Citizens for Accountability; No on 11", had raised $350,000:

California Democratic Party, $75,000.
California Correctional Peace Officers Association, Truth in American Government Fund, $250,000.
Members' Voice of the State Building Trades, $25,000.
"Voter's First" campaign committee, $40,000

Polling information

A poll released on July 22, 2008 by Field Poll showed Proposition 11 with 42% support and 30% opposition. A late August poll released by the Public Policy Institute of California showed Prop. 11 with 39% of voters in support.

Month of Poll	Polling company	In Favor	Opposed	Undecided
July 2008	Field	42 percent	30 percent	28 percent
August 2008	PPIC Public Policy Institute of California Public Policy Institute of California is an independent, nonpartisan, non-profit research institution. Based in San Francisco, California, the institute was established in 1994 with a $70 million endowment from William Reddington Hewlett...	39 percent	36 percent	25 percent
Sept. 2008	PPIC Public Policy Institute of California Public Policy Institute of California is an independent, nonpartisan, non-profit research institution. Based in San Francisco, California, the institute was established in 1994 with a $70 million endowment from William Reddington Hewlett...	38 percent	33 percent	29 percent

Result of vote

Additional reading

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