In an environment where wealth inequality is a political issue, this piece makes the case that the best approach is not more government redistribution programs but rather having companies extending share ownership far more broadly. Author Mundell discuses an original way to encourage more widespread employee stock ownership.

In his last published work, John Steinbeck, that great chronicler of the working class, mused that Americans never embraced socialism because the poor didn't expect to stay poor; they instead viewed themselves as "temporarily embarrassed millionaires."

Today, the mood is more somber. A working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research suggests that intergenerational mobility in the U.S. is on average no higher than in Europe. A recent Gallup poll found that Gen Z respondents were almost equally split on whether they view capitalism or socialism more favorably.

Decades ago, Congress made an earnest effort to head this off. With America’s wealth increasingly concentrated in companies, it forged a bipartisan consensus to incentivize companies to extend share ownership more broadly. By rewarding nonexecutive employee performance with company stock—in addition to wages—employees get a pro rata claim on all the future profits the firm earns. Wealth creation through equity ownership is profit sharing both now and in the future.

Imagine, for a moment, that instead of today’s gig workers and their companies being locked into a never-ending transactional dance over their status, that top-rated Uber drivers had the opportunity to earn stock in their company.

Yet despite research demonstrating mutual benefits for corporations, shareholders and employees, and elaborate government incentives (especially with ESOPs), broad-based employee ownership has barely migrated outside of Silicon Valley. Conventional wisdom points to the complexity of the ESOP program, but tinkering with it over time hasn’t helped, and meanwhile the need grows more urgent.

Before reaching for yet another government fix, shouldn’t we first see if a fully informed market can produce a solution on its own? Outside of ESOPs, there isn’t enough public reporting of employee ownership data, even for publicly traded companies. And that means there is no transparent scorecard, no easy way to compare one company to the next and, of critical importance, no way for companies to compete with each other on employee-ownership adoption.

To create that scorecard, we must make currently invisible employee-ownership data visible to all Americans. The tool required is a public-facing Employee Ownership (EO) Index, in effect, a “company Gini coefficient” that measures employee stock ownership within and between companies. The power of such an index shouldn’t be underestimated. In addition to potentially impacting market value, it’s a way for companies to signal their good intentions.

The ESG (which asks stockholders to consider a company's commitment to environment, social and governance issues when making investment decisions) taught us just how sensitive corporations are about their reputations, even with regard to societal problems they aren’t fully equipped to solve. In contrast, broad-based employee ownership is completely within their control and totally consistent with profit maximization. The EO Index offers both companies and the public a flashlight to reveal which companies are leading, which are following and which are impeding change on this defining issue for the future of democratic capitalism in the U.S.

Our nonprofit organization, Work to Own, along with a team from Harvard Business School and other leading institutions, is releasing a first-ever Employee Ownership Index for the S&P 500. Though it will require further refinement because of the data limitations, we believe it will create a new market standard for measuring broad-based ownership that will encourage a race to the top.

The SEC could greatly improve the robustness of the rankings by mandating that companies disclose employee stock compensation by income cohort, but until then, Work to Own will be supplementing our existing measure with surveys of the leading companies to produce a more definitive ranking of the S&P 500.

The more robust the tool, the more empowered companies will be as change agents, and the less demand there will be on government to expand redistributive programs. For while progressively larger rounds of redistribution have improved the living standards of the poorest Americans and strengthened the safety net, they haven’t solved the economic mobility problem and, arguably, have imposed huge costs on the efficient functioning of the market economy.

Rather than continue this course, we must find solutions that expand wealth from the bottom up. Then, and only then can the founding vision of America be restored, and, as Steinbeck described in another essay, can the working class once again be “temporarily embarrassed capitalists.”

—William A. Mundell, Founder and Chairman of Work to Own, and Chairman of Neurosphere Entertainment.

Making Corporations The Change Agents To Jumpstart Economic Mobility

Forbes.com

C16_Making Corporations The Change_Forbes.com

Washington is appropriating tens of billions of dollars to rebuild New Orleans and the devastated Gulf Coast region. But one measure that would cost little and quickly spur an inspiring revival of this impacted area would be making the region a true free-enterprise zone.

Residents and local businesses would be free from both federal and state capital gains levies. Parents would have genuine school choice: If they wanted to move their children to another school, they'd get a voucher or coupon equivalent to the amount spent per pupil in their current school. Pre-Katrina property tax rates would be slashed. Give people who currently live in the region or who move to it an income tax holiday: no taxes owed to Uncle Sam or state capitals for, say, ten years.

With those kinds of incentives small businesses would flourish--a handful might even become tomorrow's Microsoft or Intel or Apple or Oracle. Job opportunities would proliferate. So would good schools. People would gladly migrate to the region and build anew. Critics may cry that all this would give the area an unfair advantage vis-à-vis the rest of the country. Precisely. Which would lead to another constructive move--making the entire country a true free-enterprise zone. America would prosper as never before.

Thank goodness we have accepted the Netherlands' offer to send experts on levees and levee reconstruction. That country has an extraordinarily sophisticated system of dikes and floodgates.

The Netherlands underwent a Katrina-like disaster in 1953. Like New Orleans, much of Holland lies below sea level. The dikes broke, and 1,800 people lost their lives. Holland put in a three-tier system of levees, and its North Sea floodgates are considered a marvel of modern ingenuity.

So let's take seriously the advice of these experts on how to protect New Orleans in the future and which parts of the city should be rebuilt and which left unrestored.

Out of the Katrina disaster might come--finally-a renewed sense of seriousness concerning energy.

•Oil refineries. There hasn't been a new one built in the U.S. in nearly 30 years. Yes, the petroleum industry has been remarkably creative in increasing output from existing plants, but new ones are needed. The President should push for legislation to clear obstacles, particularly delay-it-to-death environmental lawsuits and regulations. The Environmental Protection Agency, for instance, has an array of rules that force refineries to produce a variety of gasolines to meet regional environmental standards, especially during the summer. Their effectiveness is debatable; the fact that they increase gasoline costs and reduce gasoline output is not. Most of these regulations were suspended temporarily after Hurricane Katrina. Why not scrap them altogether?

•Congress should allow oil exploration in a small part of Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). In essence we're talking about a handful of acres here, the equivalent of a sugar cube in New York City. And we're not talking about sweeping, awe-inspiring forests: This region is bleak, even in summertime. Moreover, the oil industry has again and again proven its ability to drill in and then restore impacted terrain.

•Congress should also permit exploration and drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS), including areas off the shores of Florida and California. Some 85% of these waters are off-limits. Thankfully, drilling technology and practices have improved substantially in the last 30 years, sharply reducing the possibility of spills. Experience has demonstrated that even when spills do occur, the affected areas recover rapidly. The amounts of offshore oil and natural gas are stupendous. If these reserves were developed, our dependence on overseas energy sources would considerably lessen.

President Bush could help to once and for all pop the oil-price bubble by selling oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve on a more regular basis. Before the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina, speculators knew that Uncle Sam was a buyer of last resort. There is no fundamental reason that petroleum prices should be almost three times the level they were three years ago.

California entrepreneur Bill Mundell--founder and CEO of Vidyah, a leading private educational organization--is spearheading a citizens' effort to attack one of the major corrupters of American politics today: gerrymandering. Thanks to high tech, politicians can now establish district lines that effectively make elections for state legislatures and for the House of Representatives uncompetitive.

In California last November not one incumbent was defeated in elections for the state legislature or Congress. Not one of the 153 seats up for grabs--53 congressional seats and 100 in the state legislature--changed party hands. As has often been observed, the U.S. is becoming a democracy in which the politicians choose the voters rather than the other way around. Aside from a handful of notable exceptions such as Iowa, states more or less follow California's Soviet-style approach to drawing voting district lines.

Mundell chairs Californians for Fair Redistricting, which is pushing for passage this November of Proposition 77, the Voter Empowerment Act. The initiative would establish a nonpartisan panel of judges to draw competitive and compact district lines. No longer would boundaries resemble a Jackson Pollock painting. Competition would be restored--and with it infinitely greater accountability.

You'd think that with more and more pols ensconced in safe districts, they'd act more responsibly. Quite the opposite--special interests have gained more influence, and spending has reached irresponsible proportions. Gerrymandering is one reason California politics has become so dysfunctional. Needed reforms are dead-on-arrival in the state legislature.

It's no wonder that Proposition 77 is despised by most Golden State politicos. California State Attorney General Bill Lockyer tried throwing Proposition 77 off the ballot on minor technicalities. Fortunately the state Supreme Court blocked Lockyer's insidiously cynical maneuver, and Proposition 77 is back on the ballot.

If successful, this initiative will set an inspiring precedent for similar redistricting reform efforts in the rest of the country. And Mundell will rightly become a political force to be reckoned with.

Bridgeclimb, an Australian company at the base of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, does a brisk business selling so-called bridge climbs (

,). New York City should set up a similar operation at the Brooklyn Bridge. Enterprising souls are willing to do it, including those who currently run the Sydney concern. Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani wanted the city to do just that several years ago, but Big Apple government lawyers howled that the city would lose money from the liability suits brought not by the bereaved families of those who accidentally spill into the river below (as Rich Karlgaard points out, the Aussies do everything they can to make the jaunt safe, including cabling climbers to the bridge itself) but by people who stub their toes and bang their knees, etc.

Still, the idea is a great one. I climbed the Sydney Harbour Bridge, and it's a captivating thrill. Mayor Bloomberg should make a Brooklyn Bridge climb part of his reelection platform. It would win votes, and the inauguration of such a climb would be a great way to kick off his second term. New Yorkers would probably take to the bridge experience even more than Sydney-siders have.

What about those possible liability suits? Would-be Brooklyn Bridge climbers should have to sit through a safety lecture and sign multiple pieces of paper acknowledging that this trek is no cakewalk. Of course, a plethora of lawsuits could, in a perverse way, do some good: Such suits might push the normally nonsensical City Council or the New York State legislature to enact a wee bit of tort reform.

forbes.com

C01_Fact and Comment_Forbes.com

Arizona voters want an independent commission to handle redistricting. Irate state legislators sued.

More than 200 years ago, at the Massachusetts convention to debate ratifying the U.S. Constitution, state representative Theophilus Parsons emphasized the need for a remedy if “a state legislature” were to “make an unequal and partial division of the state into districts for the election of representatives.” But although the Framers responded by providing for federal regulation of elections in the new Constitution, the problem of gerrymandering persists.

Courts and legislatures struggled to address gerrymandering for decades, but it was not until 2011 that one state, Arizona, successfully used a ballot initiative to create an independent commission to draw district lines for Congress. Now the Arizona state legislature is suing to invalidate the lines drawn that year, arguing that the U.S. Constitution requires that the state legislature draw those lines. On March 2, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in this lawsuit.

We in California have a strong interest in this court case. That’s because California used the ballot to go even further than Arizona and barred the legislature from directly selecting the members of the commission. We, together with three former governors of California and the Chamber of Commerce, filed an amicus brief that among other things demonstrates that the dangers inherent in this lawsuit extend well beyond Arizona and California.

A broad decision from the high court eliminating any regulation of the “manner” of federal elections not made by state legislators could not only invalidate fair redistricting in other states that use independent commissions but also threaten important existing reforms that were first accomplished by ballot measure, such as permanent voter registration and all-mail balloting.

The principal issue before the court is: What does the Elections Clause of the Constitution mean? It says, “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations . . .”

The Arizona legislature argues that “Legislature” may only mean the specific group of elected members sitting in the state capitol. But the dictionary known to the Framers, by Dr. Samuel Johnson, defined legislature as “the power that makes laws.” So did Noah Webster, when he wrote his 1806 dictionary.

For the past century, some states have used the initiative and referendum as “the power that makes laws” on a broad range of subjects. In spite of the fact that state legislatures have historically misused their power to redistrict, the Arizona legislature insists that the citizens of Arizona should not be allowed to use the initiative to create a commission to draw new lines.

We will never be certain of how the Framers would have defined “Legislature,” because the initiative was unknown in 1787. But we do know their views on federalism and fair elections.

The authors of the Federalist Papers contemplated that Congress would serve as a backstop in case the state legislatures abused their power to regulate elections to cripple the nascent federal legislature. Hence that second line in the Elections Clause, giving Congress the power to pass its own laws that would override state rules. Had Congress been displeased with the use of new alternative political structures to carry out redistricting, it could have mandated that redistricting be done solely by the legislators.

But Congress never did so. In fact, a later Congress acted to further clarify the vision of the Framers by considering the changed landscape and explicitly giving the states freedom to act in accordance with their own laws. In 1911 Congress changed the relevant law, which had referred to redistricting by “the legislature of such State” to provide that the redistricting should be done by a state “in the manner provided by the laws thereof.”

This was done after a floor discussion of the then-new phenomenon of the statewide initiative, first adopted in 1898 in South Dakota, and some mention of nonpartisan commissions. It would now be up to the states to choose the means to accomplish their duties.

And yet today we have the remarkable irony of state legislators arguing that the clause intended to give Congress the power to prevent gerrymandering instead forbids a state from preventing it.

The commissions recently used in California and Arizona may have their flaws. But those could be fixed before meeting again in six years time. Already, they have proven to be far more open, transparent and responsive to diverse groups than the alternative—legislators meeting in a backroom and producing new maps. And like it or not, commissions produced many more competitive seats in 2012 and 2014 than had been seen in the past.

There should never again be a situation like that in California in the decade of the 2000s where, in a state with 53 House seats, there was a change of party exactly once in 265 House races. “We the people” deserve better.

Trying to Pry the Gerrymander Out of Politics

wsj.com

C02_Trying to Pry the Gerrymander_WSJ.com

Several months of quiet whispers have quickly turned into a resounding buzz -- and a nervous buzz, no less -- about a case pending before the U.S. Supreme Court that questions whether it's constitutional for independent state commissions to have the sole power to draw political district maps.

The case is centered on Arizona, but the buzz being heard on this side of the Colorado River arises from the fear that if a lower court's ruling is thrown out, California may very well be next in the return to partisan congressional gerrymandering.

It explains why everyone from legal scholars to three former California governors is asking to be heard before the nation's highest court.

Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission

, now scheduled to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in March. And the argument being made by Arizona's legislative leaders in their quest to outlaw the state's redistricting commission is pretty simple: The U.S. Constitution, they say, vests all power over congressional elections in state legislatures -- and no one else.

The legal fight has been brewing for a long time. Arizona voters approved 

 in 2000 that created an independent redistricting commission. A decade later,California voters 

assigned the drawing of congressional districts

 to a similar panel (after giving the panel 

Now, a swarm of Californians are filing 

Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission

California Citizens Redistricting Commission

 depends on what happens in Washington, D.C., before the end of 2015.

While California's commissioners have filed their own 

 in support of the Arizona panel, their fight was joined on Friday by 

 from three former California governors -- George Deukmejian, Pete Wilson and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Of those, Schwarzenegger has the most to lose in terms of his legacy, as he was a driving force behind 

the two initiatives that wrestled control of political map drawing away from the Legislature

The governors were joined in their filing by the California Chamber of Commerce as well as wealthy activists 

 -- two big money backers of the redistricting initiatives.

It's fascinating that the California cavalry is rushing in to defend its Arizona compatriots now, given that this effort to kill Arizona's redistricting commission is pretty much down to its last swing of the bat. A U.S. District Court ruled against Arizona's legislative leaders last February, and it's not exactly clear that the Supreme Court justices will even consider all of the arguments made by legislators seeking to regain their redistricting power. Perhaps, but everyone still sees the stakes as high.

"The Arizona litigation," said California Chamber of Commerce President Allan Zaremberg, "jeopardizes the will of the California electorate and its embrace of fair redistricting and competitive elections."

For the average observer, the crux of the case may be this: Is the power of Arizona voters to write legislation -- legislation written through the ballot initiative process -- equivalent to the legislative power over elections in Article I, Section IV of the Constitution:

The times, places and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by law make or alter such regulations, except as to the places of choosing Senators.

Arizona's legislative leaders say, quite simply: no way. In 

their December filing with the U.S. Supreme Court

, they argue the above passage is crystal clear:

"The term 'the Legislature' is clear and explicit and has an unambiguous meaning repeatedly recognized by the Framers and this Court: the representative lawmaking body of a State. In the Constitution, the Framers carefully assigned particular obligations to particular State-level entities, whether the 'people,' the 'legislature,' the 'executive,' or the 'State' generally. That precise division of labor leaves no doubt that they intended that 'the Legislature' -- meaning the representative lawmaking body -- be the entity that 'prescribe[s]...Regulations governing redistricting."

Arizona's independent redistricting commission

 is selected by a different process than the one in California, though Golden State activists and lawmakers may have used parts of the Arizona process to help shape the final details that were drafted in 2007.

In Arizona, the independent commission has five members. Four of them are chosen by the state's legislative leaders from a pool vetted by a judicial commission; the chairperson of the commission is then selected (out of the remaining applicants) by the four commissioners.

In California, the panel is 14 members. Eight commissioners are chosen at random, from a pool of applicants vetted by the state auditor but from which each of the four legislative leaders is able to reject six names. Those eight commissioners then choose six colleagues from the remaining applicants.

From a layman's perspective, if Arizona legislators are successful in convincing the Supreme Court that they been stripped of their right to have a role in crafting congressional maps -- 

even though the Arizona system allows top lawmakers to pick four-fifths of the commission

 -- then it would seem much easier for California's legislators, who have a much smaller role, to argue they, too, have been wronged. Remember, the entire political campaign was about stripping politicians of their power to draw congressional districts.

(And in case you're confused, the pending Supreme Court case is only about drawing 

 districts, not those for Arizona's Legislature.)

Most states across the nation continue to have their political maps drawn by legislators -- a power that's led to countless charges of districts skewed by gerrymandering for partisan gain. And that's what supporters of independent redistricting say will happen again if the high court strips the Arizona commission of its power to craft the state's nine congressional districts.

"The Arizona Legislature's lawsuit is just an effort to get the foxes back in the henhouse," said Kathay Feng, executive director of California Common Cause and one of the authors of the California redistricting laws.

In California, a redistricting process dominated by majority Democrats in the Legislature would undoubtedly produce more Democrats and fewer Republicans in the state's congressional delegation, though leaders of both parties in the state Capitol opted for a map that protected incumbents in 2001, the final once-in-a-decade redrawing before the independent commission took over.

Even some members of Congress don't want to go back.

“Districts drawn by incumbents to protect their jobs makes politicians less accountable to their constituents," says Rep. Julia Brownley, a Ventura County Democrat. She and 19 other incumbents filed their own amicus brief in hopes of blocking the rollback effort by legislators in Arizona.

A Gerrymandering Comeback in California … via Arizona?

kqed.org

C04_Comback in California_kqed.org

Three former California governors are wading in to an Arizona elections case before the Supreme Court that could have major implications on how California draws its congressional and legislative districts.

Former Govs. George Deukmejian, Pete Wilson and Arnold Schwarzenegger, along with the California Chamber of Commerce, GOP mega-donor Charles T. Munger Jr. and entrepreneur Bill Mundell, submitted a brief late Friday stating their support for an independent commission that crafts a state’s districts, rather than restricting the task to state legislatures.

Arizona, like California, has an independent panel that draws the state’s districts. But Arizona’s legislature wants to take the job back and has challenged the constitutionality of allowing such a committee to determine district boundaries. They argue that legislators alone have that power.

The case is set to go before the Supreme Court in March.

California’s redistricting panel was created by a 2008 ballot initiative to draw state legislative districts; in 2010, voters approved extending its authority to draw congressional districts as well.

, the governors and their allies said that “for decades, the California Legislature abused its power to adopt congressional districts, at times adopting highly partisan gerrymandered districts ... and at other times adopting bipartisan ‘sweetheart’ gerrymanders designed to insulate incumbents of both major parties from electoral competition.”

The brief asserts that the Constitution allows voters to use the initiative process -- as they did in California and Arizona -- to delegate the redistricting power to an independent panel.

“The lines drawn by California’s Citizens Redistricting Commission have resulted in the fairest and most competitive elections in California history,” said CalChamber President and CEO Allan Zaremberg in a statement.

He added that the “Arizona litigation jeopardizes the will of the California electorate and its embrace of fair redistricting and competitive elections.”

Zaremberg said, in a follow-up interview, that the brief’s signatories were those who had “taken a leadership role in fair redistricting.”

The group has a noticeably GOP tilt -- the three governors are all Republican and Munger is a major party donor. Rick Hasen, a law professor at UC Irvine, said such an assemblage could be helpful in convincing Justice Anthony Kennedy, a likely swing vote on the issue.

“If, as in many cases, Anthony Kennedy is the swing voter, he is that same kind of moderate Republican as George Deukmejian, as the Chamber of Commerce,” Hasen said. “That’s the kind of Republican Justice Kennedy was before he was a judge.”

If the Supreme Court finds the independent redistricting commission to be unconstitutional, that would almost certainly pave the way for a challenge to the district maps drawn in California in 2011.

Hasen said the ripple effects could extend further to other California electoral reforms done by initiative, such as the open primary system.

“Anything that could affect how federal elections are conducted -- to the extent it would be done without the Legislature -- could be subject to being unconstitutional” if the court finds against the redistricting commission, Hasen said.

3 former California governors back independent redistricting

latimes.com

C05_3 Former California Governors_latimes.com

With the census nearly complete, states next year will redraw congressional and legislative lines. Thanks to high tech, gerrymandering--creating districts in such a way as to give particular parties or incumbents a decisive advantage--has reached a level of near perfection, with district boundaries resembling a Jackson Pollock painting on crack. Competition is critical to a functioning democracy, just as it is to free markets. As more than one wag has put it, politicians in this country pick their voters rather than the other way round.

Gerrymandering is why California's legislature has become notoriously dysfunctional. After the last census Sacramento politicians cynically drew congressional boundaries so that all incumbents would be protected. Iowa is about the only state in the Union that makes a genuine effort to create competitive races for both Congress and its state legislature.

But the tide may change in California. In 2008 an initiative was passed that created an independent commission to draw lines for the state legislature. This November another initiative, Proposition 20, would give the commission power to draw congressional boundaries as well, cutting the state legislature out of the process. Not surprisingly, California politicians are howling. They've put another proposition on the ballot that would undo the 2008 initiative and give the legislature's redistricting back to . . . the legislature.

Bill Mundell, director of ZBB Energy and chairman of Intekea, and an activist, has produced a documentary, 

, that details the damage this process has done to the Golden State. Catch it at gerrymanderingmovie.com.

C07_With the census nearly complete_Forbes.com

The esoteric subject of who draws California’s political districts has morphed into a high-drama affair this fall, a multimillion-dollar struggle with political intrigue stretching from Sacramento to Washington and even, some suggest, to Israel.

It’s a battle about power, Nancy Pelosi and control of Congress, pitting a Los Angeles billionaire against the son of Warren Buffett’s business partner. There’s racial strife and even a full-length documentary in the mix.

All this over two competing ballot measures, Propositions 20 and 27, which would overhaul the arcane, once-a-decade redrawing of political districts in the nation’s most populous state.

“It’s really frankly very dull to most people — and yet so important,” said Bill Mundell, executive producer of Gerrymandering, a documentary released this month about how political districts can be contorted. Backers of Proposition 20 have sent 660,000 DVDs of the movie to California voters.

Every 10 years, after the U.S. Census, lines must be redrawn to ensure that legislative and congressional districts have equal populations. For years, in nearly every state, state legislators drew those lines. Critics say the process has allowed lawmakers to choose their voters, rather than the other way around. The last set of California maps, drafted in 2001, protected incumbents so thoroughly that no seats switched party control in more than 300 elections in the state in 2002 and 2004.

Two years ago, Californians approved a ballot measure, Proposition 11, stripping legislators of power to draw their own districts’ boundaries and handing that authority to an independent citizens’ commission.

Now, two competing Nov. 2 ballot measures offer voters divergent paths going forward: Proposition 20 would double-down on the still-forming citizens’ panel, allowing it to draw maps for Congress too. Proposition 27 would scrap it entirely. If both measures pass, the one with more votes would be enacted.

The initiatives have lured roughly $20 million in campaign money — and both were placed on the ballot by big donors who, their opponents hint, have mixed motivations.

Charles T. Munger Jr., the son of Buffett’s business partner and a big GOP donor, and his wife have injected more than $12.5 million of their fortune to pass Proposition 20. He casts the campaign as completing the job voters began when they passed Proposition 11 in 2008.

“Districts are drawn like fortresses for incumbents of both parties,” said Munger, a physicist.

The billionaire on the other side is Haim Saban, a Los Angeles Democrat and entertainment mogul who provided a $2-million loan this spring that paid for signature gatherers to get Proposition 27 on the ballot. Saban is the unlikeliest of bankrollers; in 2008, he contributed $200,000 to the campaign to create the citizens commission that Proposition 27 would unravel.

Saban may have provided the answer back in 2004. “I’m a one-issue guy and my issue is Israel,” he said in an interview with the New York Times that year. Mundell and other opponents of Proposition 27 have connected his change of heart to his desire to protect the congressional seat of Rep. Howard Berman (D-Valley Village), the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and a staunch supporter of Israel.

Berman, his brother Michael Berman, a redistricting expert, and Pelosi (D- San Francisco) have been the leading political organizers behind Proposition 27, said Daniel Lowenstein, the measure’s author and an emeritus professor at UCLA’s law school.

Saban declined to be interviewed. His spokeswoman, Cassandra Bujarski, said in a statement that Saban believes the redistricting commission, which has yet to be fully formed, “hasn’t worked out as intended because the state’s diverse population has not been adequately represented in the process of selecting members.” Records show his loan has been repaid.

Whatever Saban’s motivation, Berman’s district provides an interesting case study in how gerrymandering is used in California.

The issue is often cast in terms of partisan balance — Democrats versus Republicans. And in some parts of California, strategic drawing of boundaries can tilt a district one way or the other.

But in many parts of the state — much of Los Angeles County, for example — the population is so one-sidedly partisan that almost no amount of line-drawing could elect a representative from the other party. Instead, lines are drawn with an eye more toward the primary election than the general.

In Berman’s case, lawmakers in the last round of redistricting, nearly 10 years ago, redrew the boundaries of his 28th congressional district to leave out some heavily Latino neighborhoods, insulating the congressman from the threat of a Latino challenger.

Racial and ethnic tensions have often played a role in redistricting battles and have also dogged the citizen commission. The selection process for the panel drew criticism early in 2010 for under-representing minorities. The crop of 60 finalists has proved more diverse, with 17 Latinos, 10 Asians, eight African Americans and four Native Americans among those still in the running to be on the 14-member panel.

Both sides have tried to use the issue of race in the current campaign.

In the official voter guide mailed to 11 million California homes, former national NAACP Chairman Julian Bond called Proposition 20 “insulting to all Californians.”

“Jim Crow districts are a thing of the past,” Bond said, adding that Proposition 20 “sets back the clock on redistricting law.”

The Yes on 20 campaign had California NAACP President Alice Huffman sign the rebuttal to those remarks. Huffman has been paid nearly $100,000 by the Yes on 20 effort for her strategic advice and outreach to black voters. She has been criticized in recent years for being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by ballot campaigns that the state NAACP has endorsed while she has been president.

Some Democrats suggest that Proposition 20 is a tool to dilute their power. Democrats firmly control the state Legislature and thus the current map-drawing system. Pelosi could try to bolster the number of Democrats elected to the House in 2012 by influencing the way congressional district lines are drawn next year.

Pelosi and 17 California House Democrats each contributed at least $10,000 to promote Proposition 27 to abolish the citizens’ commission.

Munger dismissed the notion that he wants to influence elections for GOP gain, arguing that he could lavish funds on GOP candidates — or run for office himself. “If this is a Republican plot, it’s an awfully stupid one,” he said.

Competing propositions take aim at California redistricting

C08_Competing propositions take aim_latimes.com

 defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

We've seen redistricting initiatives appear on the California ballot and, except for 2008, all have failed. Reformers have struggled with the burden of trying to pitch a complex "inside baseball" issue that is loved by political junkies but very hard to explain simply to the general public.

That's why we decided to make the movie "Gerrymandering," which has received critical acclaim and will open in theaters throughout the country this week. In fact, hundreds of thousands of copies of our film will be sent directly to homes in California. My hope is that this will lead voters to vote yes on Proposition 20 (which would give the existing redistricting commission the power to draw the new district lines for Congress) and no on Proposition 27 (which would eliminate the commission altogether).

Gerrymandering is America's best-kept secret. It has effectively disenfranchised the majority of voters - and they don't even know it. But they do know our country's infrastructure is crumbling, our economy has cratered and our government is broken. It turns out our ability to address those problems is directly affected by the arcane rules of redistricting.

 wrote that "the genius of representative government comes from excluding the people in their collective capacity from the direct business of governing." It's a terrific idea, but it presumes a well-functioning, responsive system.

The failure of representative democracy in this state has led citizens to overutilize the initiative process to express their will. Originally conceived as a reserve power, the initiative has become a full partner to the legislative process. This initiative inflation has given us unfunded, uncoordinated mandates that cannot be adjusted to deal with changing circumstances, leading directly to our recurring budget disaster. Whoever is elected governor of California in November will be trapped by this system.

The passage of Prop. 20 and the defeat of Prop. 27 will take the power to draw the district lines for Congress away from the politicians and give it back to the people. Fair district lines are sure to again produce a significant number of competitive House races in those areas of the state with both 

Even if redistricting reform doesn't produce a single newly competitive district, taking the power to draw lines away from the party caucuses still will have a salutary effect on our representative democracy.

When the line-drawing process is in the hands of the party leaders, legislators feel compelled to toe the party line to preserve their futures. If it does nothing else, redistricting reform will empower intra-party dissenters in a way that enhances the free flow of ideas that should be a normal part of the legislative process. This reform is unquestionably an initiative of the people and not of the politicians nor of the special interests that control them. An honest redistricting system will give us the chance to overcome the undemocratic and self-interested schemes of career politicians.

Prop. 20: Fair redistricting empowers dissenters

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Bill Mundell: Most voters lose with gerrymandering

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" (op-ed, April 1), Prof. Bernard Lewis argues that the February Israeli election again demonstrated the failures of Israel's electoral system. He urges that the Knesset no longer be elected nationwide but instead be composed of members representing individual districts, as are the legislatures of the U.S. and U.K.

But the adoption of the "constituencies" model used in Anglo-American countries brings its own set of problems. The effectiveness of a district-based system depends on how those district lines are drawn.

With inexpensive computer models now widely available to all, it is possible to determine the boundaries of a district down to the level of an individual block. Districts can be gerrymandered to contain a specific number of voters of the desired party, race or nationality. Districts will almost always elect someone from the party they were intended to favor. This allows party bosses to eliminate competition in general elections and remove the voters from the equation.

Prof. Lewis does not mention that in the U.S. the parties exercise the same degree of 

 influence over the makeup of the legislature as they do in Israel. The decennial redistricting process provides an opportunity for the party leadership to reward friends and eliminate enemies. A favored member may be given a seat that guarantees landslide victories for the next decade eliminating interparty and intraparty competition.

District-based elections give the appearance of accountability to the voters, but the reality is often different. A district-based system with no check on the ability to draw district lines would be no improvement at all.

C12_There Is No Perfect Electoral_wsj.com

A sharply split 2-1 decision by the California Court of Appeal regarding the fate of Prop. 77, the redistricting-reform ballot measure, speaks to the intense politicization of the state's initiative process. Prop. 77's proponents have filed an emergency application to ask the California Supreme Court to preserve the ballot measure.

In 2001, state Republicans and Democrats (aided by technology which allowed a whole new level of voter profiling) struck a brazen deal to draw districts: This resulted in an election where for the first time in modern California history not one seat changed party hands. Prop. 77 calls for immediate reform by mandating an independent panel to draw districts impartially.

Democratic Attorney General Bill Lockyer and his confederates in the legislative leadership have attempted to characterize what were essentially clerical mistakes surrounding Prop. 77 as some kind of conspiracy between the proponents, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and a million Californians. Frankly, if the legislative chairs want to investigate a conspiracy, they should start with the AG's own bizarre legal renderings: For months, he used his authority to write title and ballot summaries in a partisan fashion to discredit Gov. Schwarzenegger's reform package. His characterization of a general budget spending cap measure as "School Funding, School Spending" was such a blatant attempt to stir up voter concern over education that he was forced to rewrite summary and title. When questioned by the press about the redistricting proposition, the AG offered that while he'd always been a proponent of removing redistricting power from the hands of the legislature when he was a state senate leader, he thought Prop. 77 was "kooky."

The AG's campaign against this measure smacks of Wonderland: "First the verdict then the trial." In the wake of the Court of Appeal decision, there is talk of copycat lawsuits challenging the plethora of initiatives which have become law. And flying through California's buzz-circuit was a story -- which may be apocryphal -- that in D.C., on hearing of the ruling favorable to the AG, the most right-wing GOP member of the California delegation as well as its most liberal Democrat, both leading opponents of fair redistricting, were seen embracing.

The special election this fall is more than a clash between Gov. Schwarzenegger and his Janissaries versus the Democratic legislature. It is potentially the Second Act of the Recall -- the second stage of a revolution to reclaim sovereignty.

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": You seem to blindly adopt Gov. Schwarzenegger's talking points on our state's redistricting reform initiative. And you accuse my office of attempting to thwart redistricting reform by challenging it on a "technicality." But I have a duty to provide the people a title and summary that reflects the initiative they see on the ballot. My office never got a chance to fulfill that duty with Prop 77. In failing to provide my office the initiative they placed before voters, the proponents violated the law and the Constitution. Public confidence in the initiative process cannot survive if we allow such violations to stand.

You conclude that the proponents were not deceitful; however, since I filed suit, it's been disclosed that the initiative proponents knew of their error early on and tried to cover it up. They deceived the California secretary of state by failing to disclose the error to him until after he certified the measure for the ballot. They withheld the truth from my office for weeks while duplicitously assuring me, in writing, that nothing was amiss.

As a long-time proponent of reapportionment reform, I hope the people ultimately place redistricting power in the hands of an independent body. But when we do so, we must do it legally.

Thank you for your July 18 editorial exposing the deleterious use of the California attorney general's office to thwart the will of the electorate. Almost a million California voters signed the Voter Empowerment Initiative, which turns redistricting over to an independent panel of retired judges.

While statewide polls show voters want the governor and the legislature to compromise on a host of issues, redistricting reform should not be one of them. What happened in 2001 was unjust, and must be reversed before we have another election.

Confusing voters is what this frivolous legal challenge is designed to accomplish. While the campaign against the initiative finds a theatrical setting in California court, the legislature bullies Gov. Schwarzenegger to compromise, urging a trade-off on term limits and a delay of redistricting reform until 2011. A 2005 Rose Institute poll shows a majority of bipartisan voters support immediate redistricting reform.

Because the right of initiative is one of the most precious rights in our democratic process, the California Supreme Court has previously ruled that "if doubts can reasonably be resolved in favor of the use of this reserved power, the courts will preserve it." No initiative has ever been disqualified for the ballot based on technical differences between a version submitted for summary and a version signed by the voters.

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Bill Mundell, the only Republican making serious preparations to challenge U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s bid for reelection, said Tuesday he has decided not to run, leaving the GOP with no clear contender for one of California’s top races for 2006.

The move by Mundell, an education software executive, reflects the difficulty Republicans face in finding a strong candidate to challenge the popular Democratic incumbent.

In an interview, Mundell said he was willing to spend several million dollars of his own money on the race, but would have needed to collect much more from donors to mount a viable campaign. He said his conversations with the party’s major contributors in California made clear that donors do not plan to put substantial money behind any push to oust Feinstein, and he had no interest in running a “vanity campaign.”

Mundell, chief executive of Vidyah Inc., had raised his public profile this year as a major supporter of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Nov. 8 ballot measure to strip state lawmakers of their power to draw district maps for themselves and members of Congress.

Republican campaign consultant Dave Gilliard said the absence of a Republican to run against Feinstein reflects the party’s lack of a “strong bench” of candidates -- especially for a race against an incumbent Democrat who has cultivated a moderate image.

“Very few want to take on someone like Dianne Feinstein,” he said.

As of the end of September, Feinstein had $5.2 million in the bank for her reelection run. After 13 years in the Senate, Feinstein can easily raise millions more. Given federal limits on campaign donations and the dwindling time left before the election, it will be increasingly difficult for a Republican to raise enough money to mount a credible fight against Feinstein.

With hotly contested Senate races in other states, the national Republican Party appears unlikely to pour resources into the contest in California, which has strongly favored Democrats in recent years. As a result, the GOP’s best prospect to challenge Feinstein would more likely be a rich candidate whose personal fortune could bankroll the campaign. Feinstein barely defeated such a candidate in 1994 when she was challenged by then-Rep. Michael Huffington.

“There will obviously be people who want to run,” said Feinstein campaign strategist Bill Carrick. “It’s just a question of whether there will be anybody credible who wants to run.”

Mundell Will Not Challenge Sen. Feinstein

NBC News Conference Bill Mundell