I like the general idea of this proposal, but you are right that in a state like CA with highly partisan urban areas, it will be hard to make districts 53.5% Democratic/GOP. But that is something where the courts will interpret a poorly crafted purposal. It is a shame that all this always has to go to the voters because the legislature is so powerless and self-interested.

This is a preposterous measure, and not just because it would make it easier for Reeps in a blue state. It's just bipartisan entrenchment by other means, couched in terms that make it sound progressive.

Nonpartisan means "not partisan," not "set up so each of the two major parties has a chance at winning."

In a state with CA's political make-up, the only way g) is mathematically possible would be to gerrymander the state to give all 53 districts to democrats.

In a state like Ohio, c) could be used to isolate the liberal vote into a few urban districts.  However, in LA and particularly in SF the liberal vote has considerable (overwhelming) spillover into the suburbs.  I'd say the knife will cut both ways, and c) will isolate the rural vote as much as the urban vote.  (as others have noted this is completely inconsistent with g)  My point is that c) could be dangerous in a state where the rural and urban populations are comparable.

Also, how are they going to define "communities of interest"?  As I tell my classes, one perfectly legitimate way to define a community of interest is that two communities vote the same way.  In fact, it's probably better than most other measures.  

For example, in Chicago, the African-American communities on the South and West Sides differ dramatically on many SES measures.  They share in common their race and party affiliation, but on other measures (education; size of church attended; income), they are very different communities.

My thought, therefore, is that the bestcase scenario would be a legislative alternative clarifying districting priorities (compactness v. competetiveness, yeah, try that in LA), number of commissioners, their selection criteria etc.

As I've argued before here and here redistricting would be good for California period.  But it would also be good for Democrats here in California.  Protected districting has, IMHO, given rise to a cult of mediocrity such that Cruz "not quite as charismatic as Grey Davis" Bustamante, and Nancy "why not Roemer?" Pelosi are party standouts.

1) Independent Redistricting Commissions do not automatically create more competitive districts:

A) Arizona, the only state to implement a new IRC in the last round of redistricting actually had a bigger drop-off in competitive legislative seats than California did after the last round of redistricting and has since been taken to court for ignoring the requirement to seek competitive districts.

B) Other IRC states also had mixed success at creating competitive districts, with few significantly increasing competitiveness.
Competitiveness in congressional elections has been declining for decades, as much between rounds of redistricting as immediately after them (indicating that campaign fundraising and other advantages of incumbents, increasingly politically segregated settlement patterns, and other issues may be more important causes of safe seats).

2) Competitiveness should be both highly prioritized and carefully defined.

A) The McCarthy bill, for which the Governor has indicated support, requires the IRC to seek competitive districts, but does not allow it to access any partisan registration data or voting history that would be necessary achieve it.

B) The McCarthy bill defines competitive districts as those with "a difference of no more than seven percentage points between the number of voters in each district who are registered with the two largest political parties." This definition will tend to create districts that lean Republican in a manner similar to a Republican partisan redistricting plan (because of lower turnout and higher crossover rates for registered Democrats).

C) Instead, statistical models based not only on registration data, but also recent voting patterns, should be created to predict whether a district will be competitive (predicting results in which the major parties each get 46.5-53.5% of the major party vote). Michael McDonald, hired as the competitiveness expert for Arizona's IRC, developed a highly predictive model and software that allowed it to easily be applied to draft maps, but his suggestions were ignored by the IRC, which interpreted the Constitution as considering competitiveness a lower-level priority (and according to a Maricopa Judge, did not even give it that lesser degree of weight, instead ignoring it almost completely).

3) Minority representation must be respected.

A) A three member panel comprised of retired judges is unlikely to reflect California's diversity. Retired judges are more likely to be older, white, male, and Republican than the average citizen.

B) A larger number of commissioners including some current judges or citizens would help make the panel more diverse and responsive to minority needs.

C) Compliance with the Voting Rights Act should be explicitly required and prioritized in the amendment, which the McCarthy bill does not do.

For more information, check www.demos-usa.org next week when the report will be posted.

Disclosure: The author of this comment is a policy analyst for Demos and author of the forthcoming report.

Mr. Arnold-lover himself...Dave "I am not gay" Dreier does not like the idea. The reason being is this. Most of the CA Republicans have committee chairmanships because of their safe districts and their seniority. So ask yourself, if Duncan Hunter, Bill Thomas, David Dreier, and Chris Cox tell Arnold they would rather have a safe seat than a volatile one...whatchu think is gunna happen?

Arnold's problem is that he thinks the Republicans are actually interested in reform. At least in CA, they want a bigger slice of the pie. That's it...so Arnold's real problem is that he thinks he has blanket support from the Republicans and he really does not. Needless to say, the Legislature is preparing to gore him just that way.

One thing he could do though, which would be good I think, is to reform how state assembly and senate districts are drawn. Namely, he could make Assembly districts unable to cross county lines. In other words, counties could be cut into smaller districts if they are populous, but if they are not populous you would not be able to chop up two counties to form two districts. Either the county encapsulate the distirct, or the district encapsulates the county.

The other reform is to add state Senate seats so that each county gets one Senator. At first this would appear to be bad overall, but what it actually does it allow rural counties which have poor represenation through other channels air grievances. It sounds meaningless but CA's biggest industry is still agriculture and there are other BIG BIG problems which urban politicians ignore here because quite frankly it hasn't reach them yet. One is the levee brekage northeast of San Francisco. Right now no one cares...until it breaks and contaminates 50% of the Bay Area's water.

In short the best legislature structures reflect balance. Until Ahhhnold gets that memo, he's better off strapping those frogs to the boxes he so eagerly blows up.

Interestingly though, Pennsylvania, which has a population half the size of Cali has 115+ state representatives, whereas California only has 80.

The only problem with judges is that they were appointed by a very political governor, so naturally they are going to have some political bias, just as we all do, but I don't have a problem with the "to the extent possible" language.   That is there to ensure enough flexibility to pass constitutional muster.