Contribute to redistricting reform? Or to complain about it after the fact?

It’s not the largest sum of money -- $25 – in the world. Heck, my latest purchase from Amazon.com (which I’m expecting to receive on Saturday) was for about that much.

But there’s something about the latest plea made Friday via Internet (to make that $25 donation to the group that is trying to get a redistricting procedural reform on the Nov. 4 ballot in the form of a referendum) that bothers me somewhat.

 

How will they use their money?

IT’S THAT I seriously fear the money being raised now will wind up going for negative campaign ads against incumbent officials who didn’t support their redistricting effort – which may wind up flopping because the proponents couldn’t get enough valid signatures of support for a referendum question. It reminds me of an old Saturday Night Live sketch in which Dana Carvey's "George Bush" put out one last negative ad after Election Day to use up money -- reminding us that in 1988's Bush/Dukakis fight, "He beat a bad man."

The State Board of Elections had until Thursday to determine how many of the nominating petition signatures were actually valid, although they extended that deadline until Friday.

But that wasn’t good enough for the redistricting reform types, who want to perceive a grand conspiracy at work (with the support of the Chicago Tribune editorial page) because they didn’t get the one-week extension (to next Thursday) that they wanted.

Although considering that we’re running into the summer months and the clock is ticking; an argument can be made that there won’t be enough time to prepare for a Nov. 4 referendum question on the ballot if we don’t figure out now what questions actually get on the ballot.

THE ISSUE AT stake is that just over 500,000 signatures of support were submitted by the group calling itself “Yes! for Independent Maps.” State law requires a certain percentage, which for this year’s election cycle translates to about 298,000 valid signatures of support.

And preliminary inspections by state Elections Board officials found that the number of invalid petition signatures was so great that they fell short.

We’re now going through a process by which the activists (whom I suspect would hate to think of themselves in such an uncouth manner) are trying to “restore” signatures – and the money being sought now from all those $25 donations is supposed to pay for it.

Heck, even all of Barack Obama’s Internet pleas for money to conquer the beasts otherwise known as House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Tea Party activists only ask for $3-5 bucks at a time.

THE GROUP USES quite a bit of bravado in its fund-raising pitch by claiming they’ve really won this fight, except for “deadline fiascoes and political grandstanding” that they’re supposedly fighting against.

The fact that they may have gained a batch of garbage signatures isn’t something they’re willing to admit to.

As for their redistricting reform effort, I’ve written before how I’m suspicious of it. Watching some of those who are leading the effort, it seems that it is a lot of business-oriented types whose idea of a non-partisan Legislature is one that would ignore social issues and put a certain spin on economic measures.

In short, forget all the rhetoric and concern about gay marriage, and focus on something “important” like trying to make Illinois a “right-to-work” state – as though Indiana ought to be the ideal for what a Midwestern U.S. state ought to be like.

YES, OUR CURRENT system for drawing political boundaries for legislative and congressional districts across the state is flawed. It is way too politically partisan – with each political party more interested in dumping on the opposition than trying to benefit the public. The once-a-decade lotteries for control of the process that we avoided in 2012 are the worst.

But I’m not convinced this effort is any less partisan. Particularly in the way it seems unconcerned about inclusion of non-white legislators from areas that have significant ethnic and racial populations.

As for those who suggest that computers should be programmed to draw boundaries, I’d argue the programmers’ biases would take over. They are a unique breed, in and of themselves. There may be no way we can get a perfect reapportionment process – so long as human beings themselves are entrusted to it.

All of which may mean the way we get a “just” political process? It may be the day when those “Damned dirty apes” – Remember Charlton Heston? – wind up taking over the Earth!

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It ain’t over ‘til it’s over

If he hadn’t been a guru, of sorts, to the New York baseball scene, Yogi Berra could have had a career as a political observer to our local officials – perhaps the guy whispering his words of wisdom into their ears.

The Tao of Yogi?

Because that particular Berra-ism about declaring victory too soon is one that perhaps the people trying to lead a movement to change the way we draw our political boundaries should have learned a long time ago.

I STILL REMEMBER reading the reports about how the movement (calling itself Yes for Independent Maps) was crowing a month ago when they submitted nominating petitions that demand the issue be put on the ballots for the Nov. 4 elections in the form of a referendum question.

Let the people decide. “Yes,” or “no.” They had 532,264 signatures of support that they filed with the Illinois State Board of Elections

That is well in excess of the minimum number of signatures needed in order to actually get an initiative on the ballot across the state. They won. They declared victory. They made smug statements about how this, alone, showed the moral high-ground and desirability of their cause.

There was no way they could be stopped now!!!

READING THOSE ACCOUNTS, I recalled thinking they were premature in declaring victory. Way too cocky, as a matter of fact. Somebody was going to wind up eating some serious crow.

Which is what seems to be happening now.

Reports this week indicate that the State Board of Elections is finding that the 532,264 signature figure is off, way off.

Yogi 'plays' better on TV than most pols

For one thing, the elections board says it counted all the signatures, and only came up with 507,467. Which is still well ahead of the 298,400 valid signatures required this year (it’s based on voter turnout in recent election cycles, so it changes) to succeed.

BUT …

The state Elections Board handles the process by doing a thorough review of a randomly-selected share of petitions.

Petitions containing 25,375 signatures were scrutinized – and 11,568 signatures were found to be legitimate. That’s less than half!

At this rate, the petition drive is going to turn out to have produced a lot of junk (that’s a lot of times that “Mickey Mouse” signed his name to these documents). May 31 isn’t only the deadline for the General Assembly to conduct its business. The end of the month (actually, May 30, the last business date, since May 31 is a Saturday) is when the process must be completed.

SO UNLESS SOMETHING shifts dramatically in the next week or so, this is going to wind up being a failed effort.

Like many pols, son followed him into family 'business'

Admittedly, the Yes for Independent Maps group is trying to fight back, although their route seems to be one more of whining about the review process being “hasty,” and the Chicago Tribune reporting about “personal advances” made by state Elections board officials to the group’s official watchers.

It sounds like this could be a cause that falls by the wayside. Which doesn’t surprise me because the whole process of nominating petitions is such a subjective one. There is so much leeway by officials to declare what is, and isn’t, valid.

Nobody should presume this is over until they actually walk into their polling place and see the question printed on their ballots.

IT MAY COME across that I’m enjoying this lesson in political reality being taught to the Yes for Independent Maps group – which at times behaves in ways that make it seem more like a cause funded by Republican gubernatorial hopeful Bruce Rauner so he can have something to talk about, rather than an actual concern for the issue.

Yogi comes equipped w/ his own 'yes' men

It’s actually funded in part by Chicago Cubs part-owner Tom Ricketts (he gave $50,000 back in March). Which makes me wonder why he’s not focusing more on his ball club.

Perhaps Yogi could come to Chicago and give the Wrigley Field set some advice on what constitutes a real winning ball club (he would know, 14 World Series appearances, with 10 of them on the victorious side).

Although reading through the various lists of Yogi-isms, I came across another one that I suspect many of our local political people would find applicable – “Half the lies they tell about me aren’t true.”

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Can we really reform redistricting? Is the ‘human’ element just too strong?

I always get a giggle whenever I log onto my e-mail accounts and see a prominent name as having “sent” me a message.

EDGAR: Pleading for my money

Not that I’m delusional enough to think that the aforementioned person has any clue who I am, or really cares what I think. But the way in which activist causes try to create that image can go far – particularly when they’re asking for money.

IN THE LATEST instance, I got a message on Thursday from former Gov. Jim Edgar – who apparently is now part of the Yes for Independent Maps crusade.

They’re a group that looks at the sorry situation we have where partisan politics has completely taken over the way things get done, and thinks the key to breaking up such political hard-headedness is to change the way in which legislative and congressional district boundaries get drawn.

After all, if political people don’t have such a strong influence in determining that their districts are drawn in ways to include only supporters and their opponents’ districts containing all the opposition, then maybe people might have more of a say.

As Edgar put it in the e-mail, the current redistricting measures, “harms communities across the state and creates a system where we, the people of Illinois, are no longer choosing their representatives.”

NOW I’M AWARE this is a generic form letter sent out by the group to many people who wound up on their e-mail lists (you should see the ones I constantly get from allies of Barack Obama, and even a few of Obama’s harshest political critics).

The real thing they want is for me to donate money. This latest e-mail contained a convenient link so I could easily whip out a credit card and make a contribution to the Yes for Independent Maps group (based in Chicago).

I don’t really believe that Edgar has given me any thought since the day he ceased being governor back in January 1999 (and I doubt he gave me much thought even when he was governor and I was one of the Statehouse reporter-type people who tried to document his every political move).

A noble cause?!?

But maybe he is sincere about this latest involvement in redistricting reform.

BECAUSE I REMEMBER that while he had a generally sympathetic Illinois Senate when he was governor (and for one brief two-year period had complete Republican control of state government), it was often those alleged political allies of the GOP who were his most outspoken critics.

And some of them who now wish he’d just go away as a relic of the past, rather than trying to influence current political policy.

When it comes to this particular issue, it really is a flaw of both sides. We hear a lot of complaining about how Democrats have used their influence over state government to disregard a significant swath of the state.

Yet I also recall that two-year period as one in which Republicans did exactly the same thing to the people they wanted to perceive as their opposition.

I CAN’T SYMPATHIZE with those GOPers who think they’re being dumped upon now by Democrats because it always comes across that they’re not interested in fairness as much as being able to be the ones who do the dumping on others.

The only problem I have with these activist-types who say they want to reform the process is that I’m not sure if we’re just going to get political geek-types with their own ideological hang-ups drawing boundaries.

For those who say the process should be done by a computer program that draws maps without regard to special interests, I’d wonder if the person who writes the program has his own hang-ups to deal with.

Because some of those “interests” – particularly all of those concerning districts promoting the interest of certain non-white persons in our society – do have to be acknowledged.

SO WHEN SOMEONE comes up with a way that can seriously disregard bias by all to prepare political boundaries, perhaps then I could get on board in support.

Until then, I won’t be taking up Edgar’s e-mail plea to donate my money. I’m skeptical.

And yes, I’m also cheap!

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