Summarize in 3-5 sentences without plagiarizing please
In a Legislature that has shown little interest in improving the way New Jersey's government is elected, organized and funded, it's news when a leader of either major political party proposes a major change in one of those areas.
Last week, Assembly Minority Leader Jon Bramnick (R-Union) did just that, calling for a constitutional amendment to require that when the legislative map is redrawn, the mapmakers created as many competitive districts as possible.
It's safe to bet that nothing will change as a result - and the reason, basically, lies in the way New Jersey's government is elected, organized and funded. Nevertheless, Bramnick has identified an area that definitely needs improvement.
The GOP lawmaker justified his proposal by claiming that the Legislature's Democratic majority has gone overboard with its investigation of the Christie administration's Bridgegate scandal and should return to pursuing a true "reform agenda." Whatever the truth of that partisan allegation might be, he's right that more Election Day competition would be a good thing.
"Gov. (Tom) Kean once said that most people want you to govern from the middle," Bramnick told a news conference, but in New Jersey "the districts have become so partisan that representatives play to the wings, and not to the middle."
Of the state's 40 districts, only a handful are considered winnable by whichever party puts up the better candidates and runs the better campaigns. In this category are usually listed the 14th, anchored by Hamilton Township; the 1st, consisting of Cape May and parts of Atlantic and Cumberland counties, and the 38th, mostly in central Bergen.
This situation stems from the tight control exercised by the Republican and Democratic parties over the election process, control that extends to the redrawing of district lines after each federal census to ensure population equality. That task is assigned to a commission divided equally between Republicans and Democrats, who are appointed by the two state party chairs; no independents, third-party members or private citizens need apply.
Each of the two party delegations prepares a map that favors its own candidates' chances, and the inevitable tie vote then is broken by a neutral chairman who has been approved by both parties and appointed by the state chief justice. In 2011, that chairman was the late Rutgers professor Alan Rosenthal, whose openly declared bias was for the protection of incumbent legislators and continuity of representation.
Because the majority of incumbents that year were Democrats, it was the Democratic map that Rosenthal approved. So safe did it prove to be for its designers that in the 2013 election in which Republican Gov. Chris Christie won a second term over his Democratic challenger by 22 points, Republicans picked up zero seats in the Senate and Assembly.
Fewer swing districts mean less bipartisan lawmaking, Bramnick said. "If politicians do not fear the wrath of voters, there is no compelling interest for them to work across the aisle and produce results," he explained. "Republicans aren't going to like this any better than Democrats, because there are a lot of Republicans in safe districts who can achieve anything they want and still get elected."
Moreover, as former Sen. Bill Schluter (R-Mercer) and Ingrid Reed of Trenton, retired director of the New Jersey Project at the Eagleton Institute, have argued, competitive elections also would motivate more bright and capable people to run, encourage issue-based campaigns, and improve turnout at the polls. Voters don't have all that much motivation nowadays: last Nov. 5, only 39.6 percent of them showed up statewide.
Bramnick's proposed constitutional amendment would instruct the redistricting commission to strive to create districts in which neither party would have no more than a 10 percent election advantage, based on their voting patterns and trends and their numbers of registered Democrats and Republicans. This would be one way to improve competitiveness, but other and possibly better ways are available.
California, for example, also has a commission to redraw legislative districts with five Republican and five Democratic members, but it also includes four citizens unaffiliated with either party. A redistricting map, to be approved, must win a supermajority of at least three Democrats, three Republicans and three unaffiliated members. The commission has gotten good reviews for making the public interest an important part of the redistricting process.
But California's reform was adopted by citizen initiative and referendum, which we don't have in New Jersey. Here, all state laws and constitutional amendments originate in the Legislature, and the Legislature rarely takes actions at odds with the personal and partisan interests of its members and the party organizations that sent them. That makes it unlikely that Assemblyman Bramnick's proposal, or anything like it, will be adopted anytime soon.