by Jeremiah Jeffries
This election is special for a number of reasons. What is particularly interesting is that there is only one issue on the ballot: Prop 50. VOTE NO on Prop 50!
Prop 50 is a constitutional amendment that seeks to override the authority of the Citizens Redistricting Commission (CRC) to redraw California’s congressional districts lines to be more favorable to Democrats (gerrymandering) until 2031 when the CRC would again have the authority to redraw congressional district lines after the 2030 census.
The publicly stated reason is that Prop 50 is in response to Texas and other Republican controlled states changing their congressional district lines (gerrymandering) to create more Republican seats in Congress. So they argue that California should also do this to create more Democratic seats as a counterweight nationally.
While I understand this strategy, it is wrong and shortsighted and creates a dangerous precedent we should not allow. I don’t think that whatever gain we would get from this should outweigh our values, even when our values put us in a difficult situation locally, statewide or nationally. That’s the point of integrity, right? We do the right thing even when it’s hard.
Yes, Trump and his Republican and Democratic colleagues are making things difficult and challenging us to stand up for ourselves and not be complacent. Prop 50 is not that in spite of what its proponents would have you believe. It is undermining our values. It is an abuse of power. It is becoming them.
If California were a Republican-led state (officially, as it has been in the past, e.g. under Govs. Reagan, Wilson, Schwarzenegger etc.), many of the same people and organizations supporting it would be opposed to Prop 50.
This proposition is emblematic of a bigger problem in our political system and with our elected officials: No integrity – politicians and electorates making decisions that uphold our worst values of greed and selfishness, creating and supporting legislation that penalizes the poor and working people while increasing the wealth gap.
Gerrymandering is wrong. We should not endorse it as a state. We should strengthen our election laws and draw districts that make sense and follow a set of criteria to create the most reflective representation possible for the health and general wellbeing of our people.
Voters put in place the Citizens Redistricting Commission (CRC) to do just that. We should not tamper with this as a short term reactionary measure to counteract the impact of other states seeking to undermine the voice of their own constituents. And we should not do that to our own constituents. Vote no on Prop 50.
Jeremiah Jeffries is a San Francisco public school teacher and a co-coordinator of Teachers 4 Social Justice. He can be reached at empower75@gmail.com.
