In The Know: Love Politics? Don't Watch Its Making

Byline: Don Shelby
Source: WCCO
Date: January 12, 2008

Watch video here.

Minnesotans have always been proud of the state's good government, but even good people can work in a broken system. That's what some high powered Republicans and Democrats said Friday at the capitol. Don Shelby said if the fix works, Minnesota will once again be the pride of national and local politics.

The part of the system that is broken is called redistricting. We redraw lines every 10 years, based on the census.  It is said that those people who love sausage and politics should never watch either of them being made.  Some brave Republicans and Democrats, a former Vice President, two former governors and state leaders took the Senate and the press on a trip through the sausage factory today, and it wasn't pretty. 

The problem has been that when it came time to redraw the lines of districts, incumbents did the line drawing, unwilling cut their own re-election throats.

The Humphrey Institute, which has come up with a plan for fixing that flaw, has said that anymore voters don't choose candidates, the candidates choose the voters. 

Lost in a system like that is competition -- not just for public office -- but for ideas and policy. 

In the last statewide election incumbents averaged a 25 percent victory margin.  In other words, the way the political sausage is currently made, it is better not to watch.