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A wise fella once said that God decided to create a horse, but he called together a church committee to carry it out. When the committee finally settled on a design, the result was a camel. The least graceful, most awkward, and generally inefficient beasts of burden that ever was.
Then God made the real horse and banished the camels to the deserts. Our current legislative districts were designed by 5 different committees fighting each other in several arenas. In not one of those arenas are the communities and voters invited to take part. It's the epitome of smoke-filled, backroom dealing. It often is brought to the state or federal high court, to be resolved. |
Let's start the dialogue now, to create districts which allow lawmakers to represent communities and go to the capitol as part of 3-member delegations of those communities in the greater districts.
1. Each district must be essentially the same size in population. This causes some neighborhoods to get carved in two. But it's always avoided whenever possible. We wait for the US census report (next winter), then carve up our population by however many senate seats we decide. The Oklahoma Senate has expanded and contracted multiple times, and the legislature can choose to do that again.
2. The Oklahoma Senate should coordinate with the Oklahoma House of Representatives, to create a 2:1 ratio of House seats to Senate seats. Just add 2 senate seats and subtract one house seat and you're there. It allows each new senate district to equal exactly 2 House seats. That's important.
3. Once the senate districts are drawn, simply create 2 House seat boundaries from within that senate district. repeat the process in each of the 50 Senate Districts and you have a set of 3 legislative subdivisions
My retiring senator is Gary Stanislawski. His Senate 35 boundary overlaps 8 House districts. That means when his constituents contact or visit him about a problem, he may need to find which of the possible 8 House members is also serving that constituent. No, a region should have a set of 3 lawmakers working for them. Senate District '35' should have House District '35A' & '35B'. Some other states have adopted this model. Minnesota has used it for about 50 years. the lawmakers love it and so do the political parties.
1. Each district must be essentially the same size in population. This causes some neighborhoods to get carved in two. But it's always avoided whenever possible. We wait for the US census report (next winter), then carve up our population by however many senate seats we decide. The Oklahoma Senate has expanded and contracted multiple times, and the legislature can choose to do that again.
2. The Oklahoma Senate should coordinate with the Oklahoma House of Representatives, to create a 2:1 ratio of House seats to Senate seats. Just add 2 senate seats and subtract one house seat and you're there. It allows each new senate district to equal exactly 2 House seats. That's important.
3. Once the senate districts are drawn, simply create 2 House seat boundaries from within that senate district. repeat the process in each of the 50 Senate Districts and you have a set of 3 legislative subdivisions
My retiring senator is Gary Stanislawski. His Senate 35 boundary overlaps 8 House districts. That means when his constituents contact or visit him about a problem, he may need to find which of the possible 8 House members is also serving that constituent. No, a region should have a set of 3 lawmakers working for them. Senate District '35' should have House District '35A' & '35B'. Some other states have adopted this model. Minnesota has used it for about 50 years. the lawmakers love it and so do the political parties.
- It has safeguards against gerrymandering charges because it's not designed purely to benefit only the incumbent. It's designed to be a compromise between the house and senate, which, in itself, speaks volumes in a court litigation. In 2012, Texans were essentially denied a voice in the presidential primary, because of a lawsuit over the new districts that the legislature drew.
- Political parties in states like Minnesota, New Jersey, and elsewhere reorganized by senate district, rather than county. It makes each local party organization more manageable and each delegation can be managed by volunteers. Currently the OKC & Tulsa Party organizations simply cannot be run by a volunteer. But when you split them into 8 senate districts, they become very manageable and the metro areas are restored to proper representation at the State Committee meetings.
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One tiny issue would be created and require a 'fix'. If the House has an even number, a potential tie vote could occur. Most legislative bodies simple rule that a vote fails in this case.
But in an organizational vote (for speaker and pro temp), a tiebreak vote is required. The senate already has this figured out . The Lieutenant Governor serves in this role. Some state empower the Secretary of State to fill this tiebreaker role for House leadership votes, if a Secretary of State is not yet sworn in, the Governor would become the tiebreaker vote. Here'sa link about the history of ties in legislatures.
The embedded map is responsive. zoom in to find out what your Senate district might have looked like, if Oklahoma had adopted this streamlining effort 10 years ago.
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We created these imaginary senate districts by combining to current House districts and coloring them the same shade, to make them obvious to spot. The actual senate districts we see, in 2 years; will look more like the current senate districts, but let's hope the legislative leaders can give this idea a reasonable study.
