"Fairness and Integrity in Redistricing Act (FAIR)"
January 26, 2005
The People of the State of California find and declare that:
(a) Our Legislature should be responsive to the demands of the voters, but existing law places the power to draw the very districts in which legislators are elected, in the hands of incumbent state legislators, which is a conflict of interest.
(b) Legislators' self-interest in drawing their own members' districts has resulted in partisan gerrymandering, uncompetitive districts, ideological polarization, and a growing division between the interests of the People of California and their elected representatives.
(c) The redistricting plans adopted by the California Legislature in 2001 produced an unprecedented number of uncompetitive districts, serve incumbents and not the People, and are repugnant to the People.
(d) The experience of the 1970's and 1990's demonstrates that impartial special masters, who are retired judges independent of partisan politics and the Legislature, can draw fair districts by virtue of their judicial training and judicial temperament.
(e) We demand that our representative system of government assure that the voters choose their representatives, rather than their representatives choose their voters, that it be open to public scrutiny and free of conflicts of interest, and that the system embody the principle that government derives its power from the consent of the governed. Therefore, the People of the State of California hereby adopt the "Fairness and Integrity in Redistricting Act."
