I skipped the Monday Rally and Meeting

Yes, rather than go to Lawrence for the hearing by the State Redistricting Committee♠ I took my wife to dinner at the Long Horn, where I ran into fellow Lowellians who were also not at the hearings.

Why this dereliction of duty?  The hearings are not going to fix what is an obvious perversion of the process.

We can look at the Massachusetts' Fourth Congressional District and see that the DNA of Governor Elbridge Thomas Gerry lives on, 200 years later this next year.

This image is from Wikipedia, which notes it belongs to the Federal Government and is available for publication.

But, we don't have to go south and west of Boston to see this problem.  We can look at Chelmsford, which was broken up like a soda cracker by the General Court a decade ago.  A town right next door to Lowell used to have its own Representative in the General Court, Republican Carol C. Cleven.  As I recall, the coverup about forcing her out by destroying her district in 2002 resulted in one more of several recent House Speakers to be forced to leave office.♥ 

We need a better way.  One option is a computer program.  The program needs to have some goals and the two that are reasonable are the ones given to the new California Redistricting Commission:

... the goal was to maintain reasonably compact districts and keep communities of interest together.

That quote is from a Real Clear Politics article on the new redistricting process in California, after the Voters took the process out of the hands of the Legislature.  Yes, those pesky voters.

Here is a comment from the Real Clear Politics article that sums up a good aspect of the redistricting plan:

The relatively close nature of these district lines all but ensures that slight demographic changes could result in big shifts in elections over the course of the decade.

I like the idea of using a computer program, such as the one shown here.

Not everyone likes that idea, as this article shows.

But, I would be happy with the California system.  I would even be willing to see the 5th District go away IF I thought that we have a fair system of compact districts that were built around communities of interest.  On the other hand, such a system would probably create the current 5th, but make the current 4th go away.

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  Note for Reporter Chris Camire, or his editors.  It may not be the new way, but I think State Redistricting Committee, being the one and only such Committee in the Commonwealth, deserves capitalization.  We all need to work to stop spreading kad barmaism.
♥  And, it looks like former Speaker Salvatore F. DeMasi is also going down.  It is kind of sad.  The tide turns and you find yourself stranded on a sandbar that you didn't realize was there.