In What Ways Has California's 2011 Redistricting Process and the Open Essay

In What Ways Has California's 2011 Redistricting Process and the Open Primary Election Changed the State's Political System - Essay Example Moreover, the decision to hold primary elections will further intensify the situation as the position of the influential incumbents dominant in the Congress for years is at stake. Also, in the aftermath of the redistricting process some of the incumbents will be forced to retire however in other case, incumbents will be running against each other for elections, thus the open primaries would be significant in this context. In this case, it is being expected that the extreme Republicans or even Democrats will be replaced by new and neutral candidates by virtue of the open primaries, thus about a quarter of the seats owned by California in the Congress will be replaced by new candidates who wouldn’t have experienced the process before. To elaborate on the effects of the redistricting process, it is crucial to highlight the significance of redistricting to analyze the issues and implications of the process in California. The process of redistricting relates to the congressional al location of seats to the population of U.S. There are basically 435 seats whereby all seats have been uniformly distributed amongst the entire population of the U.S. However, the population census and the demographics keep changing with time, and thus they have to be re-analyzed with time to come up with fair allocation of congressional seats to the entire population, thus, after every 10 years the government goes through the process of redistricting based on the changes in population demographics of the U.S. California is one of the most populous state of U.S with 53 representatives assigned to this state alone. Historically, when redistricting took place it had no effect at all, and there was just a change in one of the seats which was swapped between the seats as a result of the primaries. Gerrymandering is one of the ways how the incumbents influence the redistricting process to avail the best chances to secure their positions, by changing the inclinations of the maps in such a way that the maximum number of voters` base is covered in the areas representing their districts. This results in the distorted figure of the maps that are produced after the gerrymandering process. The redistricting process held in 2011 was indeed a unique one as an effort was made to appoint neutral members for the purpose. In case of California as well, 14 members were appointed all of whom weren’t seasoned politicians or incumbents, rather amateurs which suggests that the chances of political point scoring or distortion of results was near to impossible. For this reason, many of the congressmen seemed unhappy with the decision. "When you go from a system that allows incumbents to draw districts that favor themselves to one that disallows considering incumbents at all, you're bound to have some incumbents paired together and some open districts," suggests Tom Bonier who`s the adviser for Democrats redistricting process. This implies that if the issue of incumbency is not t aken into account, chances are that multiple incumbents will end up running for the seat in the same district. Some of the general trends which emerged or are expected to emerge in the future can conveniently be traced after an analysis is conducted over