`SAFE SEATS' CONFUSING TO MOST VOTERS.

Byline: Jill Stewart 

EVEN if the courts allow onto the November ballot Ted Costa's Proposition 77 to end California's era of ``safe seats,'' his opponents will have achieved their true goal: voter confusion.

Eight times, Californians have unsuccessfully sought to fix the reeking system of political spoils achieved via ``redistricting.'' Now, Attorney General Bill Lockyer is trying to stop Proposition 77 in court - on specious grounds.

For shame. ``Safe seats'' stole away our democracy while we slept. ``Safe seats'' are why none of California's 53 U.S. congressional seats changed party hands in 2004 and why no legislative spots in Sacramento changed party hands.

Most people imagine that when they vote, they do so in a real community based largely on geography - a ``voting district.'' Nope. The Legislature uses computer programs to painstakingly divide voters by party - not community. Republican and Democrat are separated into bizarrely shaped ``districts'' so overpopulated with one party that our two-party system is effectively quashed.

Once a party dominates a rigged district, the party force-feeds its corralled voters a preselected party hack. Using party money, the hacks win most of the spring primary races. Then, in November, since the two-party system has been obliterated, the hack is guaranteed a victory against the stamped-out party.

Think ``The Matrix.'' You're force-fed to support a creepy apparatus that wants to control your world, and you don't even know it. The insiders who do know prefer to keep the debate among insiders only. It's such trouble to involve the public.

Let's review a few examples.

The League of Women Voters, in an op-ed for the San Francisco Chronicle, recently offered this riddle:

``The maps drawn after the 2000 census are best described by the term `incumbent protection plan.' Not one legislative incumbent lost in 2002 and 2004, and only three legislative seats (out of 200 races) changed parties. Of course, the problem isn't always incumbent protection; in other decades, the unfair advantage has gone to the party that dominates the process.''

Um, what process? What advantage? Where's the bit about how the legislature uses computers to falsely divide us so they can force-feed us like a bunch of foie gras geese?

Think tanks spew a thick mist of gibberish. The Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies says: ``Redistricting is the redrawing of boundaries for legislative districts to reflect changes in population. ... Redistricting and reapportionment, the allocation of seats to states, help determine the partisan makeup of our legislative bodies.''

Though technically correct, the emphasis on ``changes in population'' is really misleading.

Journalists are even worse. The Los Angeles Times recently explained that redistricting is ``the Legislature's ability to shape its own voting districts, which Democrats and Republicans have both long used to maintain power and keep challengers at bay.'' Huh? The Legislature has ``its own voting districts?'' Aren't districts for voters? Silly me. What's all this about ``challengers?'' So confusing, you turn the page.

A bewildering July 29 story in the Sacramento Bee defined redistricting as ``lawmakers' ... authority to draw political boundaries.'' That's like saying April 15 is ``a deadline for writing a check.''

The media simply don't care if you can't wade through their babble. The journalists get it. Must the tedious public understand, too?

On July 29, the Associated Press reported on a legislative alternative to Proposition 77 that critics say hands legislators ``too much control over the design of their districts.''

``Their districts'' again. Get it?

At bottom, this is why Proposition 77 calls for a panel of independent judges to draw ``voting districts.'' Our Legislature, which has meticulously stamped out the two-party system in your area, must be banned from redistricting. Other states use independent panels that prove their value by creating honest voting districts made up of real communities filled with all sorts of voters.

It turns out that real ``voting districts'' breed real candidates. And real candidates compete by offering real ideas.

So listen carefully in 2005. If the courts let Proposition 77 onto the ballot, the insiders will utter endless verbiage on the subject. Yet most will say nothing at all.