I've said before that I am skeptical of any panel composed of appointees unaccountable to the voters. That almost always spells trouble. It certainly helps that McClintock is onboard, but I will wait to see the exact makeup of that panel. If it turns out to be a majority of Rat appointed drones, that will be that.
Sensible enough out-of-context, but currently the alternative (the status quo) is lines drawn by the 65% Democratic state legislature -- a legislature that would be only about 55% Democratic (Kerry's 2004 vote) if lines were drawn fairly. Technically those legislators are "accountable to the voters," but the trouble currently is, the legislators (via gerrymandering) have CHOSEN WHICH VOTERS they're going to be accountable TO. Namely liberal ones. Conservatives are herded into overwhelmingly GOP districts and have no effective voice to stop unfair districting, other than the initiative process involved in Prop 77.
I will wait to see the exact makeup of that panel
It'd be nice to know ahead of time, but that's not how the measure is designed. Only after it passes would the panel be created: http://www.fairdistricts.com/Initiative_Text.asp
First 24 retired judges are chosen at random with the following qualities:
- have indicated willingness to serve;
- have NEVER held partisan elective office;
- committed not to seek or accept political office afterwards for at least 5 years; and
- have not received income from politicians or committees within the past year.
From the 24 judges thus selected at random, the following state legislators EACH pick 3 judges (with no overlap; no one judge can be picked by more than one legislator) to advance in consideration: Speaker of the Assembly (Democrat); minority leader of the Assembly (GOP); President pro tem of the state Senate (Dem); and minority leader of the Senate (GOP). That creates a list of 12, thus far. Then, each of those four politicians gets to "challenge," i.e., eliminate from consideration, ONE of the nine judges picked by the other three legislators, idea being to weed out the worst or most partisan-leaning of judges. That leaves NINE (to twelve; technically the challenges may go unused) judges thus far.
Still with me?
With some details and unusual scenarios left out, what happens next is this. The Clerk of the state Assembly draws three of the 9-12 judges' names by lot. (At least one of the 3 must be Dem. and at least one GOP.)
My preference would be to give the Governor a role, by letting him "pick three and strike one," like the other four politicians get to do.
Is this perfect? No. It seems to me to be much, much better than the guaranteed scr*wing we're getting right now, however, and it can be improved in elections to come. But consider: Why is the Democratic Party foaming at the mouth over this, while most of the GOP opposition is coming from individual GOP politicos (not the party generally, as with Dems) who fear losing the "safe seats" that are a by-product of the Democratic gerrymander?