I was pleased by Rick Krahn’s recent letter (Our Readers’ Views, Dec. 29) in which he spoke to the need for improvements in the way we select our elected representatives. I’d like to expand on his thoughts.
I concur with his call for less gerrymandered districts. Asking an elected body of representatives to “fairly” draw their district boundaries is naively foolish. Self-interest is too dominant a consideration. Better to have an independent commission selected by, say, the court. The commission’s task would be to create reasonably compact districts with fewer of them one-sided. More purple, and less red or blue. This would cause candidates to search for agreement in the middle, rather than appealing to extremes.
Mr. Krahn also discussed the difficulties of raising money for running an election. I suggest campaign contributions be limited to registered voters from within the same state. No more corporate or out-of-state contributions. This would probably have the effect of reducing the size of campaign budgets. Fewer yard signs and TV commercials — who could oppose that?
Finally, calls for term limits are misguided. If districts are more competitive and we get excess money out of campaigns, we can have confidence voters will select good people to represent them. Without taking care of the root problems, term limits only guarantee a stream of legislative newbies, responding to the same reward system currently in place.
