written from Upper Rock, Wisconsin (find your bioregion/watershed)

Toward a Bioregional State:

Bioregional Letter #4

Bioregionally Sensitive Congressional Districts,
that are Party-Competitive, as well as an Ecological Feedback to the State

Making Bioregionally Sensitive Congressional Districts,
that would be more competitive for all parties, instead of the 'pocketed'
clientelistic districts that the majoritarian parties have created for themselves alone

This letter discusses the importance of making the bailiwicks of United States elections geographic, because presently incumbency is over 90% in the Congress, voter turnouts are 50% or less--even some are unchallenged 'returns' to the federal congress (over 60 elections in 2000 to the congress were unchallenged, no one ran against these 'representatives.' How can they be representative unless there are competitive elections?).How can this be?--with a majority of the public concerned about environmental and health issues?

Write it up to the gakekeeping of the elections process and formal framework of the majoritarian parties, where getting elected is less something to do with representing, it is all about assuring uncompetitive districts, and making themselves for a particular area the only route to the state. This fourth bioregional letter explains how we can remove these ungeographic bailiwicks and set up a meaningful bioregionalist politics: by (1) removing the gerrymandered, uncompetitive, districts that the majoritarian parties have set up on the ground which keep them from competiting for the vote, and keep the voters reliant upon them instead, and (2) setting up districts to be ecological feedback against environmental degradation of particular areas. Changing the geography of the districts in states and for federal elections would make all parties more competitive and thus more representative, by removing the 'pocketing' of our votes by these uncompetive parties. Allowing third/fourth parties to enter politics is a structural district change requirement.

Date: Sat, 11 Nov 2000 16:28:17 -0600
To: bioreg <bioregional@csf.colorado.edu>
From: Mark Douglas Whitaker <mrkdwhit@wallet.com>
Subject: proportional representation in the electoral college; gerrymandered
majoritarian districts in the United States; the bioregional state

Hello,

Here's another praxis that gelled after I wrote that bit about proportional
representation and the electoral college. It concerns the same principle,
looking into how the formal structure can facilitate geographic political
expression, over facilitating clientelistic majoritarian party frameworks.

Typically, in the United States the majoritarian parties are so 'popular'
because on the ground they disallow any choice of the voters in the matter.
If you are looking for a praxis for bioregionalism, this is it.

Wonder why there is such a high incumbency rate for the majoritarian
parties in the United States, over 90%, despite voting totals being barely
50% at most, in many elections, despite a majority of the United States
citizenry concerned about the environment? Wonder why many federal level
elections are unchallenged? It is because they are laughing at you, while
urging you to vote. Because the majoritarian parties have geographically
designed elections to be this way, for them to be uncompetitive and secure
for themselves. The majoritarian parties have gerrymandered the
congressional districts to create 'shoe-in' districts for themselves and for
themselves alone, where no one has a choice except for one party. These
districts are ungeographic. Plus, these districts are monopolies: they are
undemocratic on the ground, because they intentionally set up districts
demographically so they are secure of a win. In this way the majoritarian
parties have engineered divisions in the United States polity, instead of
themselves being reflective at all of the United States. If they were
reflective, the majority of the United States would have already decided
against them. Then how do they keep power? They keep power because they have
set up the geography of elections exclusively for uncompetitive elections.
Take a look at any map of the congressional districts and you will see many
irregular polygons, that follow only particular demographics the Republicans
want to appeal to, or particular demographics the Democrats want to appeal
to, as well. In this sense, they are engineering divisions in the polity to
suit them. Where are the districts, you may ask, where these 'two parties'
compete, where the voter has a say and a party choice in who is the
representative? There's nothing like that in the United States. Incumbency
is above 90% on the United States for either of the 'two parties' despite
such low voter turnouts. Incumbency is extreme because the two parties are
recumbent (laying on) self-designed districts that cordon off turf for only
one party. How do we get them off our backs? Change the ungeographic
bailiwicks to geographic bailiwicks, where they are required to compete.

Thus on the ground, the majoritarian parties have rigged the formal context
of voting feedback so that they are the only party option in almost every
district. Competition between them within districts is virtually missing.
They have created privatized bailiwicks, what in English history was called
a 'pocket borough,' an uncompetitive district designed to 'return' electors
instead of elect them. The United States has more pocket boroughs than
democratic, competitive elections. They have designed the United States to
suit themselves, in a very ungeographic way. This abets and expands
environmental degradation as well as human health degradation.

How does this deal with bioregionalism?

Presently, nothing is further from bioregionalism than these ungeographic
gerrymandered districts, because they set up a situation where environmental
issues that are geographic are unable to politically be transferred to the
state, because they are split across a political process that is monopolized
by uncompeting majoritarian parties, regardless of whether it is Democratic
or Republican. Republicans who are concerned for their health or the health
of their children, who ask why there is so much sickness, so much childhood
cancer--are spurned in these districts. Democrats who are concerned about
their children as well, thinking the democrats are more 'of the people' are
spurned as well. As long as these bailiwicks are set up to be monopolies for
these two parties instead of organized to make geographic competitive
elections, instead of organized to reflect the geography of pollution and
social risk, environmental degradation and human health degradation will
expand.

Environmental politics, a state feedback that is ecological, requires a
geographic politics, instead of simply a political/idological politics. A particular
locality requires geographic representation before a party selectively represents
it ideologically. Districts are required to facilitate this expression that is already
there--only divided by ideological appeals and the decennial changing of the
arrangements of the districts to facilitate ideological clientelism to nationalist parties,
instead of to let the environmental feedback against state developmental issues ever
be united in its expression as a geographic politics.

It is this way because of the ungeographic formal structure of the state. The
more the formal structure of the state is designed to maintain informal
ungeographic clientelism, the more the political feedback can be monopolized
and gatekept, and the more there is environmental degradation (and human
health degradation) because the state fails to get this geographic feedback,
it is filtered out of the ungeographic majoritarian party bailiwicks that
are only designed to 'return' parties instead of make them representative or
competitive.

Since the state is a developmental process: e.g., the policy power of the
state, the infrastructure, the laws around consumption and its organization,
the land tenure issues, the laws around finance, the taxation perks or lack
thereof--the whole built environment and laws around consumption and waste
get tailored as a developmental process around very ungeographic feedback to
the state, and are distributed into very ungeographic baliwicks, that leads
to further environmetnal degradation. Any environmental pollution or
instutionalization of risk that attempts political feedback is additionally
gatekept by the 'two parties' that intentionally drop the ball, because they
can: because with the way their private bailiwicks are organized, they split
environmentalism across Democratic and Republican engineered categories,
when environmentalism is a geographic polity issue that cuts across party
lines, gender lines, ethnic lines, economic lines, every line.
If environmental degradation, the institutionalization of risk, and waste
streams are geographic, we require geographic districts in states for the
Congress, as well as within states for the state legislatures. Otherwise,
risk assessment through the poltics of the state will entirley be biased
toward institutionalizing more and more risk, and more and more
environmental degradation, since the feedback is guillotined by ungeographic
bailiwicks--instead of turning developmental processes of the state towards
more humane (and environmentally aware) paths.

Since the state is a developmental process of politics, a reliance on the
informal politics of ungeographic bailiwicks allows these informal groups to
gatekeep and arc over issues of environmental degradation and selectively
listen to and even assemble their own selective polities. Presently, the
'representatives' get to choose their public, and shuffle the map every
decade to make sure they stay in power, instead of letting the geographic
public getting into a situation where they could choose their representatives.

This ungeographic bailiwick abets environmental degradation and impairs
human health, because the formal state relies on informal parties as
political feedback. However, when informal parties give themselves the power
to selectively design their own uncompetitive polities, like in the United
States, the state is built from the informal politics of exclusion that
keeps changing to maintain this exclusion, instead of stable geographic
politics of inclusion. The Democrats and the Republicans keep changing the
rules to maintain their lack of representation, to maintain low voter
turnout, to maintain environmental degradation--because it suits them both.
None of them want to actually *be representative.* They only want to be *the
representative,* which is a different issue altogether, and which has a
strategy based on exclusion and district bailiwick 'updating' to maintain
their shoe-in candidate.

Bioregionalism is a state formation issue, a state creation issue. It seems
to me that typically bioregionalism lacks a way to extrapolate a politics
wider than the bioregion itself. By analyzing in each state, the differences
between the bioregion and the congressional bailiwicks (or the counties, or
the state bailiwicks), you can see why and explain why certain politics
'dies' as it is filtered through a very clientelistic, ungeographic, and
unrepresentative party monopoly that demotes geographic politics of
inclusion. Plus, this can offer a means to make democracy more competitive,
as well as a means to actually enfranchise the politics of environmental
degradation and human health, by removing ungeographic clientelistic
monopolies of either party. This is a way to do so:

The state is a geographic expression. Unrepresentative parties attempt to
make representation based on demographics, instead of geographics.
Sustainability requires that the state avoids and rejects having its
material geographic politics gatekept and split by groups that lack a
geographically inclusively representation, which instead typically base
themselves on an environmentally degradative exclusion based politics,
regardless of who they appeal to, in short. Bioregionalism is a formal
structural issue, because the formal structure of politics is biased towards
creating and maintaining environmental degradation, through informal elites
that have power because of ungeographic and monopolistic gatekeeping of
policy frameworks, as well as how they tailor the state to suit their
uncompetive monopology on the ground, in the baliwick. In this sense the
bailiwicks of the Democrats as well as the Republicans set up environmental
degradation, as the vote is organized on an ungeographic unit.

It is important to keep informal elites from designing and tailoring the
formal architecture of the state into ungeographic 'representation,' because
this sets up a context of a lack of party competition. And, instead of the
informal parties thus being representative of the public, they design
ungeographically and mutually-exclusive bailiwicks that institutionalize
themselves without ever being able to make the claim of being
representative, since they operate as monopolies on the ground. This is like
picking choice chocolates from a box of candy, and throwing the rest away.
And there is a lot that is being thrown away. When the bailiwicks in a state
are ungeographic, the informal parties become entirely clientelistic and
unrepresentative, because there is no one to police them to be
representative. They become the state and loose their democratic legitimacy
by designing their own voter blocs, instead of the government coming to
reflecting them as representatives.

Organize the watershed. Draw maps. Challenge the gerrymandered
congressional districts that serve to divide us and put us in fiefs and
allow the majoritarian parties to appropriate votes and select who they want
to appeal to (if they compete at all, since the govern mostly upon their own
terms, on the ground).

This is the moment since they are so divided, and will be the moment for
several years, according to the way the Congressional elections went. Plus,
there is the historically important very shallow adherence to either
majoritarian party presently. With only 50% of the United States feeling it
worthwhile to vote in this election, Bush or Gore remember only have about
25% support apiece from the voting public. With the government and the
popular vote split as 50/50 as it gets, we have an opening, and the elite
pact that keeps them basically two wings of the same party, and keeps them
uncompetitive, is breaking up.

Since states are geographic expressions, when the politics are based on
distanciated clientelism it is easy to see why unrepresentative politics is
institutionalized--and why environmental degradation ensues,
simultaneously. This is because each of them construct a polity of their own
choosing, and agree to set up a regime where there is a lack of competition,
instead of the geography that would allow the polity to choose them to be
representative. Instead a clientelistic arrangement of the informal actors
of the state set up a context where the unrepresentative elites get to
choose the polity they selectively want to appeal to, instead of the polity
choosing them. The change of these unrepresentative gerrymandered districts
is first in a bioregional make over (or bioregional make of, map ) of the
state.

(1) Find a particularly nice example of gerrymandering irregular polygon
that (2) cuts across a bioregion and divides its environmental political
feedback, that (3) has experienced a large environmental pollution incident,
and work from there to have the district changed, claim unconstitutionality
of unrepresentative district, because of the uncompetitive party context,
how it makes for a very clientelistic and uncompetitive form how the
majoritarian parties set up an undemocratic process where their selective
elites gatekeep environmental issues, and keep environmental politics
divided. Instead of being representative of a particular geography, informal
majoritarian elites carve up a particular population demographic and
selectively use that to maintain power.

This context of uncompetitive clientelism leads to a form of
institutionalization of risk, undemocratic politics, large insurance
premiums, etc., because the political feedback from the geographic areas of
risk or pollution or anything are intentionally shattered and selectively
filtered to maintain this process of clientelism and environmental
degradation that is supports.

The United States is so hideously degradative, even to its own people (with
such high and expanding cancer rates--38% for women; 41% for males--it was
'only' 25% in the 1960s for each gender group), there is declining
fertility, etc. In terms of human health, the majoritarian parties are
killing us, by being unable to address these issues of environmental
degradation and health concerns that are geographic, instead of demographic.
Look at a map of the congressional districts. Environmental polities are
entirely removed from the architecture of the state, presently. Is it any
wonder that Green partyism finds itself drawing the short straw when the
game is rigged geographically (to demote geography), that the vampires draw
the long straws, because they drew the map of uncompetitive districts among
themselves. The environmental feedback that does exist is splintered by
their local level clientelism that makes the unitary bailiwick of
environmental degradation and the desire to alleviate its suffering through
political challenges, intentionally divided on federal level as majoritarian
party fingers extending from the capitals of the states or from Washington,
D. C., in the case of congressional districts, only see the districts in
their own interest, instead of in the public interest.

Organize the watershed. Draw maps. Compare the bioregional map with a
congressional map overlay. See for yourself. See in what political
structural context 'accidents' and health issues are at their worst.
Compare a bioregionalist map of material social conditions, where pollution
goes, who are the ones materially affected--with the artificial and
environmentally degradative demographical maps that cut and divide the
politics of the United States to support majoritarian parties and them
alone--and to support each of them, without them actually setting up
competition between them. This should appeal to any Green, any independent
swing voter, and even any Democrat or Republican who are disgusted with
their unrepresentative parties on the ground and want democratic competition
between the parties. As well as someone who can tell them why their children
who are born without belonging to any political party, are born with brain
cancer.

Most bioregional strategies are entirely local. They require a way to
extrapolate how to organize larger levels of politics on this secure base of
geographic representation, dealing with the sociology of risk and pollution,
etc. so that social risks can be adjudicated more appropriately and to the
correct authorities through the correct channels, instead of abated through
a ungeographic clientelistic gatekeeping interests.

Organize the watershed. Draw maps.

Regards,

Mark Whitaker
University of Wisconsin-Madison

link to a map of the present congressional districts of the United States

link to a map of the majoritarian districts of Wisconsin, compared to the bioregions of Wisconsin

link to www.fairvote.org, where you can see the irregular majoritarian districts. Choose 'redistricting.' This site discusses the degree to which they are uncompetitive as well, with 60+ Congressional representatives and senators 'returning' to Congress without having been challenged when they 'ran' for election. There were over 90 of them in 1996. For a sense of scale, there are only 535 members of Congress total (435 House; 100 Senate). The size of the Congress is adjusted occassionally. The House of Representatives has been at 435 since 1910. Additionally, incumbency as a phenomenon is over 90% in the United States as well. There is very little 'running' for office in the United States. Why is this so? Some of this was explained above. See the other pages for more.

other pages on the bioregional state, keep reading them in order (recommended) or

bioregional letters list

Work toward sustainability:
bioregional voting districts
that reflect your experience of health and environmental risk