six of one

It's sometimes fashionable to push direct representative democracy. Pick a few dozen citizens of a district at random, put them in a room for a few days, and have them work out policy for that district on various issues. The problem is, as I learned when I tried to take a questionnaire on my city's issues, that this requires knowledge of and interest in things the average citizen could not possibly know or care about.

Latest example, redistricting the city. Our city of 150,000 has only recently been divided into six city council districts, and with the new census they have to be adjusted. The commission has prepared four maps and has submitted them for citizen comment on a web page.

My district is the most underpopulated, and a large tract of territory that I consider part of the local neighborhood is being transferred into it from a neighboring district. But that's the same in all four maps. The differences among them concern one or two blocks of apartment complexes in two other parts of the city, which I have nothing to do with - one of them I hardly even drive past.

Unless you live in one of those small areas, and are knowledgeable about potential candidatures and about ethnic balances in the districts, and what's more care which one you're in, I can't imagine forming a particular opinion about this. One of the options has fewer line segments than the others, but is that really a reason to pick it?

So far, I found when I visited the page, 3 people had registered but none had left any comments. No wonder.