Author: Yongho Kim

And, yes, the people drawing political maps still want voter input. An updated online tool and six new centers across the state offer more ways for residents to have their say.

By BROOKE STAGGS | bstaggs@scng.com | Orange County RegisterPUBLISHED: September 20, 2021 at 2:58 p.m. | UPDATED: September 20, 2021 at 2:59 p.m.

Today is a big day for the future of politics in California.

Sept. 21 is the due date for the final census data that the state’s Citizens Redistricting Commission needs to finish drawing new, ten-year boundaries for every state and federal political district in California.

Drafts of the new political maps, which are sure to spark debate among political and community activists, are due out by the end of this year or early next year.

But the process of re-thinking political boundaries in California has been underway for months. Linda Akutagawa, chair of the Redistricting Commission, said the group has been using suggestions from the public to draw new lines and that even more input — which can be delivered live or via online sites like WeDrawTheLinesCA.org — is essential to creating fair political maps.

“The more input we get from diverse communities enables us to do a better job,” said Akutagawa, of Huntington Beach.

“We hope it will also enable people to feel more of a sense of engagement and ownership of who can represent them and how the process works.”

What is redistricting and why should I care?

Redistricting happens once a decade, in every state, after the federal government publishes updated census information. The primary goal is to make sure everyone has equal representation and that political boundaries accurately reflect all voting groups.

The new lines matter. If a boundary shifts one block in either direction, it can mean residents in that neighborhood instantly get new representatives in Congress and in Sacramento.

In Southern California, for example, it’s already known that House districts represented by Katie Porter, D-Irvine, and Ken Calvert, R-Corona, are overpopulated when compared with neighboring districts. As a result, both seats will need to shrink, potentially changing the constituencies that elected progressive Porter and conservative Calvert.

For decades, California legislators created new political maps behind closed doors — a process that’s still the norm in most states. That practice can lead to partisan gerrymandering, with incumbent politicians drawing districts that favor themselves and their parties.

In 2010, California switched to a Citizens Redistricting Commission, which is made up of 14 non politicians from around the state, to draw new lines for the House of Representatives, both legislative branches of Sacramento, and the State Board of Equalization.

This year’s commission includes five Republicans, five Democrats and four people who are registered as No Party Preference. In addition to Akutagawa, who runs a group called Leadership Education for Asian Pacific, other locals on the commission include J. Ray Kennedy, an international elections expert from Morongo Valley, Antonio Le Mons, who helps run Skid Row Housing Trust in Los Angeles, Sara Sadhwani, a political science professor at Pomona College, Derric Taylor, an investigator with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, and Angela Vazquez, of Los Angeles, who helps lead The Children’s Partnership.

Under state law, commissioners can’t consider partisan data when drawing new district lines. Districts must be contiguous and compact. And so-called “communities of interest” — such as minority groups or residents with critical common concerns — must be kept together whenever possible to avoid diluting their voices by spreading them between multiple districts.

What work has been done on redistricting so far?

In early 2021, the commission started holding a series of public meetings to help people understand how the process works and how they can get involved — and to get voter input on what new districts should look like.

In addition to the public meetings, feedback also came from voters using a new online tool, DrawMyCACommunity.org, that lets them sketch out their ideal political districts and make a case for why the state should use their idea. That site is still active. Recently, Akutagawa said, the site was updated to let everyone see what other Californians have suggested in terms of district boundaries.

This month, the commission also opened Redistricting Access Centers in six cities: San Bernardino, Long Beach, San Diego, Sacramento, Oakland and Fresno. At each center, a worker is ready to help residents learn more about the process and to guide them if they want to offer input. (Appointments are needed and masks are required, with more information at statewidedatabase.org/redistricting_access_centers.)

The commission’s first of many tough decisions has centered on how to count people currently in state and federal prisons in California — some 210,536 people as of the 2020 census.

The federal count tracks prisoners based on where they’re incarcerated, while state law now calls for prisoners to be counted based on the city where they lived at the time of their arrest. Akutagawa said the state rule is aimed at avoiding artificially inflating representation for communities that happen to have prisons in their boundaries.

The commission was able to make adjustments for state prisoners. But Akutagawa said they weren’t able to get the data they needed in time to make that change for federal prisoners. So, in August, a split commission voted to exclude all federal prisoners from counting toward a congressional district’s population.

What’s next? And how can residents get involved?

That wrangling over prison populations slowed down delivery of California’s final census data. Once the commission gets final numbers, Akutagawa said they can really start the hard work of using the data to draw new district lines.

While much of the process is guided by state and federal law, Akutagawa acknowledged the citizen commission is still figuring out the best approach to sort through the data.

Regarding current district lines, Akutagawa said the commission is determined to draw maps with an open mind rather than just trying to make small adjustments to what already exists.

“I think we’re tying not to box ourselves in just yet,” she said. “To me, I think this is the part where we just want to remain open to all possibilities.”

What type of feedback is the commission getting?

Redistricting always is a fraught process, since new lines can make life tougher for incumbents and, ultimately, shift the balance of power between political parties in Washington, D.C. and Sacramento.

The process is even more complicated this year because, for the first time in its history, California’s population growth has slowed to the point that we’re slated to lose a congressional seat.

So far, Akutagawa said public redistricting meetings have been cordial, even though some residents have asked for contradictory decisions. Akutagawa expects conversations, both from the public and among the 14 commissioners, to get tougher as real lines come into play in the coming weeks.

The most difficult thing, she said, is wanting to honor everybody’s requests and make districts as fair as possible, even though she knows there’s no way they can make everyone happy.

 ‘But even little nuances can sometimes make a big difference,” she said. “So, the more we can get input from people about that, the better our maps will be.”

Will Orange County’s Top Politicians Use Redistricting to Protect Their Own Re-Elections?

As Orange County’s powerful county supervisors gear up to redraw their own election districts, questions are mounting about whether they will protect their own re-elections by jettisoning parts of their district that didn’t vote for them, and adding in areas that are more favorable at the ballot box.

Areas getting particular attention among county insiders are whether supervisors will move the heavily Democratic communities of Santa Ana, UC Irvine and Laguna Beach out of Republican supervisors’ districts and into nearby districts represented by the board’s two Democratic supervisors.

Four of the five county supervisors didn’t return phone messages for comment on this story.

Supervisor Doug Chaffee, who did pick up the phone, said he wasn’t aware of any such plans, adding he doesn’t expect the districts to change much.

“I haven’t heard anything, and I’m not sure what I would give up to get. I have no idea what would make my district safer, for me,” Chaffee said.

“And I don’t know how anyone can figure it out at this point without the [new U.S. Census] data yet being released. I don’t really expect too much change,” he added.

Shirley Grindle, a longtime county government watchdog who has been observing supervisors since the 1950s, is skeptical.

In order for redistricting to help residents, as opposed to politicians, Grindle says an independent commission needs to do the work of redrawing election boundaries for offices – not the Board of Supervisors. 

“The only appropriate and ethical thing for the Board to do is to appoint an independent commission to come up with a redistricting map,’ ” said Grindle, who was a lead author on the county’s 1978 campaign finance limits law as well as the 2016 county Ethics Commission.

“The Board needs to stay completely divorced from this process in order to avoid accusations of ‘feathering their own nest.’ ”

Shirley Grindle, a longtime county government watchdog who has been observing supervisors since the 1950s

Case in point, she says, is the recent action by three supervisors to put a measure on the ballot that resets and extends their own term limits, using ballot language that was widely seen as deceptive and self-serving by observers from across the political spectrum.

The ballot language supported by Chaffee and supervisors Lisa Bartlett and Andrew Do simply called the measure a “lifetime ban after three terms.”

Conservative and liberal residents – who waited 7 hours to speak when the item was brought up at the end of the supervisor’s agenda – called the measure’s language “sneaky” and a misleading effort by supervisors to extend their own power.

The only public comments supporting the measure were from the three supervisors who voted to put it on the ballot.

A few days later, state lawmakers and Gov. Gavin Newsom killed the measure when they approved a new state law banning local ballot measures from the upcoming governor recall election.

Supervisors can try again next year.

“If their term limit proposal had been written so as not to allow some of the current supervisors to serve [three] more terms, they would probably have had support from many of us because it was a lifetime ban,” Grindle said.

‘Buckle Up’

Jon Fleischman, an OC-based conservative activist who formerly served as executive director of the California Republican Party, noted that redistricting is inherently political.

“I think that everyone should have a realistic expectation that redistricting is a fundamentally political process,” said Fleischman, who publishes the Flash Report.

“This is the drawing of political boundaries, so in addition to having community groups of interest, you’re going to have political groups of interest all lobbying the Board of Supervisors,” he added.

“Buckle up, it’s going to be an interesting ride.”

OC’s Lack of Outreach So Far Stands in Contrast With Other Governments

While other nearby local governments have been gathering public input for months on what their new district maps should look like, Orange County has not.

The state commission in charge of redrawing legislative and Congressional seats also has been conducting dozens of Zoom outreach meetings.

OC officials say they plan to start public outreach in the coming weeks, through a series of meetings required by state law.

Redistricting can have huge implications for democratic representation.

“In a democracy, voters are supposed to choose the representatives. The representatives are not supposed to choose the voters,” said Fred Smoller, a political science professor at Chapman University, recently told Voice of OC.

“[When] you have the public officials drawing the districts, they get the ability to ensure their own re-election. And that’s why we have to have a system for choosing public officials that is above reproach.”

What Happened Last Time

The last time OC supervisors redrew the boundaries, they handed off the process to their own political aides and focused on protecting their own seats.

“Continuity of representation” was the way supervisors put it in their goals for redistricting a decade ago.

During the 2011 redistricting, Latino and Vietnamese resident groups criticized the county for not doing much of its redistricting work in public.

Voice of OC reported at the time that at their few public meetings, committee members heard public concerns and then, with little discussion, voted for the maps already drawn by the supervisors’ offices.

The final map approved in 2011 split Orange County’s sizable Latino community into two districts.

And it redrew the supervisors’ district boundaries in a way that a local Republican Party leader said guaranteed GOP victories in all five seats.

The next few years did go on to yield solid wins for the GOP, with Republican candidates winning all county supervisor elections in the seven years after the maps were redrawn.

Can a Commission Truly be Independent?

Supervisor Chaffee, one of two Democrats on the board traditionally dominated by the GOP,  questioned how Grindle’s proposal of an “independent” redistricting commission – such as the one California voters put in place for state and federal districts – could actually be independent.

“How would that even be composed? Would it not be a political body in the first place?” Chaffee asked.

“Who’s choosing it, how does that happen? Do you select out of a hat, put all of the judge’s names…how would you get a truly independent body, that’s the first question. If it’s truly independent and they’re smart people, fine.”

When it comes to redrawing state and federal districts, the California Citizens Redistricting Commission is required to have five Republicans, five Democrats, and four members who aren’t affiliated with either of the two major parties.

Much of the selection involves random drawing of names among applications who are deemed qualified by state auditors.

The state commission is prohibited from taking partisan considerations into account, and instead must prioritize keeping similar communities together when redrawing districts.

For reshaping the OC supervisor district lines, the incumbent supervisors will themselves be deciding how the maps will be redrawn – and which voters get moved from one district to another.

Will Politics Play a Role?

Carolyn Cavecche, a former mayor of Orange who now serves as president of the OC Taxpayers’ Association, said her group will be keeping a close eye.

“We’re going to be watching to see if it looks like any deals are being made amongst the supervisors…to move districts even more Republican or more Democrat,” she told Voice of OC.

“I think especially among District 1 and District 2, it will be interesting to see how those two specific districts’ [maps] end up in the next election cycle.”

Chaffee, who’s running for re-election next year, says he works hard to not take politics into account when he’s making decisions.

“I try to keep politics out of everything,” he said.

Yet Grindle says she’s seen a clear pattern over the decades she’s watched supervisors:

“Once they get a taste of that power and influence, it’s all about getting re-elected.”

Mike Moodian, a public policy researcher at Chapman University, said it’s typically in politicians’ nature to hold on to their influence.

“Generally,” he said, “elected officials do whatever they can do to maintain power.”

Nick Gerda covers county government for Voice of OC. You can contact him at ngerda@voiceofoc.org.

Locals tell Redistricting Commission: Help O.C.’s ethnic and beach communities boost political power

The relatively small group of residents who spoke during the first California Citizens Redistricting Commission to be held in Orange County in nearly a decade offered a common suggestion:

Carve out political districts that strengthen the power of the county’s distinct ethnic communities, and then do the same for the county’s beach communities.

But not all of the more than 40 residents who made comments during the online meeting Thursday, July 8, agreed on how those communities should be represented. And their differences highlighted the complexity of the political dilemmas facing the citizen panel, which, over the next few months, will redraw state and federal legislative districts in ways that will shape power in Sacramento and Washington D.C. over the next decade.

“I don’t envy your decision-making in terms of where the lines are drawn on the edges of some of these cities,” Tammy Tran, 40, of Westminster told the commission as she requested more recognition for sprawling Little Saigon.

Once a decade, after the federal government publishes updated census information, California’s Citizens Redistricting Commission must, by law, redraw boundaries for state and federal political districts. Those boundaries will determine the specific voters who will send people to the U.S. House of Representatives, the California State Senate and Assembly, and the State Board of Equalization.

In addition to evenly distributing voters and following other guidelines, the citizen commission also must learn about so-called “communities of interest” across the state and, whenever possible, keep those communities together as they sketch out new districts.

But the definition of communities of interest, and the boundaries of those communities, is far from black and white. That’s where meetings — like the one held Thursday for Orange County, and about 35 similar meetings slated to be held statewide through September — come into play.

“We need the neighborhood and community of interest information from you,” Linda Akutagawa, a member of the state redistricting commission from Huntington Beach, told residents who tuned in to Thursday’s virtual meeting.

Roughly a third of the people who spoke during the meeting asked about political unification of Little Saigon, which is is now spread between three Congressional districts. The not-so-little community of about 200,000 — the largest concentrated Vietnamese population outside Vietnam — is centered in Westminster and Garden Grove but also includes portions of Fountain Valley, Stanton, Midway City and west Santa Ana.

“Instead of dividing those into three congressional districts, please do it as two so at least we have a stronger voice in Congress,” said Hang Hopper of Fountain Valley.

A similar request came from Caroline Nguyen, a program assistant with the California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative. Her grassroots group participated in Thursday’s meeting as one of 15 partners in the People’s Redistricting Alliance, launched in February by the progressive Orange County Civic Engagement Table. Multiple members of the group spoke about requests to keep O.C.’s historically disadvantaged communities together, with some providing the commission with written testimony supporting 18 communities of interest, including Asian American, Latino and LGBTQ populations.

“I ask this commission to do a better job than the 2011 commission in how it treats the Hispanic community,” said Mario Rodriguez, a founding member of Hispanic 100, an organization that mentors Hispanic adults in Orange County.

Before the 2011 round of redistricting, for example, Rodriguez said Assembly District 69 included a solid Hispanic community. But Rodriguez and others said lines drawn that year divided the county’s Hispanic voice and diluted the group’s power by carving heavily Latino portions of Tustin and Orange.

Another speaker asked the commission to protect Latino voices by keeping Anaheim Hills in a separate district from other parts of Anaheim. Even though the communities reside in the same city, the demographics in the two communities are distinct, and want different things from lawmakers in Sacramento and Washington. One speaker recalled an era in the not-so-distant past when Anaheim’s City Council was dominated by people from the wealthier foothill area, even as most of the city’s population was less diverse, less advantaged and lived in the “flatlands.”

There was some disagreement over whether all of Orange County’s beach communities should be in a single Congressional district, or if they should remain split between two districts. For now, the northern coastal cities from Seal Beach to Laguna Niguel are in CA-48 and represented by Republican Michelle Steel. But the county’s southern coastal cities are combined with cities in north San Diego County in CA-49, and they are represented by Democrat Mike Levin.

Former Seal Beach Mayor Ellery Deaton asked the commission to put all of the coastal communities into a single district, arguing it will give them a stronger voice to tackle unifying issues such as beach erosion, flood control and tourism.

“If we don’t have a representative who is focused on protecting our beaches, but instead is split among many interests, the resulting dilution to the communities of interest — all of them, whether inland or at the beach — results in not being properly served,” Deaton said.

Peter “PT” Townend, a former world professional surfing champion who advocates for Huntington Beach tourism and wetlands, echoed that request. With the global surfing industry centered in multiple O.C. cities, Townend said it makes sense to him that they have a single representative fighting for their common causes.

“The more people who care about an issue, the greater likelihood that an elected official will respond in a timely manner,” said Jake Schwartzberg, a high school math teacher from San Clemente who also favors clustering the beach communities.

But Livia Beaudin, an environmental attorney based in Oceanside, asked the commission to keep southern Orange County’s beach communities grouped with northern San Diego County’s beach cities, as they now are in CA-49. Beaudin said the areas have distinct shared interests, such as bluff erosion, water quality, planned desalination plants and waste removal at San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. She urged that the communities remain in a single congressional district “despite the county border.”

Another resident who spoke in favor of keeping a Congressional district intact even though it crosses counties lines was Susan Pearlson of Brea. She lives in CA-39, which includes portions of Orange, Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties and is represented by Republican Young Kim. While the district’s boundaries might seem nonsensical to some, Pearlson said the areas are strongly united around concerns over the traffic bottleneck at the 57 and 60 freeways, as well as fire danger from the nearby hills, and a shared desire to preserve the open space between them.

The meeting, as was the case with the seven other redistricting hearings already held in other parts of the state, was conducted virtually. Commission spokesman Fredy Ceja said the group hopes to hold hybrid meetings — with people able to appear virtually or in person — as soon as next month.

Attendance at the meetings started out slow, with some leaders fearing burnout from the pandemic and political tension. But Ceja said the commission’s outreach effort around the state is boosting participation, with more people showing up at each meeting.

In addition to testimony heard at hearings, the commission will collect community of interest data into at least mid-September or whenever they finally get data from the Census Bureau. Regular deadlines have been delayed several times due to COVID-19. After that, the commission will actually start drawing new district lines and holding community input meetings on their proposals.

In the meantime, people who want to weigh in on redistricting still have opportunities to be heard. More meetings are scheduled in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. Also, people can weigh in via email by using a new online tool — DrawMyCACommunity.org — which lets them sketch out their ideal political districts and make a case for why the state should follow their suggestion.

Residents also can submit testimony by phone, email or letter, with more information at wedrawthelinesca.org/public_comment.

While Congressional redistricting has a much higher profile, local government agencies – including cities, school districts and Orange County – also are preparing to draw new boundaries this year that will serve them until the 2030 census.

It’s likely to be a bigger deal for the county (whose five supervisors each represent a geographic area) and for the many cities, school districts and special districts that have switched to district-based voting in the last several years where elected leaders now are chosen from their geographic sector of the community.

But by law, everyone has to go through redistricting every 10 years – when data from the decennial census comes out – to ensure residents are getting equitable representation.

Orange County is one of the first to kick off the process locally, with OC Registrar of Voters Neal Kelley offering “redistricting academy” sessions this month to help local officials through the process and the county planning public workshops in each supervisorial district in August. And residents in some cities are already seeing invitations to community workshops.

The pandemic has made the process a bit more challenging because it delayed census data collection, so state and local governments may not get the information they need until the end of September, several months later than normal.

Most cities and school districts don’t have seats on the ballot until November 2022, so they have a bit longer to redraw their district lines. But the county is still required to have its new maps ready by Dec. 15, so that crunches the schedule for community input, including public meetings and allowing people to draw and submit their own suggested maps, said Jessica Witt, the county’s government and community relations director.

What’s changed?

Although the official numbers aren’t in yet, up-to-date estimates from the state Department of Finance show Orange County’s population grew by just under 5% – adding about 143,000 residents – since 2010, said Deborah Diep, director of Cal State Fullerton’s Center for Demographic Research, which is working with the county on its redistricting effort.

Those state figures show Irvine grew the most of any OC city, by far, with nearly 60,000 more residents since the last full census. Five other cities and the county’s unincorporated area added more than 5,000 people each in that time, but Anaheim was the only one besides Irvine to break into five digits (with roughly 17,000 new residents).

The growth in nine cities can be counted in the hundreds, and six cities saw their populations shrink a bit since 2010, though none showed a dramatic loss.

What does that mean for the county and any cities or other agencies that use by-district representation? As they draw new lines, officials have to consider a number of factors, said Senior Assistant County Counsel Nicole Walsh:

• Districts must be roughly equal in population (no more than 10% difference between the biggest and smallest)
• As much as possible, local communities and neighborhoods should be kept together
• Districts must be geographically connected (no islands cut off from the rest)
• Officials must try to avoid splitting up “communities of interest,” which is broadly defined as sharing social or economic interests, but in practice could mean a lot of things.

The county created a comment form to ask residents about communities of interest in their area and has already started getting feedback, Walsh said.

Importantly, the maps aren’t supposed to factor in political considerations, so how many residents in a district are registered as Democrat or Republican doesn’t matter, and boundary changes could mean some sitting officials get drawn out of the area they now represent.

Influencing the process

Unlike Congressional and state legislative seats, which are strongly tied to party politics, elected positions with the county, cities and school boards are technically non-partisan. But political parties still get involved in local elections and take an interest in redistricting, which could help or hurt the chances of their members winning office.

At the local level, there’s nowhere near the “massive outside influence” that goes into ensuring safe districts for state and federal legislators, said Republican political pollster Adam Probolsky.

While he thinks the county’s redistricting after the 2010 census was done fairly, Probolsky said one difference this time may be a “hyper-aware” political environment in which more interest groups are fighting to get noticed.

“Elected officials who are trying to be highly responsible to the differences among us are going to have a lot of challenges in figuring that out, how are we going to be responsive to all those communities,” he said.

But Democratic consultant George Urch said Orange County’s Democratic and Republican parties, and some elected officials, are already focused on local level redistricting as a means of furthering their interests.

California uses an independent commission to redraw lines for state offices, but in most local agencies the elected officials (such as a city council) make the final decision.

“It can severely impact an elected official in terms of their reelection, so there’s high impact and anxiety – and if they can control the process they’re going to try hard to control the process,” Urch said.

Redistricting is supposed to be about fair and equal representation for the residents and communities that make up a city, school district or any other political subdivision, so public involvement is baked into the process.

It may sound bureaucratic and boring, but “redistricting and how we set up our communities, especially on a national level, determines how money is allocated,” Walsh said. “You should care because these are your elected representatives and you want to have a say in that, as much say as you can.”

Information on Orange County’s redistricting effort is at ocgov.com/redistricting. For cities, school boards and other local agencies, check the agency’s website

Following a 2011 Orange County Board of Supervisors redistricting designed to ensure partisan control, community organizations and residents are organizing to ensure this decade’s process centers around community needs rather than party politics. A coalition of over 16 groups, the People’s Redistricting Alliance has come together to educate low-income communities of color about the once-a-decade process of redrawing legislative boundaries, mobilize them to participate in public hearings, and create a space through which they can identify “communities of interest” and draw maps that improve the responsiveness of government at all levels.