Redistricting Wrap Up
Submitted by Margo Reeg on behalf of the LWV of LA County ILO
January 27, 2022
The Redistricting Process for Los Angeles County, the state of California, and Los Angeles City came to a finish in December with the publication of the newly redrawn maps for County Supervisorial districts, state Assembly, Senate, Congressional and Board of Equalization districts, and Los Angeles City Council districts. The League followed each of these processes for the year in which they were functioning. LWVLA observed City Council, state, and LA County. The County board watched the new County process as the board has in at least two previous decades.
Chris Carson was the lead monitor for LWVLA and LWVC in this area, having been intimately involved in getting the Independent Citizen Redistricting Commission measure passed in 2008. She also worked on advancing independent redistricting during her service on the LWVUS board. She closely monitored the California state Commission.
Monitoring the Process
The League’s primary goal was to monitor the process by which the appointed commissions carried out the mandate to hold open meetings, seek training on voting rights laws and specific aspects such as Racially Polarized Voting, and hold ample public input sessions to learn from and residents about their Communities of Interest. During this pandemic year the commissions were very resourceful in hosting all their meetings via ZOOM and, in the case of the LA County Commission, holding 5 in person public input hearings–one in each Supervisorial district– as well as several in person commission meetings.
Los Angeles County Citizen Commission
On the Los Angeles County level the creation of an Independent Citizen Redistricting Commission for the County came about due to a state law passed in 2016. This law stipulated a specific set of requirements for the selection and qualification of commissioners as well as the requirements for the hiring of staff and consultants. These requirements made it very difficult for interested consulting groups to apply so the LA County Commission had at the end only one choice for a Demographic/Mapping group which was based in the East Coast. The Voting Polarization Consultant was also limited to groups mainly outside LA County.
The League worked closely with a group of organizations including Common Cause, MALDEF, NALEO, CHIRLA, Community Coalition, League of Conservation Voters, Asian Americans Advancing Justice-LA, the Advancement Project, and others to follow the entire process from the choosing of the Commission members, through drawing up bylaws, hiring staff, choosing consultants, and conducting meetings. On a number of occasions the coalition wrote letters to the Executive Director and the Commission on procedural issues and public input. The Coalition met biweekly to discuss the Commission proceedings and to formulate comments to be communicated to the staff and commissioners. On some occasions members of the Coalition including League members made public comment during meetings. Our intent was to make sure that the Commission operated according to the law, followed the requirements of districting, educated residents on the means to communicate public comment on Communities of Interest, and held more than the minimum number of public hearings.
County League Board Involvement
The League members on County board who actively participated on a regular basis included Monica Marquez, Grace Peng, and Margo Reeg. Fatima Malik, President, followed the coalition reports and created League statements. Grace went above and beyond by taking courses and becoming certified in GPS mapping through UC San Diego. She made several requests of the county staff to add mapping data sets to make the mapping software more usable to track neighborhood characteristics other than race and socio-economic levels. She also utilized the mapping software to create maps for her local area and the County. Monica and Margo attended nearly all the meetings and often took notes for the Coalition. Margo also oriented the young people in the coalition on how the process had worked in previous redistricting years before the independent commission was established.
Redistricting Requirements
In the end, the newly drawn districts on the county level had to have substantially equal population (total deviation less than 10%), adhere to the Voting Rights Act to neither concentrate people of one racial group in one district to limit their influence nor to fragment the ethnic and racial communities to dilute their voice. In addition, districts must be contiguous, reflect Communities of Interest, and if possible be compact. In a County of over 10,000,000 people and only 5 Supervisors, it took a great deal of public comment, map drawing skill, understanding of neighborhoods and regions, and creativity to create 5 districts that were fair and gave the multitude of diverse communities in the County the opportunity to elect a Supervisor of their choice.
Final Maps
At the final map drawing session on Sunday, December 12, the Commissioners, in response to many comments from residents in the San Fernando Valley and Chatsworth who wanted their area to be kept in one district, and to people from Glendale and Burbank who also wanted those cities to remain together, and to Asian Americans who wanted their neighborhoods in the city core to remain undivided, pulled the West Valley communities into the 3rd District and removed areas in the eastern part of the 3rd District into District 1. Then they placed Glendale, Burbank and some of the studio lots into district 5 along with Pasadena and a number of foothill cities that had wanted to remain together. Supervisor Kuehl, whose 3rd district will have no incumbent in the upcoming election, wrote a letter implying that one or more Commissioners made these last minute changes to further the chances of a city council member who intends to run for District 3 supervisor. The Commission Co-chair Daniel Mayeda and Commissioner David Holtzman, who had both been interested in pulling the entertainment studio areas into one district, denied having any influence with any candidates. However, most of the comments from the public on the final night when the map was adopted, quoted the Kuehl letter and accused the Commissioners of misconduct.
The final maps are displayed on the county redistricting website, lacounty.gov/redistricting. In addition statements by the Supervisors and a link to the lengthy Final Report are at this location. In the final report the Commission and the Executive staff made a number of recommendations to make the next process run more efficiently. Among those recommendations is that the application and selection process for commissioners start sooner. They also recommended using online and hybrid meetings in the future even if there is no pandemic. Many more people were able to observe the process and make public comments using the online format than would have been able or willing to had all the meetings been held at the county Hall of Administration. The Commissioners needed time to vet and hire their own staff and less stringent requirements for qualifying applicants to do demographic work and research on voting trends. The County League as part of the Coalition addressed the issue of the County hiring the Executive Director and legal staff in a letter to the Commission. To change these requirements for timing and for consultant qualifications will require a change in state law. Software implementation issues were a problem partially caused by the late arrival of final census data.
All in all, it was a fascinating process made more difficult by the restrictions of the pandemic. The LA County Commissioners were a diverse and highly qualified group of people. They worked diligently to hear and accommodate the hundreds of Community of Interest statements in order to create districts that best enable residents to elect a supervisor who represents their interests.
Many of us will find that we have been moved into a new district that may be unfamiliar. But the county is not the same place as it was in the 1990s and 2000s when we were first required to have districts that allowed an African American and a Latina to be elected. Remember this is the first time in which the people in LA County will choose their representatives rather than the Supervisors choosing their voters. The League’s job is to educate voters about the new district boundaries and to facilitate getting all candidates to post their campaign information on VotersEdge.org.
