The end result? Twenty-two of the state’s new 80 state Assembly districts will now have a Latino citizen voting-age population greater than 50%.

Several others were drawn to boost the importance of Asian American voters. The commission hired outside legal counsel to determine whether districts clustered around parts of Los Angeles, the Inland Empire and the Central Valley had to be drawn in ways that enhanced the political clout of Latino voters. “It’s something that has a lot of wiggle room,” McGhee said.īoth standards caused ripple effects in the maps over the course of the 12 weeks the commission spent drawing lines, but the effort to address voting discrimination was the most significant. Unlike the Voting Rights Act - in which the legal standard involves proving the existence of racially polarized voting patterns that unfairly deny minority groups a share of political power - a community of interest can be defined any way its members might choose. “Adding communities of interest as one of the criteria,” McGhee said, “was a way of providing extra protection for racial and ethnic minorities.” The commissioners did so by embracing two of the most far-reaching - and ultimately subjective - redistricting rules added to the California Constitution by the 2008 ballot measure that wrested redistricting away from the California Legislature. “And we tried to spread the pain and gain, as thoughtfully and as fairly as we could.” “We made hundreds of hard choices,” said Commissioner Russell Yee, an Oakland Republican.

Several of the 14 commissioners, who signed off on the final maps on Monday, candidly admitted they had no choice but to pick winners and losers. Californians who believe objectivity is the only thing that creates fairness in the once-a-decade redrawing of political boundary lines will probably be disappointed with the maps submitted to state elections officials on Monday.Īs the experience of the state’s independent Citizens Redistricting Commission showed, even when redistricting is removed from the hands of legislators, subjective decisions must still be made.

Map of new california