The Citizens Redistricting Commission is racing to meet its deadline for redrawing voting districts for use in next year’s elections.
To date, the Commission has released a bunch of “visualizations” that helped citizens and Commissioners both to see how voting district boundaries might look.
Yesterday, the Commission released actual proposed voting district maps for Congressional, State Senate, and State Assembly Districts. (Other entities are working on new voting districts for school boards and for County Supervisors.)
Orange County Breeze encourages everyone to submit comments on these maps. Comments may be submitted using an online form at https://airtable.com/shrQDD2ta2emnSzzO.
According to the Citizens Redistricting Commission:
Draft Map Public Input Meeting Schedule
November 17, 2021—Congressional District Feedback
November 18, 2021—Assembly District Feedback
November 19, 2021—Senate District Feedback
November 20, 2021—Board of Equalization & Any District Feedback
November 22, 2021—Any District Feedback
November 23, 2021—Any District Feedback
You can make an appointment to participate in a meeting here: https://www.wedrawthelinesca.org/draft_maps_public_input
Here is a link to each of the LARGE statewide maps, for reference:
- Proposed Congressional voting districts
- Proposed State Senate voting districts
- Proposed State Assembly voting districts
The new maps are really hard to look at — they are not in the same format as the “visualizations”s released earlier. The labels get in the way of looking closely, and district boundaries are drawn over one another. I hope that clearer maps are released.
Following are comments regarding the proposed voting district boundaries, as best as I can make out from zooming in on northwest Orange County on the released maps.
Congressional
The smaller northwest Orange County communities that make up the core coverage area of Orange County Breeze appear to be grouped together and not swallowed by Long Beach. Instead, three “arms” of the proposed district reach southeast towards Santa Ana, northeast towards Fullerton, and northwest towards Lakewood and Cerritos.
State Senate
The smaller northwest Orange County communities that make up the core coverage area of Orange County Breeze appear to be split. Seal Beach, Rossmoor, and Los Alamitos are grouped in a coastal district with Huntington Beach. This includes the two military installations. Cypress is in a separate voting district with La Palma and Buena Park that spreads east, then hooks south to Santa Ana.
State Assembly
The smaller northwest Orange County communities that make up the core coverage area of Orange County Breeze appear to be split. Seal Beach, Rossmoor, and Los Alamitos are grouped with an otherwise inland district that embraces Garden Grove, then hooks south. Cypress and La Palma are again in a separate voting district with arms that reach southeast, northeast, and northwest.
Criteria used by the Citizens Redistricting Commission
- Districts must be of equal population to comply with the U.S. Constitution.
- Districts must comply with the Voting Rights Act to ensure that minorities have an equal opportunity to elect representatives of their choice.
- Districts must be drawn contiguously, so that all parts of the district are connected to each other.
- Districts must minimize the division of cities, counties, neighborhoods and communities of interest to the extent possible.
- Districts should be geographically compact: such that nearby areas of population are not bypassed for a more distant population. This requirement
- refers to density, not shape. Census blocks cannot be split.
- Where practicable each Senate District should be comprised of two complete and adjacent Assembly Districts, and Board of Equalization districts should be comprised of 10 complete and adjacent State Senate Districts.
In addition, the place of residence of any incumbent or political candidate may not be considered in the creation of a map, and districts may not be drawn for the purpose of favoring or discriminating against an incumbent, political candidate, or political party.
While looking through the Wedrawthelines web site I stumbled on to the Nov 10th Visualizations which are easier to read compared to the graphics files. Our St Assembly and St Senate districts for West OC changed a little from Nov 7th. Our House district was modified again, still includes Seal Beach, Los Alamitos, and Cypress, NO Long Beach. This is no longer a big coastal district, that part of the Nov-7th revision was moved inland to Garden Grove, Westminster, Fountain Valley. Little Saigon is not very little now and the residents campaigned to keep their voters together. This House district resembles the letter C and the top of the C extends to Fullerton. I’d say we in West OC should cash in our chips and get out of the game. The big fight now, from what I see in the public Input and Public comments, is in San Diego county.