The lines that define us

Redistricting is supposed to help make our votes count equally, but it may be disenfranchising us from the democratic process

BY ANNE QUINN

Nothing is on the ballot in San Luis Obispo this election day, although everyone is talking about democracy in light of recent terrorist attacks. But when SLO voters return their attention to local politics for the March primaries, they will face a political landscape that’s changed so much they might not recognize it.

While every one has been busy waving flags, an obscure process called redistricting took place. Now SLO County voters can’t vote for their own state senator if there’s a special election, the Five Cities area is divided and no longer has common representation in Congress, and Supervisor Mike Ryan has an almost shoe-in victory in the next election.

Each decade after the newest census, Congress notifies each state as to how many seats its earned in the of the House of Representatives, based on population. This is called reapportionment.

Then the fun begins. State legislators are put in charge of re-drawing voting districts, not only for the national congress but for their own offices, in a process known as redistricting. The new districts created should be equal in population, exhibit racial diversity, and share common interests, but often politicians are accused of drawing lines for their own political gain. This year is no exception.

Redistricting resembles a corporate merger where everything suddenly changes to the benefit of some and the discomfort of others.

Thanks to redistricting, SLO County voters could find themselves represented for years in the state senate by someone they can’t vote for.

SLO County was moved from State Senate District 18, represented by Jack O’Connell, into State Senate District 15, represented by Bruce McPherson, thanks to redistricting. As a result, we are now represented by a republican, McPherson, despite the fact the county elected democrat O’Connell in the last election. O’Connell’s term will expire in 2002, but McPherson’s term is not up until 2004.

McPherson plans to run for Lieutenant Governor in 2002, and if he wins there will be a special election, but SLO County voters won’t be able to vote in it.

Nathan Barankin of California Attorney General Bill Lockyer’s office explains it this way: "If Bruce McPherson wins the election in November 2002 for Lieutenant governor, his senate seat becomes vacant the day he is sworn in as Lieutenant governor. After that, the Governor would have to call a special election to fill the vacancy created in Senate District 15. Even if the new district lines are approved (they are currently subject to challenge in a variety of lawsuits) the special election would be held only in those communities that constitute the old senate district 15 so San Luis Obispo wouldn’t have a vote."

Redistricting also disrupted the plans of Sam Blakeslee, a rising star on the SLO County political scene who got a taste for politics when he ran for President of the Board of Cuesta College trustees, an elected seat, and won.

Blakeslee also made a splash when he spearheaded the D.R.E.A.M. initiative, a ballot proposition which was essentially a statement of interest by the voting majority to make the scenic coastal lands around Diablo Canyon Power Plant public after the plant closes.

Blakeslee planned to run for Abel Maldonado’s State Assembly seat knowing that Maldonado was gearing up to run for Jack O’Connell’s state senate District 18 seat.

But when redistricting made San Luis Obispo County part of State Senate District 15, represented by senior republican McPherson, the seat became unavailable until 2004.

This forced Maldonado to re-think what to do in 2002. He decided to drop back and rerun for his assembly seat.

That made sense for him, since Assembly seat terms are only for two years, and he can run for the state senate district 15 seat in 2004 if he still wants to. But it shut out Blakeslee, who refused to run against Maldonado, his friend and political mentor. He said he was only going to go after the seat if Maldonado vacated it.

Apparently, letting politicians draw their own districts is like letting the Hell’s Angels write helmet laws. Right now there are so many challenges to redistricting in the courts that Barankin said there might not even be a March primary election if they can’t be resolved in time.

Since the legislators are able to redraw the lines that affect their own chances for reelection, they are often accused of doing it in ways to insure they’ll get reelected.

If the process is clean its called redistricting. If it’s dirty its called gerrymandering–named for Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry who won immortality by crafting a district for political purposes that looked like a salamander. The process of manipulating district lines to get the vote has been named for him ever since.

Redistricting occurred this year. Did Gerrymandering? Some say ‘absolutely.’

Redistricting is currently the subject of lawsuits up and down the state all claiming gerrymandering. "No one knows the potential of the litigation out there to disrupt the next elections," said Barankin.

While its not in the shape of a salamander, the new shape of Congresswoman Lois Capps 22nd district, which now stretches from San Simeon to Oxnard, is long and skinny, and looks like the old district’s image distorted in a fun house mirror. The district is not the subject of litigation although its new form seems to violate one of the ground rules of redistricting: compactness.

Compactness is not defined as a neat shape, but communities of common interest, according to an article on redistricting in California County, the Journal of the California State Association of Counties. If so, one might wonder what Oxnard and Cambria have in common besides the Pacific Ocean.

The new design of Capps district has one Arroyo Grande resident, Trudy Jarratt, "shocked and appalled."

Jarratt can’t believe that "someone in Sacramento in their infinite wisdom" would take Arroyo Grande out of the same congressional District as the rest of the five cities area and stick it into District 22 with Bakersfield. "I can’t help but wonder if whoever decided on redistricting, even understood where we are. We are 10 minutes from the beach."

"So much of our infrastructure is in common with Grover Beach. Arroyo Grande even sells water to its neighbors," she said. "We are intertwined by our common interests and are interdependent. To have one community ripped out of that to me just seems illogical."

Redistricting has divided the congressional representation for the Lucia Mar school district between two congressional districts and also between two parties since now Arroyo Grande High School is represented by republican congressman Bill Thomas and the rest of the schools is handled by democrat Lois Capps.

Jarrett said she has written to state assemblyman Abel Maldonado, Sen. O’Connell, Gov. Gray Davis and Congresswoman Capps, with no results. "I don’t know what else I can do," she said.

Jarratt is one of the few San Luis Obispo County residents who are even aware that redistricting has happened. "Most voters won’t know until they get to the ballot box and see an unfamiliar name there," commented SLO County Clerk/Recorder Julie Rodewald.

Locally, redistricting resulted in District 5 Supervisor Mike Ryan being able to shed the two voting precincts,123 and 124, that voted 3-2 for his opponent David Blakely in the last election.

A glance at the voting district maps in the County Clerk Recorder’s office show that through redistricting Ryan got rid of voting districts 520 to 523, and 519. These are consolidated into voting precincts 123 and 124, both of which voted heavily for Blakely in the 2000 primary, according to official election results. (Precinct 123 voted 38 percent for Ryan and 62 percent for Blakely and precinct 124 voted 40 percent for Ryan and 60 percent for Blakely).

Four other consolidated precincts in the City of SLO, 125 to 128, remain in Ryan’s district.

Ryan, county staff, and county administrator David Edge all claim that they didn’t know this would be the result and that it was, in fact, an accident.

"I know it will be difficult to convince a newspaper that we did not know how those people in Ryan’s district voted but we did not work with that data," said Edge.

It was all a population numbers game, Leslie Brown administrative county staffer in charge of the redistricting project, insists.

During redistricting at the open public meetings, staff used a mapping system called GIS which instantly tapped into census data. Whenever a suggested change was made in a supervisors territory the system could not only immediately show the change in the physical boundary overhead, but instantly calculate the corresponding change in population. How people voted was not included in the process.

The first discovery made by the county staff team under Brown, which included John Kelly, Chandra Slaven and Dan Lambert, was that although the population in the North County had grown enough to move Harry Ovitt’s District 1 completely northward out of Atascadero, the numbers in Ryan’s District 5 were not high enough to keep the district strictly north of the grade, but required him to maintain some representation in San Luis Obispo.

The main problem was that Shirley Bianchi’s district (2) was short by approximately 8800 voters and Ryan’s district (5) was too large by approximately 3300.

Geographically, Ryan’s and Bianchi’s districts meet in the Cal Poly/Foothill area, and blocks in that area were shifted from Ryan’s district to Bianchi’s until the numbers of people in each district matched.

It was just a coincidence that Ryan was not popular there, Brown said. Of course, you would have to have been living under a rock not to know that Foothill Boulevard was where the political battle over District 5 always took place. However, according to the rules of redistricting as long as these voters were white it didn’t matter.

"Racial gerrymanders and otherwise racially discriminatory plans are unconstitutional, but pure political gerrymanders have not been held to violate any constitutional mandate," reads the California County article.

The local redistricting process also has the appearance of gerrymandering by its efforts to keep incumbent K.H. "Katcho" Achadjian’s district intact, but this also worked out legally.

Not that anyone is complaining about retaining Achadjian. He is so well-liked that many supporters viewed keeping him in the district as a goal of redistricting. County staff member Kelly said that overall they were disappointed that the redistricting workshops generated so little public interest, until they got to South County where so many supporters of Achadjian turned out.

Most arguments over redistricting end up in the courts. That’s how a lawsuit filed by the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund or MALDEF, one of the many that may delay the March election, will be decided.

In that case, Michael Berman, a democratic consultant who was in charge of drawing California’s new congressional boundaries, is being accused of diluting the Latino vote in one Los Angeles District because a white incumbent paid him $20,000. In fact, Assemblyman Juan Vargas, a San Diego democrat, claims Berman told him that "every democratic member of congress was supposed to pay him $20,000, or they ‘might not like their districts.’" Naturally, Berman denies this.

Vargas’ allegation is contained in a declaration filed in U. S. District Court by MALDEF. The suit alleges that state congressional boundaries approved by the legislature and signed into law by Gov. Gray Davis protect incumbents at the expense of Latino voters.

The suit is requesting a temporary restraining order to delay March primary election until June. Depending on the decision of the three judges hearing the case, the primary may be postponed statewide, or delays may occur only in the Los Angeles area districts named in the suit.

What makes the scandal really juicy is the fact that Berman’s brother, Howard Berman, (D-Mission Hills) who has represented the 26th district for years, was moved into a district made up of the primarily white area of Hollywood Hills while thousands of Latino voters were moved from his district into the adjacent 27th district.

Besides the MALDEF suit claiming gerrymandering in Los Angeles County, battles are going on in other parts of the state as well over redistricting.

While the attention of most Americans is focused on outside threats to democracy, others are working within the system to make sure the word actually still means something. The debate continues: is redistricting is a process that helps protect democracy, or one that is being used to threaten it? Æ

Anne Quinn keeps voting, whether its counted or not.