California Screamin’: Why no one in the Golden State is happy with redistricting
The ink is barely dry on California’s new congressional district maps, but if anyone has been following the process — from the census result, to the apportionment that eliminated one congressional seat from California, to the drafting and map making process undertook by the California Redistricting Commission — the emotional outrage from all political spectrums was going to be a given. Needless to say, the commission was given a near impossible job to keep as many communities together without angering one side or another.
First, is the fact that from 2010 to 2020, California actually added two million people to the state despite media warnings that folks were leaving the Golden State in droves. Second, while it makes for a simple subtraction of a congressional district number on the Wikipedia page, adding about 40,000 to each congressional district (roughly the population of Coachella or San Bruno for comparison) is not an easy task. Most districts were going to be bluer, no matter what the commission did, but probably the biggest complains that dominated the message board were on communities and neighborhoods being split up.
From tribes to the LA suburbs and every coastal enclave in between, no one wanted their group, county, or region divided. The wine country wanted to stay together. The north coast wanted their district to remain in tact from Marin to the Oregon border. And no one wanted to be lumped in with LA County. Perhaps the two biggest winners in the process were Latinos and Asians as these two groups combine for at least 10% in every congressional district — two groups that former GOP chairman Reince Priebus warned the the GOP needed to reach out to if it were going to make any headway in future elections. Needless to say, he was summarily ignored, and California since then has become a progressive stronghold.
Still, while the bickering and name calling came fast and furious on the message board, one reality remains: California, and many other states for that matter, continue to be woefully underrepresented. Currently, California has 760,000 residents to one representative, and under the nearly century old Reapportionment Act, would force an over 805,000 residents to one California rep by the year 2030.
How do we fix this? Congress simply needs to repeal and replace the Act with the Wyoming Rule, which would increase the number of representative from the current 435 cap to 573. Nearly every state would add at least one representative with seven states having one at-large representative. Failure to do so means a continued dilution of our voice in Washington and our democratic institutions.
