For Patricia Sinay, one of many highlights of her life was serving on the California Citizens Redistricting Commission, which spent effectively over a yr painstakingly plotting out the state’s political boundaries.
“I obtained to witness democracy at its core,” mentioned Sinay, 58, who lives in Encinitas and works as a guide on the earth of nonprofits.
“There have been 14 very various individuals who got here at this work from totally different backgrounds,” she mentioned. “Some might have identified greater than others about redistricting. However by the tip we have been all specialists and targeted on the identical factor, which was creating truthful maps for the individuals of California.”
Now, a great deal of that work might come undone, as voters are being asked to scrap the even-handed congressional strains drawn by Sinay and her fellow commissioners in favor of a blatantly gerrymandered map that might all however wipe out California’s Republican representation in Congress.
Sinay, a Democrat, is ambivalent.
She understands the impetus behind the transfer, a tit-for-tat response to a similar Republican gerrymander in Texas, executed at President Trump’s behest to shore up the GOP’s probabilities forward of a deadly 2026 midterm election.
“I feel what President Trump requested is completely abhorrent. I feel that Texas doing that is completely abhorrent,” Sinay mentioned. “I don’t help the actions of the present administration. I feel that their actions are completely harmful and scary.”
However, she mentioned, “I don’t suppose that is one of the simplest ways to cease what the administration is doing.”
Sinay famous Republicans have more gerrymandering opportunities nationwide than Democrats, ought to political adversaries go that route, and she or he questioned the price of California’s Nov. 4 particular election, which might run into hundreds of millions of dollars.
“There are too many individuals proper now which can be hurting that might use that cash in a lot better methods,” Sinay mentioned.
Different commissioners disagree.
Sara Sadhwani, 45, a Democrat who teaches political science at Pomona School, spoke at Gov. Gavin Newsom’s rally kicking off the gerrymandering effort and testified earlier than the state Senate, urging lawmakers to place the matter earlier than voters to allow them to give Democrats a lift.
“These are extraordinary instances,” Sadhwani mentioned, “and extraordinary instances name for extraordinary measures.”
Trena Turner, a pastor in Stockton and fellow commissioner, mentioned she’s tremendously happy with the fee’s work and believes its neutral method to political line-drawing is a mannequin the remainder of America ought to embrace.
However, she mentioned, “I don’t suppose we must be taking part in by particular person guidelines, totally different guidelines from state to state,” given what’s taken place in Texas and the specter of GOP gerrymandering elsewhere, comparable to Florida.
“The voices that we have to converse up for now will not be simply our particular person congressional districts,” mentioned the 64-year-old Democrat. “We have to converse up for the voices of our nation, for the soul of our nation.”
Neal Fornaciari, a Republican who chairs the redistricting fee, mentioned particular person members are talking strictly for themselves. (Although its map-making operate was accomplished on the finish of 2021, the fee stays in existence.)
Commissioners “are exercising their 1st Modification proper to free speech,” mentioned Fornaciari, 63, a retired mechanical engineer who lives in Shingletown, within the far north of California. However, he emphasised, “The fee is on no account concerned on this redistricting effort.”
He even declined to state his private views on the Democratic gerrymander, lest somebody mistakenly assume Fornaciari was talking on the fee’s behalf.
The physique was created in 2008 when California voters approved Proposition 11, often known as the Voters First Act. Spearheaded by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the measure sought to convey steadiness to legislative races by taking redistricting away from lawmakers, who tended to attract the state’s political strains to go well with their pursuits and reduce competitors.
In 2010, voters extended the commission’s oversight to congressional races.
Consisting of 14 members, the panel is split amongst 5 Democrats, 5 Republicans and 4 members with no celebration affiliation. Greater than 30,000 Californians utilized for the positions.
The 14 who landed the job survived a grueling choice course of, overseen by the nonpartisan state auditor, which concerned detailed questionnaires, a number of essays and face-to-face interviews. The ultimate lineup included a seminary professor, a structural engineer and an investigator for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Division.
Over the course of 16 months — and thru days generally lasting 12 hours or extra — commissioners produced 176 maps. They created district boundaries for 52 members of Congress, 120 state lawmakers and 4 members of the Board of Equalization, which oversees tax assortment in California.
Commissioners labored at no cost, receiving no wage, although they did get a $378 per diem on days they spent in session.
It’s a degree of pleasure that nobody sued to overturn the fee’s work, a rarity within the extremely litigious subject of redistricting.
“More often than not in case you watched our conferences I doubt in case you might have appropriately guessed all our political affiliations,” Russell Yee, a Republican commissioner, mentioned in an electronic mail. “We accepted our last maps unanimously. We proved that residents can rise above political, racial, regional, and generational variations to do the general public’s work collectively in an open and profitable method.”
(All fee conferences have been open to the general public, with proceedings livestreamed on the web.)
Yee, 64, the tutorial director at a small Christian research heart in Berkeley, mentioned he was usually against the Democratic gerrymandering effort “as a result of two wrongs don’t make a proper. The ends don’t justify the means.”
Nonetheless, whereas Yee leans in opposition to Proposition 50, because the November poll measure has been designated, he’ll “maintain listening with an open thoughts.”
Even when voters crumple up and toss the congressional maps Yee and others drafted, none felt as if their labors have been wasted. For one factor, they mentioned, the opposite political boundaries, for state legislative contests and the Board of Equalization, will stay intact. And the congressional strains yielded a set of extremely aggressive races in 2020 and 2024.
“We’ve proven twice now that unbiased, citizen redistricting can work effectively even in a state as populous, demographically various, and geographically advanced at California,” Yee mentioned.
For her half, Sinay, the nonprofit guide, is unsure about Proposition 50.
One factor she needs, Sinay mentioned, is reassurance “this isn’t a everlasting energy seize” and that congressional redistricting will, in truth, revert to the fee after the subsequent census, as Newsom and gerrymandering proponents have promised. Sidelining self-interested politicians is certainly a greater approach to attract political maps, she advised, however finally it’s as much as voters to determine.
“I’ll positively help whatever the people of California want,” Sinay mentioned.
