California Prop. 50 card explained: fair or partisan?

From Jean QuangCalmness

This story was originally published by CalmattersS Register about their ballots.

There is no doubt that the proposals of a proposal 50 have a guerrilla purpose.

By striving to accept a map that will put more democrats in power in areas currently represented by Republicans, they ask the voters to temporarily bypass the independent, non -party commission to redistribution of the state, which has been prioritized in the last two decades.

Does this mean that the proposed new regions of Congress will be less representative of voters beyond party preferences? We looked at some common questions.

Who draws prop. 50 card?

Paul Mitchell, a veteran democratic expert on redistribution in Sacramento, and a group of such consultants painted the card. Mitchell explained in an interview that he contributed to the delegation of the Democratic Congress in California before sending a proposed card to the Democratic Congress of the campaign.

The Committee then sent the proposal to the state legislative body, which accepted the card as part of its vote to put support 50 on the vote in November. The proposal would allow the state to temporarily use these proposed regional lines.

Is California anymore is Gerimander anymore?

Not quite.

Many Republicans, including Vice President JD Vance, are already complaining that according to the current California Democrats map are controlling over 80% of congress, although the party received just under 60% of the votes throughout the 2024 presidential election.

But this does not mean that cards are deliberately attracted to give Democrats an unfair advantage.

Registered Democrats outperform Republicans almost two to one. The civil committee, which draws the cards composed of an equal number of Democrats and Republicans, as well as four independent, were specifically forbidden to consider registration of the party in deciding how to prepare the lines. They had to consider geography, and Democrats and Republicans did not live evenly throughout the country. Plus, several of the current blue regions are highly competitive, with the operating Democrats winning them last year with thin razors.

Two academic institutions that evaluate the plans for the redistribution of countries say that California’s current map is most fair. Plans The card was found to be tilted to Democrats with two measures and balanced by two other measures. The Princeton University’s Gerimander project He gave the California B map the result of the guerrilla justice, and it only acquired it to give preference to the current politicians. (The proposed new card received “F” by the organization.)

Will the new card further divide the communities?

Both supporters and opponents of Prop. 50 claim their preferred card – the existing or proposed new one – supports cities and counties more often, leading to a better representation, maintaining such communities under the same congress.

So what is it? It depends on how you look at it and each side phrases their claims differently. Prop supporters. 50 are correct, saying that their card divides less common cities and counties into two or more areas of the current map. This is according to analysis of the two Haystaqdna cards, the company that supported the non -partisan redistribution in 2021.

An Analysis by a non -partisan Institute for Public Policy in California He found that the difference was almost insignificant.

But the Democrats map has more cities and cities that are divided between three or more areas, not just two. That is why opponents are also correct by saying prop. 50 divides communities more times – Although in their argument sent to the voters, they have overcome the number of times.

But preserving cities and cities intact is not the only way to evaluate the quality of congress.

For starters, big cities must be divided into multiple areas to ensure that each congressman represents the same number of people. Both cards give each district 760 066 Californians, give or take one composition.

Many cities in California are divided into both maps, as the state constitution requires independent card drawers to consider not only to maintain cities and cities together, but also “communities of interest”, which the law defines as “a neighboring population, which shares common social interests”.

In any region that could mean anyone who sends their children to the same school neighborhood, or anyone who works in agriculture, or anyone who relies on the I-5 for their daily journey. But there is no definite definition of all interesting communities, so once you look at them, it is a matter of how well each card is Californians.

Prop. The 50 opponents emphasized Lodi, a city of 66,000 people north of a hundredth, presented in a congress, which will be divided between three areas by report 50. The Lodi Municipal Council opposes the measure.

Mitchell said that the separation stems from the efforts to strengthen the northern part of the Democrats in the Northern Central Valley, moving to more voters from a hundred. The obtained stirring forced Lodi’s residents to be separated, but also residents of Antioch and Martinez in one district and Vakavil and Solano district together in another. All four of the last cities and counties are divided under the current map.

“That’s a compromise,” he said. “You could have competitive communities overlapping. Who is more important?”

But opponents say that these compromises should only be made with public contribution and without guerrilla purposes. When deciding which cities, counties and communities should be maintained together or dividing, 2021. An independent member of the Redistribution Commission Patricia Sinai said the Commission had held numerous hearing and received tens of thousands of written comments.

“Saying that one is separated more than the other, it is not so informative,” said Sinai, a politically independent that opposes Opor. 50.

How Prop. 50 affects the presentation for colorful people?

During the weeks leading to the elections, opponents highlighted regions that prop. 50’s Maps will part with the wishes of the leaders of the local community.

In a press release issued by another “No 50” campaign, funded by House Republicans last month, local politicians at Temple City and Azusa condemned the proposed lines to draw lines through Asian and Latin American communities in East Los Angeles County.

But overall, the proposed card doesn’t really change much, according to PPIC analysis.

If there are enough minority voters in the region to form the bigger part of the Congress County, this can cause a federal voice rights law that requires states to attract areas that protect the ability of communities to choose representatives of their choice. There are 16 such congress regions in California, all with a majority of Latin American voters.

Other concentrated racial communities that do not have enough numbers to be in the majority still have areas that are attracted to their interests, such as Asian voters in the Eastern Los Angeles County or black voters in South LA in six areas, Asian voters are at least 30% of the population – enough to influence the elections. California also has two areas where black voters reach this threshold and seven, where they make Latin American voters.

Prop. 50 would not change any of that. The Institute of Public Policy even found that the proposed card would add another area in which Latin -American voters make up at least 30% of the population.

“Some communities may have complaints of specific lines prepared by the proposed plan,” writes senior associate Eric McGi. “But the plan is generally very similar to the current one in most respects: it deviates most by creating more democratic places.”

This article was Originally Published on CalMatters and was reissued under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Noderivatives License.