The L.A. County Redistricting Battle Explained -- Without Maps!

By Gene Maddaus Wed., Sep. 14 2011 at 8:25 AM

Redistricting-- without the maps!

The redistricting battle at the L.A. County Board of Supervisors is the ultimate arcane, inside-baseball political fight. From a distance, all you can see is a bunch of people squabbling over some maps.

So let's try to simplify it a little bit. And the first thing we need to do is forget about the maps. The maps aren't helping.

Instead, we need some outside-the-box visual aids.

First, let's look at a good, old-fashioned pie chart. This will cut right to the heart of the matter.

On the left is the racial breakdown of the five-member Board of Supervisors. On the right is the racial breakdown of the county. Notice anything?

White people have it pretty good! They have 60% of the board, but only 39% of the voters. Latinos, meanwhile, have 33% of the voters and only 20% of the seats. So the white folks have too many seats -- and Latinos not enough.

Enter the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, whose job it is to care about stuff like this. MALDEF says it's time to add another Latino seat. That would make the pie chart look like this:

That's a lot closer. But how do you get there? You have to eliminate a white seat. And this is where it gets tricky.

Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas was the first to step into the fray. Rather than show his map, it might be easier to use a crude Photoshop cartoon. Here, then, is the Ridley-Thomas plan:

The Ridley-Thomas plan

OK, so you can see Ridley-Thomas on the left there with the club...

.... and he's whacking Supervisor Don Knabe across the head.

So that's the Ridley-Thomas plan.

Now, that generated all sorts of trouble. It turns out that people like Don Knabe. And they don't want to see him get whacked across the head -- not even in the name of adding a Latino seat.

So we're back to square one.

Then Supervisor Gloria Molina gave it a try, submitting her own map. And again, let's not look at the map. Let's look at a cartoon representation of the Molina map:

The Molina plan

That's Gloria Molina on the left there....

... and she's whacking Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky across the head.

That's the Molina plan.

As you may imagine, Yaroslavsky also did not appreciate being whacked across the head.

His reaction was basically: "Hey, don't we live in a harmonious, post-racial America? Didn't we elect Antonio Villaraigosa and Barack Obama? Why do we need to still be whacking each other across the head?"

Whether you agree with that perspective or not, it looks like Yaroslavsky has the votes to preserve all three white seats. The Board will vote on this on Sept. 27. The most likely outcome is that Ridley-Thomas will agree to some slight modification of the status quo -- providing the fourth vote needed for approval.

But that may not be the end of it. MALDEF may well file a lawsuit, arguing that the status quo is out of whack and violates the Voting Rights Act.

What seems clear enough is that Latinos will get a second seat at some point -- if not now then certainly in 10 years. Want proof? Check out what happens when you compare the Board's current racial composition to the county's total population -- including children and non-citizens.

Figure that in 10 years most of those children will be of voting age, and you can see that there won't be three white seats on the Board forever.

Redistricting without maps: It can be done!

Tags:

Don Knabe, Gloria Molina, L.A. County, Mark Ridley-Thomas, redistricting, Zev Yaroslavsky

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Garychomiak

How come there isn't a Los Angeles County Board of Supervisor Citizen Redistricting Commission? Wouldn't that take redistricting out of the hands of the LA County politicians, just like the California Citizens Redistricting Commission took redistricting out of the hands of the California State politicians' hands?

Wjgordon99

What really needs to happen is the addition of one or two more supervisorial districts, though the sitting supes are unlikely to share any of their power and money. The dirty little secret in LA Co is how much unrestricted money each supervisor controls, doling out dollars for their districts. I think it's time to share the territory, then we could have Asians and Latinos, Black and White seats.

Paul Mitchell

Gene, this is a great bit of Redistricting Reporting... and I've seen a LOT of it. Very well done.

Tim O'Connell

So, what I have not heard discussed is why there should be a Black seat when there are more Asians than Blacks in the County. Is it because they are not geographically concentrated into a few adjacent communities and a district with an Asian plurality would be heavily gerrymandered (I mean worse than Knabe's seat is now)?

liberals are hypocrites

so wait you are saying is that mexicans are so despicable that no other race will vote for one? so you have to create a district full of mexicans because they only vote for their own? i thought so... why is it that janet nguyen is able to be an OC supervisor when the vietnamese down there are a minority? thats right, because asians and whites vote for the platform while dumb racist peasants only vote for their own.

todd

People don't vote solely on race. I hope. If a Latino beats a white person in a race, that will change the pie chart, won't it? What if they re-do the districts and a Latino majority community votes for a white resident? Would you need to shift another seat to the Latinos in hopes of making things more fair again? I understand the need for proper representation but acting like we all for for our own race is nonsense..how did Obama get elected again?