‘40 million Californians shouting at you’: What redistricting was like for a commissioner

I and the 13 other members of California’s Citizens Redistricting Commission — strangers to each other 18 months ago — completed our task in a collaborative manner, without rancor or overt partisanship. We treated each other with respect, despite differing priorities and approaches. I believe this is the type of redistricting process most Californians — and indeed most Americans — want.

That said, we are painfully aware that the final maps we presented Monday aren’t perfect. As much as we may have wanted to make everyone happy, we didn’t. Unfortunately, that seems to be the nature of redistricting: It’s usually the case that one community’s gain is another community’s loss.

Since coming together as a commission in August 2020, we did our best to learn about redistricting, teach Californians about the process, listen to the public and build districts that would represent the state well over the next 10 years.

To be clear, these aren’t necessarily the maps that we would have adopted if we didn’t have to comply with the state constitution’s ranked criteria for districts. But we had a duty to follow the law to the best of our ability, and I believe we did.

The complexity and challenges of redistricting a state as large and diverse as California are enormous. There are over 700,000 census blocks in the state and seemingly infinite combinations of those blocks.

As we developed our maps, we faced multidimensional demands from all directions. In a way, it was like trying to understand the wants and needs of all 40 million Californians at once, each of them shouting at you while you have a blinding light shining in your eyes.

Some seeking to participate in the process have been overt about their identities and demands, but many have not. Some even actively promoted disinformation, falsely claiming, for example, that redistricting would force residents to pay taxes to a different jurisdiction or send their children to other schools.

Like a jury, we had to seek the truth as various interests tried to influence the process. We endeavored to distinguish between those seeking to tailor a district to an incumbent or candidate and those seeking to help us understand our state. I made the point on several occasions that we were not interested in protecting or endangering incumbents. The commission sought to listen to communities throughout the state and balance an enormous number of competing demands.

The pressures of undertaking such a complicated process in a limited time are simply crushing. We could have used more days between the delivery of census data and the deadline to submit our maps. We wanted to visit and learn much more about communities throughout the state. But the realities of the pandemic and the political calendar did not allow that.

To address the shortcomings of the process, I have advocated that we take time in the new year to look back and have a serious, public discussion about how redistricting can be improved in the future. I hope that the public will support that.

In closing, I’d like to remind everyone that we are not redistricting professionals, not politicians doing this for our own benefit and not experts in every community in every corner of the state. We voted to finalize the new maps as the product of a genuine effort of 14 California citizens — five Democrats, five Republicans and four with no party preference — selected through an exhaustive process designed to represent the diversity of our state and ensure fair representation over the next decade.

This story was originally published December 28, 2021 at 1:00 PM.