Redistricting in California

It was created by voters in 2008 when they passed a ballot measure to take redistricting power away from the Legislature for state Assembly and Senate districts.

The commission's makeup is 5 Democrats, 5 Republicans and 4 unaffiliated citizens, chosen from business people, professors, or community leaders.

In 1966 Governor Pat Brown signed a bipartisan gerrymander the state senators had designed to retain as many incumbents as constitutionally possible.

[2] With the legislature and governor unable to resolve the impasse, the California Supreme Court ultimately appointed special masters to draw new districts.

[4] Democrats controlled both houses of the legislature and the governorship but were feeling vulnerable after former Governor Reagan had won California by a landslide in the 1980 presidential election.

[11] Governor Pete Wilson vetoed the redistricting plan developed by the Democratic legislature after the 1990 census, alleging that it was a partisan gerrymander and would violate the federal Voting Rights Act.

[12] Only one of Jerry Brown's chosen Supreme Court justices remained after incensed California voters had removed many of his appointments in recall elections.

Governor Wilson asked and the California Supreme Court agreed to appoint special masters to perform the redistricting.

(Shelby County v. Holder) This meant that federal preclearance—which had previously applied to Kings, Merced, Monterey, and Yuba counties—was no longer required.

The commission then received datasets, input from locals, and census data in the summer of 2021 and finished its map in December of that year.

After several weak challenges to the seat by Democrats, the election was hotly contested in 1996 by a newcomer to politics, Ellen Tauscher, a candidate with sufficient funds of her own to be competitive against the incumbent.

Her redrawn district is now "safe" (she won reelection with 75.6 percent of the vote in 2002) and subsequent full-term congressional elections drew no national attention to California.

Although this could have been corrected with little effort by additional legislation, the issue was killed for the 2006 electoral cycle, with some asserting that the death of the bill was not accidental [1].

Negative results for the effective operation of the political process can be seen directly in California's 2008 budget impasse,[18] extending for 76 days since June 1, with an agreement announced September 15.

[19] The high turnover due to term limits combined with "safe" districts makes it more likely that "hard liners" will be elected (via competitive but narrow primary elections) and that the legislators will lack experience in dealing across party lines in a collegial manner — there is now a complete lack of senior leadership capable of creating and enforcing cross-party compromise.

[21] As a substantial portion of the budget is fixed by statute, state constitutional amendment, or by Federal court decisions regarding prison health care[22] there was little room for maneuver in reducing expenditures without adversely affecting programs (such as public transportation and education) or for raising taxes.

Under a veto threat[23] by Governor Schwarzenegger some modifications were made and California in 2008 achieved a budget, almost three months late,[24] with the structural deficit problems deferred until 2009.

[26] Tentative agreements were obtained for a balanced budget in July 2009, achieved in part by "borrowing" some six billion dollars from county and city governments, an action further postponing a significant portion of the problem while likely having a severe and impact upon public safety, health, and social services.

The solution includes the continued issuing IOUs to vendors at least until October 2009 and reducing state employee's working hours and salary by 15 percent.

In 2011, The California State Parks officials under the direction of Governor Brown proposed the closure of seventy state parks necessitated largely by the failure of Brown's obtaining an early 2011 ballot position for a proposal to extend existing taxes due to expire, due to the opposition of the Republican legislative minority.

[30] It was not until February 20, 2009, that a budget agreement was signed by the governor, under a plan that combines spending reductions, additional taxes, and borrowing against state lottery revenues and removing funds from certain mandated programs, with the price of the bargain being various enabling proposals to be presented to the electorate in a May 2009 special election and in 2010.

[31] Closure of state parks would save little or no money and the proposal was widely believed to be a ploy to cause pain to California's middle class in order to bring constituent pressure upon the Legislature.

This proposition removes state office redistricting from the legislature and turns it over to a mixed panel of unelected designates (members of the two largest parties in the state, currently the Democratic and Republican Parties, and unaffiliated voters) whose composition is determined by a complex multi-step nomination, selection, and rejection process (Proposition 11 was passed in the November 2008 election).

Under the previous rules a candidate successful in either of the dominant parties would likely be politically to the extreme, since primary voters tend to be more active and passionate about such positions.

The presence of a larger electorate will (presumably) tend to lead to more moderate candidates succeeding under some theories since non-party (largely "swing voters") would be more "middle of the road".

While the concept of non-partisan districting was initially promoted by Republicans under the leadership of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, the results were highly unfavorable to the party.

A related referendum to nullify the Congressional District Boundaries Plan did not qualify, having received insufficient petition signatures.

Owing to the results of this system, some incumbents were placed against opponents of their own party in the general election, while a number of others ran against unaffiliated opponents (indicated below by the California Election Code designation DTS, "Decline To State"), commonly referred to as independent (bundled here with a term with similar effect, "NPP" - "No Party Preference").

One notable contest that could guide such changes was the election of Republican and Portuguese-descended David Valadao, in a district with registration favorable to the Democrats and against an Hispanic opponent.

In light of the failure of earlier term limit modification attempts it was carefully written to only apply to newly elected legislators and effectively reducing the maximum combined Assembly and Senate service from 14 to 12 years.