County’s Redistricting Case and Edelman’s Approach to Politics

Are you ready for redistricting possibly as often as every year or so? That is one of the national ramifications embodied in U.S. District Court Judge David Kenyon’s redistricting ruling you were so quick to embrace in your editorial “Outrageous Back-Room Deal” (June 29).

Far from being contemptuous of the public, as the editorial charges, the majority of the board has a twofold purpose in openly saying it will appeal Judge Kenyon’s findings, both mindful of the public.

The original contention in the Justice Department redistricting lawsuit was that board discriminated against Latinos when it drew supervisorial districts in 1981. The county proved in court that such a district could not have been drawn in 1981. The trial and the charges should have been dismissed at that point.

Instead, Judge Kenyon, ignoring the U.S. Census as a national redistricting standard, unilaterally decided the board could have changed boundaries in 1985, using a Population Estimation Projection System (PEPS) scheme merging state Department of Finance population estimates and county birth and death records to arrive at a “current” population total. It requires little foresight to see the confusion and voter frustration that constant boundary changes would inflict, to say nothing of increased and ongoing costs.

As for the editorial’s charge of gerrymandering, there is no other course open if we are to group Latino population cores in a manner that meets the judge’s edict, and federal one-person, one-vote laws.

It is for these reasons that a majority of the Board of Supervisors made clear its intent to appeal Judge Kenyon’s inaccurate and arbitrary means of redistricting. And yes, the board did approve a $500,000 allocation to permit private pursuit of the appeal. This was done to assure that Judge Kenyon’s dangerous precedent will have a full hearing by the highest court in the land, safely beyond local whims.

DEANE DANA

Supervisor, Fourth District