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Now You Can Redraw Your Supervisor’s Boundaries : Remapping: Beginning next week, the county will offer ‘redistricting kits’ for sale. A knowledge of computers and reapportionment is vital, officials say.

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

Unhappy with your county supervisor? Now’s your chance to pencil that politician right out of the picture.

Los Angeles County supervisors are embarking on redrawing district boundaries to reflect population shifts in the 1990 census, and the process is expected to change representation on the county board for hundreds of thousands of residents.

Public input is a vital part of the redistricting. So beginning next week, the county will offer “redistricting kits” for sale, consisting of a computer database for a reapportionment plan that can be used by anyone with rudimentary knowledge of computers and redistricting, officials said at the first meeting of the Supervisorial District Boundary Committee on Wednesday.

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“Anybody who has some exposure to a computer, say a homeowners’ group . . . could easily do a redistricting plan,” said Wayne Bannister, data processing specialist for the county.

The database, which will include demographic and political information, is expected to cost less than $20, but the cost of having a redistricting plan reviewed by the county has been tentatively set at $250.

Officials said they do not know how much demand there will be for the kits.

The Supervisorial District Boundary Committee will hold public hearings on proposals submitted by civil rights groups, politicians and others before recommending a redistricting plan to the Board of Supervisors.

“We’re going to a see a lot of this,” said Bruce Cain, associate director of the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley and a redistricting consultant to Los Angeles County. “This is the era of letting everybody make proposals.”

County attorneys said that public involvement in the drafting of a redistricting plan will be a factor in determining whether a new county plan receives the required approval of the U.S. Justice Department.

Boundaries already have gone through a recent change--the Justice Department, with the American Civil Liberties Union and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, filed a redistricting lawsuit that led to the election this year of Gloria Molina as the first Latino supervisor this century.

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The redistricting kit will include instructions for drafting a redistricting plan, including a warning that plans cannot fragment heavy concentrations of minority voters, officials said.

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