District Elections Are Coming - And the Winner is...

We’ve been looking at the district maps submitted by residents. We looked at adherence to “one person one vote”, adhering to natural boundaries, and maintaining communities of interest. Here are the results. Refer back to the original articles to see the analysis.

ONE PERSON ONE VOTE

The three best maps with the best adherence to the “one person one vote” mandate were –

1. Map #109 (110 total deviations)
2. Map #108 (135 total deviations)
3. Map #110 (145 total deviations)

No other maps came close to these three.

You can view all the maps by clicking here.

NATURAL BOUNDARIES

All but two of the maps (#109, #110) violated at least one of the two natural boundaries (Aliso Creek, and “the hills”), and some of the maps violated both of them. The three best maps that broke the least number of boundaries were -

1. Map #109
2. Map #110
3. Map #114 - AC

COMMUNITIES OF INTEREST

All the maps violated at least one of the 5 communities of interest (Lake 1, Lake 2, “Creekside”, “The hills”, mobile homes), and some of the maps violated all of them. The three best maps that broke up the least number of communities of interest were

1. Map #109 – slight breakup of Lake 2 and mobile homes
2. Map #106 – slight break up of Lake 2 and mobile homes, breakup Lake 1
3. Map #111 – breakup of PH/FHR, Lake 1 and 2, slight breakup of Creekside

CONTIGUOUS

All the maps were contiguous but two maps were "barely" contiguous (#103 and #114) and one map had a big figure 8 in the middle, meaning 50% of the people were in a different part of the city from the other 50%.

SUMMARY

Only one map was in the top 3 on all 3 favorable comparisons – Map #109. Map #110 made it on two lists. All of the other “winners” appeared only once. A total of 6 different maps appeared in the winner lists; 6 maps did not make it at all.

Of the 3 comparisons, only 1 is a major consideration (one person one vote) and this is the only one for which there are no ambiguities – i.e., the results are based on numbers, not judgments. The other two comparisons (boundaries, communities of interest) are a little bit subjective, not only in terms of identifying the issue, but also determining whether or not a map met the criterion. I tried to minimize the subjectivity by looking at the extent to which any breakup for either comparison was greater than 20% of the total, but one could argue that 20% is arbitrary, which it is.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Jim Gardner is on the City Council for Lake Forest. You can check him out on LinkedIn and/or Facebook and you can share your thoughts about the City at Lake Forest Town Square on Facebook. His comments are not meant to reflect official City Policy.

Dr. Gardner has office hours every Tuesday from 4 pm to 6 pm at the City Hall. In addition, he holds a mini town meeting every quarter. The next meeting will be on Dec 2 at 2 pm at the El Toro Public Library.