Has the District Creation Turned Into Gerrymandering?

Has our district creation turned into a gerrymander? Let’s see -

“In the process of setting electoral districts, gerrymandering is a practice intended to establish a political advantage for a particular party or group by manipulating district boundaries” Wikipedia

To accomplish the transition to districts the Council was given a few guidelines as to how to create districts. The over-riding concern was to create districts of equal size so that the federal requirement of “one person one vote” would be honored. Two other desirable qualities were that the districts be compact and that they keep “communities of interest” intact.

At the last Council meeting, Councilmen Hamilton, Voigts, and Robinson recommended 2 districts that didn’t achieve the best (or even near best) “one person one vote” mandate, that split up communities of interest, and that weren’t compact.

Hmmm.

Councilmen Hamilton, Voigts, and Robinson ignored two districts that excelled in meeting the “one person one vote” mandate, kept the most communities intact, and were the most compact.

Hmmm.

Voigts rationale for selecting his two maps (#116 and #128) was “I like it”. Not a word about compactness, separating communities of interest, or keeping to the “one person one vote” mandate. It was enough for Voigts that he “liked it”.

Hmmm.

Hamilton was more specific. He wanted to set up districts that specifically split up communities of interest and were not compact. He didn’t care that the guidelines called for keeping communities of interest together, nor that the overwhelming majority of people in the City wanted their communities kept intact.

Hmmm.

I suppose it should be mentioned that the 2 maps they supported were maps in which Voigts would not be opposed by any sitting Council member. In Map #109 he would compete against Robinson and Hamilton, so there was no possibility that he would support that map, even though it was the best map in terms of the guidelines. In Map #115 he would oppose Mayor Pro Tem Basile, whose 14,000 votes in the last election meant she would be a formidable foe for a man who only got 6,000 votes in 2014.

Having created maps that were inferior on all the guidelines, they then acknowledged that their choices didn’t do what they were supposed to do, and so they asked the demographer to re-do the maps in order to make them more aligned with the “one person” mandate, more compact, and split fewer communities of interest.

DUH.

We had before us two maps (#109 and #110) that did just that. These 2 maps were #1 or #2 on all the guidelines. They kept to the “one person” guidelines by a factor of more than 10 times. They split fewer than half the communities split by the chosen maps, and they were more compact.

Hmmm

What we have here is just what people feared. Council members using districting to Gerrymander in a fashion that makes it easier for them to be re-elected or fulfill some foreign notion of how we should function. The Council had specific guidelines and data that demonstrated which districts conformed to those guidelines (Click Here). But they chose to ignore the guidelines and the evidence.

What can you do?

Not much right now. But in a few weeks you can vote "YES" to recall Andrew Hamilton and replace him with an honest independent thinking person who will put the interests of the City above their own interests.

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.