Official Title and Summary

Initiative Constitutional Amendment and Statute
Eliminates State Commission on Redistricting. Consolidates Authority for Redistricting with Elected Representatives.

• Eliminates 14-member redistricting commission selected from applicant pool picked by government auditors.
• Consolidates authority for establishing state Assembly, Senate, and Board of Equalization district boundaries with elected state representatives responsible for drawing congressional districts.
• Reduces budget, and imposes limit on amount Legislature may spend, for redistricting.
• Provides that voters will have the authority to reject district boundary maps approved by the Legislature.
• Requires populations of all districts for the same office to be exactly the same.

Summary of Legislative Analyst's Estimate of Net State and Local Government Fiscal Impact:

• Possible reduction of state redistricting costs of around $1 million over the next year.
• Likely reduction of state redistricting costs of a few million dollars every ten years beginning in 2020.

Peace and Freedom Party Position

No on 20 and 27: redistricting will not get us democracy. In a true democracy, people are represented fairly, and elected bodies reflect the population. When a representative body reflects the voters in proportion to the support for each viewpoint, it is called "proportional representation."

No matter how one re-draws the boundaries, winner-take-all elections by single-member districts will never produce elected bodies that reflect the make-up of the populace or represent their views. That's why the Peace and Freedom Party opposes redistricting in its current form. We point voters to the real solution: multiple-member districts with proportional representation.

Links

• For our position on Proposition 77, defeated in November 2005, see this Partisan article.