You Are What You Seat: The Quiet Battle for California’s New District Maps

Roughly one in eight Americans live in California. The 2020 census showed a 6.1% increase in the state’s population—now over 39 million, which is more than that of the twenty smallest states combined.

Yet for the first time in history, the state is set to lose a congressional seat. California will go from 53 seats in the U.S. House to 52 this year. The question is: which one?

One of the 18 seats representing parts of Los Angeles County will most likely end up on the chopping block. As the most populous county in the state and with the highest number of seats, it can absorb the loss of political power better than other regions. But that’s just in theory. The reality is set to be far messier, with the potential to disenfranchise already-vulnerable communities. At stake are billions in federal funding for vital services like infrastructure, public education and public health. LA County is being considered for the seat loss because it has strong representation already, but it also has “the largest hard-to-count population in the nation,” meaning unhoused and undocumented residents that need better public services, but will instead be getting less.

One of the 18 seats representing parts of Los Angeles County will most likely end up on the chopping block.

Thankfully, for those who care about who their state and congressional representatives are (which in a perfect world would be all of us), or whether their community is merged with and subsequently overshadowed by another with differing political views, there is a clear course of action: reach out to the state’s independent redistricting commission and weigh in before the new political districts are completed later this year.

There is undeniably a case for apathy. Even with the downgrade from 53 to 52, California still has the most seats in the House by a wide margin. Furthermore, the state will almost assuredly regain that seat with the next census. The number of congressional seats is fixed at 435, which means that one state’s loss is another’s gain.

And California is set to gain: Population growth is achieved through birth rates and immigration, and while the U.S. birth rate overall has steadily declined in the face of rising costs of living and lack of parental leave policies, California has a definite edge when it comes to attracting new residents. The Trump era significantly eroded immigration: between 2010 and 2016, the U.S. averaged 70,000 refugees and asylum seekers per year, a number that dropped to 32,000 in 2017 and a historic low of just 18,769 in 2019. Similarly, overall immigration went from averaging a 2% population increase per year under Obama to roughly 0.5% per year under Trump. With Trump-era policies now lifted, immigration is likely to center on, and benefit, California. Moreover, the COVID-19 epidemic continues to rage, but California’s relatively high rate of vaccinations and widespread precautions means that the state has suffered fewer deaths per capita, at 0.27% versus Texas’ 0.65% or West Virginia’s grim 1.76%. And per capita population shifts are what the Census Bureau cares about.

But clinging to a future recovery doesn’t fix the issue facing us here and now. Opining on potential political redistricting is hardly at the top of anyone’s to-do list, especially in a state in which the Democratic Party dominates politics. But it’s precisely that complacence that carries risk—since there are so few Republican seats to lose in California, a Democratic one will likely be eliminated instead. And on a national scale, Republicans only need a net gain of five seats to seize control of the House.

But it’s precisely that complacence that carries risk—since there are so few Republican seats to lose in California, a Democratic one will likely be eliminated instead.

In short, the question of California’s vanishing congressional seat is too important to be left to political operatives, who have a historical tendency to gerrymander. Take Texas, where Latinos accounted for nearly half the population increase but actually lost representation in this year’s redistricting maps, prompting a lawsuit against the state. Thankfully, California is one of the few states in which the once-a-decade process of redrawing congressional and state legislative political districts is conducted in public by a nonpartisan independent commission rather than by elected officials or their appointees. Nonetheless, the only way that said independent commission will take into account the will of the people is if residents speak up.

This is only the second time that a California Citizens Redistricting Commission has been convened since it was established by voters in 2008 under Proposition 11, so the body is still a relative unknown to everyday Angelenos. Yet public input is more crucial than ever, due to the COVID-19 pandemic’s effect on U.S. census data, which means the commission only recently received the data it needs to draw new maps by December 27. Similarly, the pandemic means public outreach has been slow-going, and though hearings have been going on all year, public comments number only about 3,200.

There won’t be draft maps until mid-November, but there are visualizations, or tentative districts, on the commission’s websitenow. That website’s comment form, as well as emails or letters sent to commission headquarters, are hard-won rights that are going unused and ignored. Voting reform advocates in other states use California as a model, and our system of independent redistricting is one of the key reforms in the Freedom to Vote Act (HR 1) currently stalled in Congress. What does it say, then, that Californians already have this freedom and simply aren’t using it?

Granted, redistricting is not a matter of majority rules, so public comments alone won’t decide the end result. The commission, by law, must produce districts that are of equal population, geographically compact, and that “comply with the Voting Rights Act to ensure that the power of minority groups is not diluted; and respect the boundaries of cities, neighborhoods and the like to the greatest extent possible.” But public comments are still valuable; they will still be taken into account as California maps its political future. And those who don’t speak up won’t be heard at all.

Seth Jacobson is the founder and principal of JCI Worldwide, a Los Angeles-based communications and research firm. He spent several years in the Carter and Clinton administrations in positions focused on economic development, foreign policy, and media relations. He is a frequent lecturer on policy and public affairs at Pepperdine University and UCLA.