We Need Fair Maps Now!
The 2021 redistricting process was fatally flawed and the current maps are tainted by the corruption and backroom machinations that were exposed so disgustingly on the leaked audio that led former Council President Nury Martinez and former County Federation of Labor President Ron Herrera to resign in disgrace.
The people of our city deserve districts small enough to afford them better access to their elected officials, with opportunities for everyday Angelenos to run for office, and they deserve clean, fair maps far sooner than a decade after the recent corrupt redistricting process. For more explanation, check out the writing below the action form.
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You can also send emails directly to some or all of the people who are on the Council’s Ad Hoc Committee on Governance Reform which is voting first on these issues: councilmember.krekorian@lacity.org, contactcd4@lacity.org, councilmember.blumenfield@lacity.org, councilmember.harris-dawson@lacity.org, cd10@lacity.org, councilmember.hernandez@lacity.org, councilmember.park@lacity.org
The Council should be expanded to 29 Districts.
Since 1924, Angelenos have been served by a 15-member City Council. The number of elected representatives has not changed in nearly a century despite the city’s population quadrupling and our city becoming one of the most diverse places in the world. No other major U.S. city comes close to our large ratio of residents to elected officials. We’re heartened to see a consensus building for council expansion but believe 23 districts still isn’t enough. Creating 29 districts would be the best approach to ensure our government’s composition is aligned with our city’s vase size and diversity.
Moving to 23 districts would still leave us with the 2nd largest council districts in the country, tied with New York City and behind only Phoenix. In contrast, 29 districts would produce approximately 137,000 residents per councilmember, placing us close to the median number of constituents per councilmember for the county’s dozen largest cities. The Council faces a major crisis in trust and increasing the accessibility of individual councilmembers to constituents can help solve the problem.
Increasing council to 29 members makes it more feasible to draw districts that keep socially and culturally coherent neighborhoods whole while not awkwardly tying them to disparate parts of the city. Modeling shows that the creation of 29 seats would enable unified representation for Koreatown, historically one of the city’s most gerrymandered and marginalized districts. A higher number of seats also make it possible for Watts to stop being shoestringed to the Harbor.
Creating 29 districts will make it more possible for everyday Angelenos to mount viable campaigns. With only 137,000 residents per district and a significantly lower number of registered voters, it becomes much less expensive to run campaigns and more feasible for candidates to conduct their outreach via their neighbor-to-neighbor conversations, instead of paying for expensive mailers and media buys. If LA City residents feel that elected office is only available to political insiders, it’s going to be difficult to restore trust. Making it easier for regular Angelenos to mount viable campaigns for an office through a combination of reducing council size and other campaign finance reforms can change this.
Setting the council size at 29 would substantially increase the number of districts with API and Black pluralities, which would not happen at much lower or higher council sizes. (We believe modeling by outside redistricting experts which should be forthcoming soon will substantiate and elaborate on this.) This would be an important way to address the fact that Black and API communities currently feel most underrepresented in city government, according to multiple polls and surveys.
LA City is one of the most ethnically, religiously, and culturally diverse cities in the world and the more we increase the size of council, the greater the opportunity for additional communities to have a representative who comes from their background on council. The Census-based categories of Black, Latino, API, Native, and White obscure a huge amount of diversity of lived experience. It’s been remarkable and important to witness the rise of Latino political power. Isn’t it time that the Oaxacan and Central American Angelenos have a good shot at winning council seat? API folks were underrepresented on council for many years. Significant expansion would create pathways to the full spectrum of the community having a shot at gaining a seat. Significant expansion also increases the opportunity for the Armenian community to elect a representative of their choosing. And the list goes on. More seats create more opportunities for representation and a wider array of lived experiences and cultural identities on council.
Another important factor to consider is that there is strong public support for nearly doubling the size of council. A solid majority of likely 2024 LA City voters favor enlarging the Council to 29 members, according to a scientifically conducted poll by the firm FM3, before and after hearing pro/con arguments.
Overall, according to FM3’s polling, people of color are heavily in favor of expansion including 66% of Latino Angelenos, 64% of API Angelenos and 59% of Black Angelenos. A late 2022 poll of LA registered voters shows similar results. Nearly two-thirds of Black Angelenos favored expansion after hearing pro/con messaging, along with approximately three out of five Latino, API, and white Angelenos, according to the CAUSE scientific poll of LA registered voters conducted by Strategies 360.
The Council maps must be redrawn and implemented in time for the 2026 elections.
This redistricting process needs to happen as quickly as possible to restore public trust. We cannot afford to wait until 2032 to finally provide a fully representative government to Los Angeles. The charter allows us to redistrict more frequently than every 10 years and we should seize that opportunity.
The 2021 redistricting process was fatally flawed and the current maps are tainted by the corruption and backroom machinations that were exposed so disgustingly on the leaked audio. The redistricting masterminded by Martinez intentionally and successfully set out to undermine tenant power in a city where more than two-thirds of residents are renters and exemplified a callous disregard for the representation of Black, Jewish, Oaxacan, Armenian Angelenos.
While there are challenges inherent with setting up an independent redistricting commission (IRC) for the first process and drawing the maps in time for the June 2026 primary, it is feasible. Much greater things have been accomplished in much shorter times. It is all about political willpower and mustering adequate resources for the task. And frankly the challenges are outweighed by the need to rapidly dispense with the corrupted maps created in the 2021 process. If the process was so badly broken that it required moving quickly to pass independent redistricting and expansion, it’s not acceptable to let a full decade pass with the old maps in place. The current maps are illegitimate and need to go as soon as possible.
When everyday members of our community learn that new maps might have to wait until 2032, they are outraged. City Council underestimates this frustration and anger at its own peril. We encourage all councilmembers to ask their constituents if they really want to wait until 2032 for reforms to go into effect. Moving quickly toward new maps drawn through a fair process is essential to rebuilding trust in city government.
We can envision a new IRC being established and completing its work by late 2025 for several reasons.
The council has the option to put a charter amendment establishing IRC on the March 2024 ballot, while placing a council expansion amendment on the November 2024 ballot. This would give eight extra months to begin setting up the IRC.
Once the IRC is created, it will be able to immediately review decennial Census data, insights from the Census Bureau’s post-enumeration survey, and the thousands of public comments offered during the 2021 process. This will help the IRC move quickly to begin drawing draft district lines and gathering additional public input.
