The Santa Clarita City Council plans to discuss Proposition 50, the Election Rigging Response Act, during Tuesday’s council meeting, following a presentation from city staff.
During their Sept. 9 meeting, a pair of City Council members, Marsha McLean and Patsy Ayala, called for a council discussion about the lone topic on the Nov. 4 ballot for voters.
The ballot measure would create new boundary lines for congressional districts that would go into effect immediately, with a simple majority required for the initiative to pass.
McLean said Friday there was so much misinformation about the “gerrymandering proposition” that she wanted to have a council discussion. There were no objections from the dais to her call for discussion.
“I’m sick and tired of the people being fed information with buzz words and misinformation,” McLean said, “and so that’s why I thought it was important for us to have the discussion.”
There are numerous impacts to districts statewide in the initiative, which a staff report describes as a “direct response to the Texas state Legislature’s adoption of new congressional district maps in Texas,” which were signed into law in August.
There are also direct impacts to the 27th Congressional District, which currently includes all of the city and some of its surrounding communities.
McLean said she did not like the fact that the measure would take away the power of the bipartisan committee the state’s constitution calls for to create voter districts. If the Legislature wants to put that decision back to the voters, she said, the voters need to have all the information.
“Currently, the city of Santa Clarita is entirely in Congressional District 27, which also includes the cities of Lancaster and Palmdale, in addition to the unincorporated areas of Acton, Agua Dulce, Castaic and Stevenson Ranch,” according to the staff report by Masis Hagobian, the city’s intergovernmental relations officer.
Supporters see the move as a response to allegations of gerrymandering in Texas; opponents say they’re preserving the bipartisan plan in the state’s constitution.
The end result for the region would be a redistribution of some of the Santa Clarita Valley’s more right-leaning communities in the county’s more rural, unincorporated areas into districts where there are larger numbers of registered Democratic voters.
Congressional District 30 would be redrawn to include the unincorporated areas of Acton and Agua Dulce, which are now part of the 27th, along with parts of Burbank, Glendale, Los Angeles and West Hollywood.
The changes would also shift Castaic to Congressional District 26, which would be shared by the cities of Agoura Hills, Calabasas, Camarillo, Moorpark, Oxnard, Santa Paula and Thousand Oaks.
The staff report indicates that, in the state Legislature, SCV lawmakers’ support is split. Assemblywoman Pilar Schiavo, D-Chatsworth, supports the measure. Sen. Suzette Martinez Valladares, R-Acton, opposes it and joined a caucus of legislators that supported two lawsuits against the proposition, both of which were unsuccessful.
In the most recent registration numbers from Sept. 5, the 27th District had 469,963 registered voters: 186,560 Democrats; 143,164 Republicans; and 21,483 independents.
In the 26th District, which is largely Conejo Valley in Ventura County, there are 475,113 total voters, including 198,911 registered Democrats, 141,249 Republicans and 20,649 independents.
In the 30th District, which has 486,822 registered voters, 257,053 are registered Democrats and 84,708 are Republicans.
