1. Hereinafter referred to as Article XXI.
2. Paul L. McKaskle, professor of law at the University of San Francisco, who had served in the same capacity in 1973, was retained as director and chief counsel; Eugene C. Lee, professor emeritus of political science at the University of California at Berkeley, Rich Langree, a Supreme Court staff attorney with extensive computer data processing experience, and Guy B. Colburn, a retired Supreme Court staff attorney, were retained as consultants; other staff included Rebecca Sullivan, Chang Morozumi, and Erica Drewes.
3. Declarations respecting the service of notice and furnishing the press release will be lodged with the Court.
4. Transcripts of all hearings will be lodged with the Court.
5. These exhibits and all written presentations will be filed and become a part of the record.
6. All section references are to the Voting Rights Act, unless otherwise indicated.
7. Section 2 provides:
"(a) No voting qualification or prerequisite to voting or standard, practice, or procedure shall be imposed or applied by any State or political subdivision in a manner which results in a denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color, or in contravention of the guarantees set forth in section 4(f)(2) [regarding language minority groups], as provided in subsection (b).
"(b) A violation of subsection (a) is established if, based on the totality of circumstances, it is shown that the political processes leading to nomination or election in the State or political subdivision are not equally open to participation by members of a class of citizens protected by subsection (a) in that its members have less opportunity than other members of the electorate to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice. The extent to which members of a protected class have been elected to office in the State or political subdivision is one circumstance which may be considered: Provided, That nothing in this section establishes a right to have members of a protected class elected in numbers equal to their proportion in the population."
8. The factors quoted by the court are as follows:
"1. the extent of any history of official discrimination in the state or political subdivision that touched the right of the members of the minority group to register, to vote, or otherwise to participate in the democratic process;
"2. the extent to which voting in the elections of the state or political subdivision is racially polarized;
"3. the extent to which the state or political subdivision has used unusually large election districts, majority vote requirements, anti-single shot provisions, or other voting practices or procedures that may enhance the opportunity for discrimination against the minority group;
"4. if there is a candidate slating process, whether the members of the minority group have been denied access to that process;
"5. the extent to which members of the minority group in the state or political subdivision bear the effects of discrimination in such areas as education, employment and health, which hinder their ability to participate effectively in the political process;
"6. whether political campaigns have been characterized by overt or subtle racial appeals;
"7. the extent to which members of the minority group have been elected to public office in the jurisdiction.
"Additional factors that in some cases have had probative value as part of plaintiffs' evidence to establish a violation are:
"whether there is a significant lack of responsiveness on the part of elected officials to the particularized needs of the members of the minority group.
"whether the policy underlying the state or political subdivision's use of such voting qualification, prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice or procedure is tenuous.
9. We use the word Latino to describe what the Census Bureau refers to as Hispanic.
10. Throughout this report, the term minority, unless otherwise qualified, refers to "protected minority."
11. Latino registration data are based on an analysis by private organizations of the number of persons with Hispanic surnames on the registration rolls. This is both under-inclusive and over-inclusive because of inter-marriage between Latinos and non-Latinos and, also, the number of "Hispanic" names in the Filipino population, part of the Asian minority. In contrast, the data on Latino population comes directly from the Bureau of the Census.
Second, data separately presented to us by the Assembly and the Senate, purportedly concerning the same area, varied markedly, and, in some instances, dramatically, undermining our confidence in the accuracy of the data. We have serious reservations as to how much reliance we can place on data of uncertain provenance.
12. The Assembly has suggested that, perhaps, even a stricter standard of population equality should be considered because of the advent of extremely sophisticated computers allowing population divisions at the level of a single block. We find no support for this proposition for reasons which will be discussed in connection with congressional population equality, infra. We do note, however, that a principal consultant relied upon by the Assembly, Professor Bruce Cain, has elsewhere criticized even the Reinecke IV limits on population variance (plus or minus 2 percent) population variance as being too strict: "[P]opulation equality is such a crude way of equalizing voters that an obsession with very small population deviations seems rather silly." (The Reapportionment Puzzle, 1984, p. 59.) Similarly, Bernard Grofman, a consultant to the California Congressional Delegation, in recommending a relaxation of exact population requirements, has argued that Supreme Court rulings in this area are "unduly mechanistic." (Voting Rights, Voting Wrongs: the Legacy of Baker v. Carr, 1990, p. 34.)
13. To calculate "maximum deviation," we begin with the population that each district would have if the districts were absolutely equal. The maximum deviation is the percentage of that theoretical population represented by the difference between the actual populations of the largest and the smallest district.
14. To develop this point further, we note that the most common manmade feature used as a boundary is a major thoroughfare. Such arterials impede development of neighborhood ties across them. (One reason is that ties are often forged by adults who first become acquainted because their children are playmates, and for safety reasons, children are often not permitted to cross arterials at least when young.) Dividing census tracts unnecessarily is, thus, somewhat more likely to make it more difficult for neighbors to organize around or communicate about a shared concern with respect to their legislative representatives. We do not mean to suggest that census tracts are sacrosanct, but only that they are rational building blocks for districting.
15. The Assembly, our staff were told, uses a mainframe computer at California Institute of Technology. It has, we are sure, enormous capabilities, including vast data banks as to how small areas (such as a city block) vote, not only as to candidates, national and local, but even as to ballot initiatives such as Proposition 13. But its operation requires an advanced knowledge of technical computer language. The Assembly has had ample time -- perhaps a decade -- to perfect its system at a cost, which must run into millions of dollars.
We, of course, had less than two months to set up a computer system and to evaluate other plans or produce our own. Most of the computer-related time we spent was in getting the data properly into our computer. Further, much of this time was getting block data (as contrasted with census tract data) into the machines. Then we discovered that a manipulation which would take a minute or less at the census tract level might take an hour at the block level. If we were to try to verify the accuracy of the Assembly or Congressional plan population statistics, it would have taken days of computer time, and we would have been able to do little else.
16. Our conclusion as to cost of using block data reflects the present state of the art as we understand it. Future technological change could warrant a different result.
17. Two of the Reinecke IV criteria, use of census tracts and "nesting" (i.e. the combining of assembly seats to form senate districts) have no relation to Article XXI and are discussed elsewhere.
18. We think it is of some significance that many of the Latino coalition appearances at our hearing were representing coalition committees of one or another county--e.g. Stanislaus County. (Examples of this sort could be multiplied endlessly.) It underscores that county lines have significance in terms of political organization and activities, the values that Article XXI is designed to protect.
19. We must note that in connection with city boundaries a problem that faced the Special Masters in 1973 still exists today. As reported in Reinecke IV (10 Cal. 3d at pp. 413-414): "Some cities have exceedingly irregular boundaries with an odd assortment of "fingers" and "peninsulas" jutting out from the basic part of the city. In many such cases, the boundaries as of the date of the census do not reflect the present boundaries or what they are likely to be during the balance of the decade. Often census tract boundaries do not correspond exactly with the boundaries of such cities." In a footnote, the 1973 Masters noted that: "[i]n many instances, a single census tract has small portions of two cities in it." (Id. at p. 414, fn 9.) Our solution has been the same as the 1973 Masters: "In such instances, census tract boundaries which preserve the bulk of the city in one district have been followed even though it resulted in trimming off small peninsulas or other such extensions of territory." (Id. at p. 414.) In this way, we have preserved the geographical integrity of various cities, although we have not always followed the literal boundaries as they existed in 1988, which we understand to be the boundaries used by the Census Bureau in computing populations.
20. Even if we were to give special consideration to the product of the truncated legislative process, the flaws, discussed below, are so substantial that we would still be required to reject the plans.
21. As explained in our analysis of the Voting Rights Act, there are many unanswered questions as to how the Act applies to the situation with which we are dealing. We do not believe it would be useful to deal with the Assembly plans in detail with respect to the Voting Rights Act, because we have even more substantial problems with their compliance with the other criteria we are required to follow.
22. The districts created by these plans would also be particularly unsuitable as a basis for nesting in the formation of senate districts, an additional Reinecke guideline.
23. We also note that Madera County is 34.5 percent Latino, and has neighboring counties similarly populated with Latinos. However, the populated areas approximately 130 miles to the north with which Madera is joined have almost no minority populations.
24. As noted, these are only two of many examples. Cogent justification of many other districts with similar bizarre configurations in these plans would be necessary before we would be able to recommend them.
25. We use the phrase "as best as we could tell" because the maps accompanying the congressional plans were extraordinarily difficult to read and set out each district separately without showing the interrelation between districts. Moreover the submission was made at the last possible moment, so that we had very little time to examine the plans before the public hearings. (Our rules urged that submissions be made as soon as possible.)
26. We stress, as with the Assembly plans, the example described is merely one of many examples of districts which do not comply with Article XXI for which no justification has been offered.
27. The presentation was also much clearer than, for example, that of the Democratic congressional delegation and included maps that showed, plainly, the interrelationship of the districts proposed by them.
28. Our differences as to the Senate's proposed District 9 are obvious by examining how we treated the same area in our recommended plan. In the case of the Senate's proposed District 12, though the Senate stressed its desire to comply with the Voting Rights Act, it started the district in Stanislaus County (presumably because the present incumbent of District 12 lives there). Since Stanislaus County--as well as Merced County immediately to the South--have relatively few Latinos compared to areas further to the south, the Senate could not construct a Senate district which even came close to a majority seat in Latino population. In contrast, we centered our district in the San Joaquin Valley on areas with more Latino population and, thus, were able to construct one which had over 50 percent Latino population.
29. Our Assembly District 79 is almost the same as the one proposed by MALDEF.
30. We do not mean this as a criticism of the motives of MALDEF in submitting complete statewide plans. Since the entire focus of the MALDEF effort was on creation of Latino districts, it is not surprising that its districting in non-minority areas has the flavor of being an afterthought.
31. Kern County is split by the Tehachapis and part of the county is in the Mojave Desert. However, over 80% of the population of the county is in the San Joaquin Valley.
32. The transportation links of sparsely populated Inyo County are almost entirely to the south, and it is part of the desert regions east of the Sierra Nevada. San Luis Obispo County is midway between Los Angeles and San Francisco and could be classified either as a Northern or Southern California County. However, the bulk of its population is in the south part of the county, and a wide area of the northern part of the county and the adjacent part of southern Monterey County are very lightly populated. (San Luis Obispo is also part of the Los Angeles-based 2nd District of the Court of Appeal.) Since inclusion of the county in Southern California allowed a precise division of population for districting purposes, we believe this classification is justified.
33. Although a county was divided, a major geographical region--the Mojave Desert area--was left intact. Thus, this division complies equally well with the requirements of Article XXI.
34. Solano County is adjacent to the Sacramento River where the river breaks through the coastal range and empties into San Francisco Bay. The division of Solano County was somewhat different for congressional and legislative districts because of differing population balance requirements. For legislative districts, the division was to include only the Vallejo area in the coastal region, which is the most natural division of the county. Because somewhat more population was required in the Coastal Region for congressional purposes, it was necessary to include Fairfield and part of Vacaville in this region.
35. This included the special steps we took with respect to counties covered by section 5 of the Voting Rights Act which we describe shortly.
36. As discussed elsewhere, we preserved cities, to the degree feasible, by use of census tracts that constituted the core of each city. But in a number of instances this meant a small deviation from the city lines, at least as they existed in 1988. In Los Angeles County, in addition to following city boundaries to the degree feasible, we used the boundaries of the statistical areas prepared by the Los Angeles County Regional Planning Commission as a guide to divisions within the City of Los Angeles and for groupings of smaller cities into districts.
37. See our previous discussion of this requirement of Article XXI. In Southern California, we also tried to protect the integrity of the desert regions east of the Sierra Nevada.
38. A total of seven congressional seats and eleven assembly seats were constructed in this minority area.
39. Our proposed Assembly District 60, part of which is squeezed between Latino Assembly District 58 and the Orange County border is an example where we could not avoid this effect.
40. A fourth county subject to pre-clearance is Yuba County located in the Sacramento Valley and the foothills of the Sierra. Yuba is the smallest of the counties subject to pre-clearance and, like the other counties, is the site of a large military installation--Beale Air Force Base. Yuba County has very few protected minorities, far fewer than the state average. The same is true of the counties that surround it. Therefore, we could do nothing with respect to Yuba County so as to better comply with the Voting Rights Act.
41. These districts will be more particularly described in a subsequent section.
42. Further, to the degree that we could determine, the level of registration for Asians, the largest single minority, is extremely low. Finally, although "non-Latino" whites constitute minority of the population of the city, they are disproportionally represented in the over-18 population and also do appear to be registered in disproportionate numbers.
43. District 12, as we constitute it has 35.9% Asians and 57.3% total minorities.
44. We were unwilling to extend a long arm a block or so wide for the several miles between the Richmond district and "Chinatown" (as did the Senate) in order to bring these two areas into the same district since it would be contrary to Article XXI. Further, "Chinatown" appears to have by far the lowest ratio of Asian registration to Asian population of any Asian area in the city.
45. Berkeley, the city in the proposed district which has the smallest percentage of African-Americans has had two African-American mayors in recent years, and the member of the Board of Supervisors for the area which encompasses the Alameda County part of the district is currently an African-American.
46. Pleasanton, Foster City and Daly City are the only cities in the North Coastal Region under the size of an Assembly District which have been split in a substantial manner, each because of the population equality standard we have been directed to follow. (Oakland is precisely the size of an assembly district, but it entirely surrounds Piedmont, and thus has to be split. Further, it functionally--though not literally--encompasses the City of Alameda, making it substantially larger than a single assembly district.)
47. See discussion accompanying footnote 41, supra.
48. While several plans submitted to us include one assembly district of over 50% wholly within the San Joaquin Valley, none included two near this percentage, and none had a senate seat with such a high percentage. We must note, however, that based on registration information provided us (but of uncertain reliability) none of these districts, including ours, has a Latino registration high enough to constitute a Latino majority seat.
49. We were able to consolidate this Asian population in a single congressional district, however.
50. The problem with trying to reduce the Latino population in the district by inclusion of non-Latino areas (such as part of Downey to the east) is that the Latino rate of registration is so low. With only 11% of the population, non-Latinos in the district as presently proposed constitute over 44% of the registered voters, and including non-Latino areas to reduce the population down to, say, 80% would probably reduce the number of Latinos actually registered to under 30%, thus making the district in effect only a Latino influence district, not a Latino majority district.
51. These included Speaker of the Assembly Brown, who is African-American and several African-American legislators representing current districts in the area.
52. The African-American population in Los Angeles has not kept pace with the overall growth of the county, especially the Latino population, much of which appears to be settling in areas currently occupied by African-Americans. Thus it is difficult to provide districts meeting current population requirements which have the same percentage of African-Americans as existed in the districts created in 1982.
53. For example, 52 percent of District 48 is Latino (compared to 42.6% African-Americans) but the Latino registration is apparently less than 6 percent.
54. Asian representatives at our hearings had requested an assembly seat in this area which maximized the Asian presence and our initial district was designed, in part, to accommodate this request.
55. In this region we were urged by several appearances at our hearings to link the cities of Guadalupe, Santa Barbara and Oxnard in one assembly district because each had a substantial Latino population. (Only the very small city of Guadalupe has, however, a Latino majority.) We have not done so, however, because the Latinos in these three cities do not constitute a geographically compact minority population. Guadalupe is 70 miles northwest of Santa Barbara and Oxnard is 40 miles to the southeast of Santa Barbara and there are significant non-minority populations in between. (Lompoc and Santa Maria are between Guadalupe and Santa Barbara and the City of Ventura is between Oxnard and Santa Barbara.) It would be impossible to unite the three cities (or even just Santa Barbara and Oxnard, the largest two) without bypassing other significant populations, which would be, in our view, a violation of Article XXI.
56. The remainder of Pomona, the more heavily minority part, is included in a minority influence district in western San Bernardino county.
57. San Bernardino had to be split for population reasons in any event, so we included the parts of the city which would maximize minority presence in District 62.
58. Anaheim, because it is long and narrow and extends across much of Orange County, ended up being split four ways in our Assembly plan. We regretted this, but could not figure any way to avoid this without substantially reducing the Latino presence in District 69. We note that the 1973 Special Masters also split Anaheim three ways.
59. The number assigned to a senate district is important because it determines in which year the election is to be held for the seat. Odd numbered seats are up for re-election in 1992.
60. We note that in 1973 the only changes made by the Supreme Court to the Senate Plan submitted by our predecessors in this process was to switch numbers for two pairs of senate districts. Reinecke IV, 10 Cal. 3d at p.404, ftn. 2. Thus, it is possible for the Court to correct this aspect of our plan if we have made a significant error with respect to numbering.
61. We were also urged to keep the Mexican border area in one legislative district because there are common problems all along the border. We are not convinced that a single district along the border is the proper solution to this issue. Such problems affect a zone extending well into California, and a legislator does not have to represent the territory literally adjacent to the border to be responsive to such problems. Further, it would probably be more useful to have more than one legislator who is responsive to such problems, which would call for two or more districts to be located on or near the border. (For example, in one hearing we were urged to make sure that the timber growing areas of the state were not represented by just one legislator because having two or more legislators concerned about timber matters would ultimately be more useful to that activity.)
62. A narrow corridor for the purpose of connecting distant populations would, in our view, violate Article XXI.
63. As noted earlier, the division of Vacaville was necessary to achieve the necessary population balance between the North Coastal Region and the North Interior Region.
64. This is the part of Solano County left when the rest of the County was assigned to the North Coastal Region.
65. Los Angeles County includes well over one fourth the population of the state, thus must be divided in any case.
66. District One consists of Del Norte, Siskiyou, Modoc, Humboldt, Trinity, Shasta, Lassen, Tehama, Mendocino, Glenn, Lake, Colusa, Sutter, Sonoma, Napa, Yolo, Solano, Marin, Contra Costa, San Francisco, Alameda, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, San Benito and Monterey Counties. District Two consists of the counties of Plumas, Butte, Yuba, Sierra, Nevada, Placer, El Dorado, Sacramento, Amador, Alpine, San Joaquin, Calaveras, Tuolumne, Stanislaus, Mariposa, Mono, Merced, Madera, Fresno, Inyo, Kings, Tulare, San Luis Obispo, Kern, San Bernardino, Santa Barbara, Ventura and the Antelope Valley in northern Los Angeles County. District Three consists of Orange, Riverside, San Diego, Imperial counties and the southeast part of Los Angeles County, including Long Beach and Torrance and other nearby cities. No cities were divided. District Four consists of the remainder of Los Angeles County.
67. By vote-registration ratio, we mean the number
of votes obtained by a candidate of a particular party (e.g. Democratic)
as a ratio to the number of voters registered to that party in the district.
