Experts propose a redraw of Stanislaus County district to avoid voting rights issue
Stanislaus County’s redistricting commission is working on the boundaries for creating a supervisorial district that has a strong majority of Latino voters.
County supervisors received an update last week on a redistricting effort that was slowed down by federal delays in reporting 2020 Census data.
Experts who are advising the county, including the Olson Remcho law firm of Oakland, recently identified a possible voting rights issue.
The proposed district boundaries for electing county supervisors, as currently drawn, could be diluting the Latino vote in Supervisor Channce Condit’s District 5, which includes Ceres, south Modesto, Patterson and Newman.
The experts say a remedy for the issue is creating a district with a large enough number of Latino voters to elect a representative of their choice.
District 5 has a voting-age citizen population (age 18 and older) that is 54% Latino. The commission is aiming to increase the potential Latino vote by adjusting the boundaries of District 5. Condit’s seat on the board will come up for election in 2024.
According to the county’s advisers, the commission could draw boundaries for two supervisorial districts where Latinos represent 50.1% of voting-age residents, but that is not recommended. Historically lower voter turnout among Latinos would decrease the chances for Latino candidates, a staff report says.
The 11-member redistricting commission is working on two “visualizations” for supervisorial districts, either of which would give District 5 a larger majority of potential Latino voters. The panel has been waiting for additional data before refining the boundary lines.
One of the rough visualizations would consolidate District 5 around Ceres and place the West Side communities of Patterson, Newman and Grayson in Supervisor Terry Withrow’s District 3.
A second visualization would stretch the District 5 boundary northeast from Ceres to include Empire. Under that alternative, Patterson, Westley and Newman would remain in District 5, but Grayson would be part of District 3.
Three weeks ago, the commission proposed a mostly status quo map to the Board of Supervisors that featured minor changes to districts 1, 3, 4 and 5.
Solange Altman, an alternate member of the commission, told county supervisors Tuesday that the Census data came in later than expected and commission members only recently found out District 5 is racially polarized.
Altman said she doesn’t want to see voting rights litigation over the county’s district map, which will set the boundaries for electing county supervisors until 2030.
Altman said the commission wants to raise the Latino citizen voting-age population (CVAP) to 55% in District 5.
Supervisor Mani Grewal said 55% sounded like an arbitrary number. He said the state’s redistricting process has included maps that create a 52% “super-majority” ethnic voting age population.
County Counsel Thomas Boze said the ideal number is hard to pin down. “It has to be more than what is currently present,” he said. The map that is ultimately approved needs to increase the CVAP enough to allow Latino voters to succeed, while meeting other criteria, Boze said.
The county will hold two more public hearings on the redistricting options on Dec. 6 and Dec. 13. Both hearings are set for 11 a.m. in the board chambers at Tenth Street Place in Modesto.
This story was originally published November 29, 2021 at 4:00 AM.
