(From the nytimes.com) California’s nonpartisan redistricting commission, charged with redrawing the state’s Congressional and legislative districts free from party politics, approved its final set of maps on Friday.
By all accounts, the new maps will increase the Democrats’ domination of politics in a state where they already hold all statewide offices. The new maps include more districts where minority groups are in the majority than did the commission’s first drafts, released in June. Latinos and other racial and ethnic minority groups said those maps violated the 1965 Voting Rights Act because they did not include enough districts in which minorities were the majority.
David Wasserman, the House editor for The Cook Political Report, projected that with the new maps, Democrats would add at least three seats in the nation’s largest Congressional delegation. The delegation’s Latino caucus could also get at least three new members, he said. As expected when voters in 2008 created the nonpartisan commission, the new maps carve up existing districts, leaving more incumbents vulnerable than in the past.
Tom Del Beccaro, chairman of the California Republicans, said his party was evaluating the commission’s process and had not ruled out a legal challenge.
Read more here: Remap Aids Democrats in California