Please vote No on Proposition 50 to stop Gavin Newsom from rigging elections in California for the next several years. Your ballot is being mailed to you any day now.
What is this all about? Well, even the ACLU understands that “Redistricting is the process of drawing the lines of districts from which public officials are elected. When it’s conducted fairly, it accurately reflects population changes and racial diversity and is used by legislators to equitably allocate representation in Congress and state legislatures. When politicians use redistricting to manipulate the outcome of elections, however, it’s called gerrymandering — a practice that undermines democracy and stifles the voice of voters. Voters should be picking their politicians, not the other way around.”
Every ten years, after the US Census, the boundaries of districts that comprise the geographical areas from which representatives are elected to legislative bodies, such as the U.S. House of Representatives, are adjusted. Redistricting ensures that all representatives represent the same number of people.
In California, these lines are drawn by a voter-initiated independent citizens redistricting commission which Gavin Newsom is trying to sideline. Gavin Newsom doesn’t want to wait for the next census, so he is trying to sabotage the independent work of the California Citizens Redistricting Commission that voters established. He and his fellow Democrats are trying to justify this effort to eliminate as many Republican congressional seats in the CA delegation as payback for Texas redistricting mid-census. However, what Texas did was fix a map that was not in compliance with how districts can legally be drawn.
By voting No on Prop 50, you will be preserving the current California law that voters approved and that took redistricting away from politicians and placed this authority with a citizen’s commission that has been doing a reasonable job of creating fair districts.
The principle here? Most people believe that when they vote, they are choosing their representatives. But when politicians are drawing the boundaries of their own districts, it is they who are choosing their voters!
One of the worst examples of this phenomenon known as gerrymandering happened right here on the Central Coast, courtesy of former Congresswoman Lois Capps. Her district has been used as an example of gerrymandering nationwide as her district lines were accurately referred as “the ribbon of shame.” The district ran up the coast some 200 miles from Oxnard to the Monterey County line. The boundaries of the district ran along the shoreline until they went in to capture a Democrat majority community and then the line returned to the shore. The lines for Capps’ district disappeared during high tide.
Vote NO on Prop 50!
The Ribbon of Shame violated every single principle of what a district is supposed to look like, including being compact, binding together communities of interest, and using established boundaries, such as city limits, as a dividing line between one district and another. The purposes of these principles, among others, is to keep communities intact so they can rally together as a political force as it relates to electing someone who will truly represent them. Divided communities can’t do that.
And guess what? No surprise here. Gavin’s new maps for CA bring back several versions of that ribbon of shame. As Tom Del Beccaro reports, if Proposition 50 is approved, CA’s Modoc County on the Oregon Border, which has two people per square mile living on its ranches and farms, will be joined together in the same district as densely urban San Francisco some 6 hours away! What does that mean in practical reality? The needs and wants of the people in Modoc will never be considered by their representative who will spend all his/her efforts on SF. The residents of Modoc and the communities in between there and SF are simply redistricting cannon fodder.
Please put a stop to Newsom’s raw power grab.
Preserve the California Citizens Redistricting Commission by voting NO! on Prop 50. And please do share this column with the many people who are not paying attention to much of anything happening in this state.
Thank you.
Andy Caldwell, Executive Director, COLAB
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Outstanding column, Andy — absolutely spot-on. You’ve once again cut through the political fog and exposed the cynical power grab behind Proposition 50 for what it really is: Gavin Newsom’s latest scheme to cement one-party rule in California.
It’s incredible how the same crowd that decries “threats to democracy” has no problem rigging districts to silence half the state’s voters. The citizens’ commission was one of the few things in Sacramento still protecting fairness, and now Newsom and his enablers want to dismantle it to secure their grip on power.
And speaking of enablers — it’s time the Central Coast finally says enough to Congressman Salud Carbajal. For too long he’s carried water for Newsom, Biden, and Pelosi instead of standing up for the working families, ranchers, and small-business owners he’s supposed to represent. His record is nothing but lockstep party-line votes and press releases.
Let’s make this Salud Carbajal’s last term in office. The Central Coast deserves leadership that answers to the people here — not to San Francisco or D.C.
Thank you again, Andy, for keeping the light on truth and accountability when so much of the media looks the other way.
— A Proud Conservative Voter
Santa Barbara / Central Coast - Enough Is Enough 805
Help end this madness locally! Vote No and Vote for Bob Smith! Deceptive Salud fails again in his 10/3 Newsletter to give any reason for his “Republican Shutdown” that in fact is the Democrat Party’s shortsighted, damaging refusal to pass an interim Continuing Resolution to 11/7. He lies outright and by omission. To keep the government running, why not eliminate now the costly multi-billion dollar COVID-19 bonus coverage to illegal aliens that ends regardless at year end? Why? — because look at the money rolling in to Democrats from this media coverage they’ve created. Their goal: billions, with millions for NYC Mayor Socialist Candidate Mamdani (78% of donations from outside of NY).
We must boot Salud by voting in Bob Smith! Salud is ready to retire but must hold onto the seat until Laura Capps is free of single mom responsibilities to take over.
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