Redrawing San Francisco’s political map

The political map of San Francisco will be redrawn, but not all neighborhoods will be affected in the same way.

According to the national census every 10 years, the city is required to change its political boundaries so that each district is roughly the same in population. The process has to be remarkably fast: the nine-person redistribution work group has to complete the new lines by April 15.

Your most delicate challenge will be what to do with District 6, which includes SoMa, Mission Bay, the Tenderloin and Treasure Island. As a district that has hosted the vast majority of the city’s population growth over the past decade, District 6 will have to shrink geographically. Which quarters of District 6 are chopped off and pinned to other districts could have profound political implications.

With this in mind, the redistribution task force is planning a comprehensive public relations process that will include at least one face-to-face event in each district early next year. The public is also invited to the Panel’s regular virtual meetings on the first Monday and third Wednesday of each month.

“I want as much public participation as possible,” said Rev. Arnold Townsend, vice president of the NAACP in San Francisco and chairman of the task force. “It is important that we try to draw districts that give people a fair chance to be represented and that the people who represent them have to listen.”

According to the city charter, the districts must meet legal requirements, including those of population equality. Population differences between districts should be “limited to 1% of the statistical mean, unless additional fluctuations, limited to 5% of the statistical mean, are necessary to prevent minority voting or dilution and / or to keep recognized neighborhoods intact to keep”.

The redistribution must also follow the Voting Rights Act, which provides specific rules regarding the voting rights of minorities and other protected groups. The redistribution working group – consisting of three members appointed by the mayor, three by the supervisory board and three members appointed by the electoral commission – will have the final say on the design of the new districts.

The inhabitants of D6 are most at stake, which is currently 30% overpopulated compared to the average of the 11 districts. District 6 was “so out of whack for the rest of the population,” Townsend said. “With all the different concerns and diversity out there, how can we ensure that we are serving the largest number of people possible? That will be the challenge. “

Compared to D6, no other district has to change much in order to meet the population criteria – another sign of the city’s one-sided growth and development approach in recent years. District 10, which includes Potrero Hill, Bayview, and Sunnydale, all neighborhoods that have seen some new developments in the last decade, is overpopulated by 9%, meaning it needs to shrink slightly. Districts 8 and 5, which include Castro and Fillmore, respectively, are also above the average population, but by less than 5%, so they may not have to shrink at all.

The remaining seven boroughs all have fewer than the ideal borough size, meaning that their population growth has lagged behind that of the city as a whole over the past decade. District 3, including the Financial District and Fisherman’s Wharf, is 9% underpopulated. Districts 1 and 4, which include Richmond and Sunset, respectively, are 8% underpopulated. These districts need to expand geographically in order to increase their population.

As part of the post-census redistribution, San Francisco will have to change its political boundaries so that all of its eleven regulatory districts have roughly the same population. Terry Forte / The Examiner

San Francisco’s district lines have remained relatively stable since they were first drawn in 1996, when voters decided to return to the district elections after being ruled by great overseers for two decades. The electoral commission has tasked SF state political science professor Richard DeLeon and his doctoral student Lisel Blash with drawing the lines. DeLeon’s map is designed to “capture more or less coherent political communities in the new lines that coincide with the other things about race and population size etc,” he said.

After going into effect for the 2000 elections, the new borders had a massive impact on city politics. Without running expensive city-wide campaigns, progressives like Matt Gonzalez and Aaron Peskin took control of the board of directors and severely curtailed Mayor Willie Brown’s power towards the end of his tenure.

Of course, the district boundaries have not been undisputed over the years. The districts of Fillmore and Japantown, which span Districts 5, 2, and 6, were contested during the redistribution process following the 2000 census. “At that time, portions of the Plaza East and Freedom West public housing projects were being cut out of this district,” Townsend said, referring to District 5. “And a lot of people felt that the black electorate was being watered down.”

The right district boundaries are important in giving voters confidence in democracy, says Jonathan Mehta Stein, executive director of California Common Cause, a voting rights advocacy group. “When people see district political lines being drawn to minimize the power of a particular group or to keep incumbents in power, I think it really has an adverse effect on local democracy.”

The question of the term of office could be a tricky one for the new election working group: If the new district managements exclude the residential address of the current superiors, he or she would not be eligible for re-election in their current district. That briefly became a problem during the final redistribution cycle when draft cards showed Supervisor David Chiu was cut off from his ward.

For his part, Townsend, who was appointed to the task force by Mayor London Breed, says he does not know exactly where the current superiors live. His priority is “keeping ethnic communities together so they have some voting effectiveness in their district,” adding that it is too early to say what that will look like on the map. At the moment he is solely focused on getting the public to participate in the redistribution process.

San Franciscans should “attend the meetings, meet with their organizations, their groups, their churches, and even their friends, and start planning and informing us about what you think your district should be like,” Townsend said. “It will be for the next 10 years.”

bschneider@sfexaminer.com