The first draft of maps were rather confusing, but since then, the Commission has given us some nice Google-maps powered visualizations. And today they have released their draft maps through that system. Here is the link
To get the latest maps, choose the type of map you want from the middle dropdown on the top row, and then provide an address. You can then scroll around the map to find the district you are interested in.
and I’m really liking the 24th Congressional District, the 19th State Senate, and the 37th Assembly. It looks to me that we may be able to replace three Republicans with three Democrats! It looks like Das Williams of the 35th Assembly seat will have to shift and run in the 37th.
Why are the cities of Pleasant Hill and Martinez in Contra Costa County being yanked out of the DeSaulnier Senate district and shoe horned into a hybrid Wolk/Wiggins district? that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Pleasant HIll and Martinez are Easy Bay bedroom communities where people commute by BART to San Francisco and Oakland to work. Why are they being stuck in a largley rural and agricultural district that stretches to the north of Clearlake? That makes absoilutely no sense whatsoever and is just inviting litigation.
The Commission is supposed to keep communities of common interest in the same district and looking at this piece of work you have to question their commitment to that task. Pleasant Hill and Martinez are separated from the rest of the district by a wide body of water called Suisun Bay and by a million miles in terms of the issues that each side of that channel hold as priorities.
This one needs to go back to the drawing board.
A good workmanlike job, given the complexity of the project.
As a bonus, there appears to be one new swing Assembly district, which includes a big chunk of flat Anaheim, and the cities of Fullerton, Buena Park, Cypress, La Palma, and Stanton. Currently the district of quirky Lincoln-impersonator Chris Norby.
And talk about finding communities of interest.
Little Saigon (in Westminster and Garden Grove) is cleverly joined with Cambodia Town in Long Beach in a Long Beach-dominated Congressional District, finally reuniting these elements of colonial French Indochina.
the congressional valley district should be an interesting swing one, not entirely unlike vic fazio’s old district lines. makes more sense than lumping yolo in with the north coast, anyways. glad to see they ignored stan forbes’ idiocy about carving up yolo three ways and lumping davis in with sac. districts with lots of small to medium sized regional interests make it more likely that deals get cut and constituents get looked after than districts with a huge city on one side and a small city lumped in.
i’m still waiting for (someone else to do) some serious data crunching, though, on partisan numbers as well as demographics by district. i suspect that deems will do quite well in 2012, but i don’t know socal well enough to say for sure.