Fresno County is majority Latino. Advocates want new districts to improve voting power
The process to redraw Fresno County’s districts for its supervisors is winding down, and a couple of maps are getting a push from advocates and residents.
Maps backed by volunteers from the Dolores Huerta Foundation and Communities for a New California had the clear support of several dozen people who spoke to the county’s Redistricting Advisory Commission this week.
Those two maps were promoted by advocates during a Tuesday meeting of the commission as ways to bring change to under-served parts of the county. While the speakers may have disagreed on which map to support, they agreed that Fresno County needs change.
The Board of Supervisors districts are drawn every 10 years. The board appoints the commission taking input, and the board gets the final decision on which map they pick. The supervisors are not required to follow any recommendations, and can pick a map not recommended by the commission.
The map-making process determines which communities are grouped together into a district to elect a county supervisor, and are not supposed to break up communities with similar interests. The county’s five-member Board of Supervisors operates a budget of $3.9 billion and makes decision on public health, public services and public works projects, among others.
Voting Rights Act concern
It’s important that the newly drawn map first considers the county’s Voting Rights Act districts, according to Lori Pesante, who works for the Dolores Huerta Foundation.
The Voting Rights Act districts are areas of the county where minority groups make up the majority. The act is meant to protect those areas from being squeezed out of their voting power by the way the lines are drawn.
“It’s not enough just to have majority Latino districts,” Pesante said. “They have to be effective, which means you have to look at the eligible voter data. How many are actually registered.”
She said the foundation-backed map — called the Equity Coalition Map — accounts for those districts first and then makes the others fit.
Fresno County is majority Latino (53.6%), according to U.S. Census, but the five-member board has just one Latino leader in Supervisor Sal Quintero.
Estella Ortega said she has lived in central Fresno for more than two decades, and feels like the supervisors don’t represent her best interests.
“The Latin communities are the majority and it’s like we have no representation, not only that looks like us, but to defend us,” she said in Spanish.
Fresno County’s Board of Supervisors drew criticism last month from the ACLU of Northern California, the ACLU of Southern California and the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Southern California. The related civil rights organizations said they were concerned after multiple supervisors publicly said they intend to keep the “existing supervisorial districts largely the same.”
“These comments are extremely concerning because this approach prioritizes maintaining the core of existing districts over mandatory criteria, something prohibited by federal law and by the Fair and Inclusive Redistricting for Municipalities and Political Subdivisions (FAIR MAPS) Act,” the organizations say in a letter. “This approach also defeats the purpose of the redistricting process: to periodically redraw district boundaries to provide residents with fair representation.”
The Equity Commission Map during this week’s meeting had the most vocal supporters, but a map for Communities for a New California (CNC) also got some attention.
Dr. Venise Curry, a visible leader in west Fresno, said she liked the CNC map — called Fresno Inclusive Families Map.
“(The map) does a better job considering communities of interest, particularly African-American communities, Latino communities and also Asian communities,” she said.
Pedro Navarro Cruz, who works with CNC, said it’s clear the county’s map needs an overhaul.
“It would defeat the purpose to push a map that is anything remotely close to what we currently have,” he said.
Redistricting process
The county hired National Demographics Corporation to help run the process. Senior consultant Jeff Tilton said a few maps have been submitted so far, and some of those are available at the county’s website.
The final meeting of the Redistricting Advisory Commission is 6:05 p.m. Oct. 21 at the Fresno County Health and Wellness Center, 1925 E. Dakota Ave.
The supervisors have their first hearing on the issue Nov. 2. Both meetings can be attended virtually.
