Kern County Board of Supervisors

Kern County Board of Supervisors redistricting has the following map and process issues: • A potential One Person, One Vote violation based on the exclusion (not re- allocation) of the total prison population; • A potential Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) violation due to the lack of proper analysis of a potential two Latino-opportunity district plan; • Transparency and public trust issue. [...] This example should give the Board of Supervisors serious pause as to whether Option 7 1 violates the VRA, and the Board of Supervisors should conduct a detailed analysis on this issue. [...] • Secondly, the Board of Supervisors did not properly inform the public regarding VRA compliance, including the role of citizen voting age population in plan analysis. [...] • Lastly, the release of the supervisors’ preferred Option 7, and passing it with little time for the public to properly respond, analyze, and comment also hurt public trust in the redistricting process. [...] Further, after the delay, the Board of Supervisors should release the data demographics, including citizen voting age population for all proposed options that staff has been using to analyze for Voting Rights Act compliance so the public can conduct its own careful review of plans.