What is Redistricting?
Redistricting is the redrawing or adjusting of district lines to ensure that legislative representation is fair and balanced. It is done every ten years, after the census data is compiled, to account for population shifts and growth over the last decade. The purpose is to bring districts back into compliance with the one-person one-vote mandate of the federal and state constitutions.
Board of Supervisors District Lines
The County Board of Supervisors adopted the redistricting ordinance on September 20, 2011, which will become effective 30 days after adoption. PDFs of the final and past district maps are available from the County of San Luis Obispo Administrative Office Web site.
Congressional, State Assembly, State Senate and Board of Equalization District Lines
The Redistricting Commission which was created by voters in 2008 and 2010, completed their work to redraw these district lines on August 15. Currently, there are legal challenges against the new State Senate and Congressional District lines. Final adopted maps and information on the Redistricting Commission are available from the California Citizens Redistricting Commision Web site.
What are the next redistricting steps for the elections office?
Election staff, with the help of Cal Poly students, have begun the task of redrawing the district and corresponding precinct lines in the Precinct and District GIS(Geographical Information System) layers. The corresponding changes will also need to be made in the Voter Management system which assigns voters to the correct precinct for election purposes. This assignment allows voters who reside in specific districts to vote for candidates and measures in those districts. At the same time, the elections staff will be resizing precincts to comply with existing law and renumbering the precincts to make it easy to identify the correct supervisorial district for the precinct. This work is expected to be completed by mid to late December 2011.
How will the redistricting changes effect voters?
For many voters in the county there will be no change. For those voters who are now residing in a different district than under the 2001 district lines, you will be represented by the supervisor or U.S. representative elected to the new district in which you live.