Waterford council narrows redistricting options, eliminates purple map after consultant says data insufficient to test racial voting patterns

At its March public hearing, the Waterford City Council moved closer to choosing a district-based election plan, eliminating one of three draft maps after the city’s consultant said available election data make standard racially polarized voting analysis infeasible.

City Attorney (City Attorney) opened the item and requested the council take the hearing early on the agenda to comply with a California Elections Code timing requirement. The council approved moving the item to the start of the meeting to ensure the required notice window.

Justin, the city’s redistricting consultant with National Demographics Corporation, told the council that traditional statistical tests for racially polarized voting — including homogeneous precinct analysis and ecological regression — require many precincts to produce statistically meaningful results. "With only one or two precincts in Waterford across the elections we examined, you can't get statistical significance," Justin said, explaining that the available precincts produce effectively the same turnout and vote patterns and thus do not permit reliable inference.

Justin walked the council through three draft maps (green, orange and purple). He said all three meet equal-population and Voting Rights Act compliance criteria on their face, and that none were drawn using partisan data or to favor incumbents. The maps differ primarily on how they group neighborhoods and communities of interest in a small-population city where shifting a single block can meaningfully change district counts.

Council members asked whether the consultant’s conclusion differed from a prior review. City Attorney replied that additional outreach and a subsequent election cycle had been examined, but the outcome of the racially polarized voting analysis remained the same. Council member Gutierrez pressed whether the new outreach altered next steps; the attorney said the legal process does not change: the next step is consideration of an ordinance establishing district elections, though the council retains discretion about sequencing and whether to place a measure before voters.

Mayor Gokin and other council members discussed the three maps in detail and expressed preferences: several members said they disliked the purple map. The council voted to remove the purple option and directed staff to return with green and orange maps at the next hearing; the decision was procedural and no ordinance was adopted at this meeting.

Why this matters: shifting from at‑large to by‑district elections can change how neighborhoods are represented; the consultant’s finding that the available election data cannot be used to demonstrate (or disprove) racially polarized voting leaves the council to decide whether to proceed on the safe-harbor path under the Elections Code, take an ordinance to the voters, or pursue other steps to reduce legal exposure.

The council closed the hearing with direction to return the two remaining maps for final consideration at the next meeting.