Advisory committee recommends Map C for county districts; commissioners question voter-weighting and potential partisan effects

County staff presented the District Mapping Advisory Committee's final recommendations and distributed Map C to the meeting attendees. Staff described criteria used by the committee (contiguity, precinct lines, avoiding unreasonable division of communities of common interest) and said the maps aim for a target population variance of roughly +/-5% but that practical constraints produced up to a 10% range in some districts.

Commissioner Bill Chang said he had substantive concerns about the process and results, arguing that using registered-voter counts instead of total population could disenfranchise households with nonvoting-age residents and alleging a partisan skew: "...it showed that there were, you know, basically, Democratic voters were, disproportionately crammed into 2 districts, so that, there was more Republican voters in 3 of the districts... that is, in my opinion, gerrymandered," Chang said. Other commissioners and staff noted the committee sought to avoid partisanship and that the map will be a ballot decision; staff recommended placing the map for voter consideration (May or November options) with district numbering to be assigned by lot.