Escondido would move

Chaldean community leaders, who said that city has more in common with rural East County than with urban San Diego neighborhoods.

The new map would add Escondido to District 5 in North County, along with the other state Route 78 cities of San Marcos, Vista and Oceanside, Camp Pendleton, the unincorporated communities of Fallbrook, Bonsall, Rainbow and Valley Center and a number of tribal reservations. With the addition of Escondido, the district would lose Carlsbad to the coastal District 3.

Jim Desmond represents District 5.

An important criteria for the commission is to protect the rights of minority voters in each district. Consultants Christian Grose, a political science professor at the University

of Southern California, and Natalie Masuoka, chair of UCLA’s department of Asian American Studies, analyzed 10 years of county voting data to determine how the new map might affect minority communities’ ability to elect their preferred candidates.

Their analysis found minority voters in the new version of District 1, the Latino majority district, would have been able to elect their candidate of choice in 100 percent of elections during that decade. Minority voters in District 4, in central San Diego, would have had 80 percent success. Those in District 3, on the coast, and District 5, in North County, would have elected their preferred candidates 40 percent of the time, while minority voters in District 5 would not have elected any candidates of their choice during that time.

Those figures were indications of how likely minority voters in those areas would be able to elect preferred candidates in future contests, they said.