Supervisors choose who votes for them

Republicans have adopted many methods they have learned to be an effective means to cheat in elections. Gerrymandering is one of their favorites because the candidate gets to choose the voters. We have seen it played out in some states where the election maps end up looking like a Rorschach Inkblot Test, and we now see it playing out on the local level.

When the referendum to stop to the conservative majority of the Board of Supervisors’ gerrymandered district map failed to gather the required signatures during the required time period, which happened to be during the holiday season and the COVID Omicron surge, Supervisor Kimmelshue’s comments commending the people who worked on the referendum, adding the failure “tells the story that the general public is not in favor of it” were disingenuous and insulting.

Apparently he has forgotten that the majority of the people that attended the public meetings of the re-districting map were opposed to Chico being divided into four districts; he summarily dismissed them like one would when shooing a bothersome fly aside as he presented the map he drew at home on his kitchen table.

This cavalier move, supported by the other two conservatives, came as no surprise, given the past behavior of Kimmelshue; soon after his election he muscled aside Supervisor Lucero and assumed her role as a member of the Vina Groundwater Sustainability Agency.

This power grab shouldn’t be allowed. The taxpayers $80,000 wasted on the ignored re-districting expert clearly exemplifies how conservatives rule. — Roger Beadle, Chico