Redistricting may be added to 2024 ballot
Critics of last year’s drama hoping it will improve efforts for the future
San Francisco voters might be asked next year to overhaul the way the city draws boundaries to create districts that elect the Board of Supervisors.
The city doesn’t have to reevaluate the boundaries of its supervisor districts until after the 2030 census. But efforts are already underway to reform San Francisco’s linedrawing process, known as redistricting, through a potential 2024 ballot measure.
It’s partly a reaction to the remarkable chaos of the city’s redistricting last year, when the once-in-adecade process of adjusting supervisor districts to account for population changes was consumed by a political maelstrom. Some critics of last year’s events hope a ballot measure can improve future redistricting efforts by shaking up how the group that draws the district boundaries is selected. Other possible changes include providing stipends to the group and requiring the map be approved by a supermajority.
Redistricting can have long-lasting consequences: The district boundaries influence who is elected to the Board of Supervisors, therefore helping determine whether the body leans progressive or moderate.
Supervisor Myrna Melgar told The Chronicle she is working on a City Charter amendment that she will propose sending to voters next year, likely in the November election. Melgar said she’s been getting input from a group of city elections commissioners who have been studying ways to improve redistricting since last year.
But she said she’s not trying to revisit the redistricting drama of 2022 that was marked by close votes, intense political pressure and marathon meetings stretching into the early morning hours amid staunch disagreement about which neighborhoods should fall in which districts.
“I have absolutely no appetite for seeking revenge or getting one up on people,” Melgar said. “What I would like to do is make sure that, going forward, we are implementing best practices.”
Melgar said November 2024 would be a good time to vote on the measure because it will be a presidential election with presumably high turnout.
Meanwhile, state lawmakers are considering a bill that would force the city to redesign its linedrawing system. The legislation, AB1248, would prohibit local elected officials from directly appointing the people in charge of drawing the new maps. In San Francisco, the legislation’s passage would necessitate taking power from the mayor and Board of Supervisors, each of whom name three volunteers to the nine-member Redistricting Task Force. The final three are appointed by the Elections Commission.
“I don’t believe elected officials should be drawing our own lines, and I don’t think we should have an invisible hand over the process, either,” said Assembly Member Isaac Bryan, D-Los Angeles, who introduced AB1248. “I think it should be truly independent and community-driven.”
Bryan’s impetus for the bill was the scandal that rocked Los Angeles politics last year, after a leaked audio recording revealed that multiple Los Angeles City Council members and a local labor leader had a crude and at times racist conversation while discussing redistricting.
Following the leaked recording, which led to the council president’s resignation, Bryan said he wanted to take politicians out of the redistricting process across the state.
In San Francisco last year, progressives were outraged by what they saw as a power grab by the city’s moderates, largely due to an ultimately successful plan to split the Tenderloin and South of Market neighborhoods into different districts. As tension over the proposed map mounted, the Elections Commission at one point considered removing its three task force appointees but did not do so. At another point, four task force members walked out in protest more than 15 hours into a controversial meeting. The final map setting the current supervisor districts was later approved in a 5-4 vote.
“I don’t think San Francisco was uniquely flawed or harmful in any kind of way — the problems that San Francisco has experienced are problems that many of the jurisdictions face and have faced,” Bryan said. “To me, that’s just all kind of a cumulative argument for why we should consider doing something different.”
It’s not clear who would be in charge of appointing the group that approves the supervisor district map if the mayor and board are disallowed. Bryan said he thinks San Francisco should make that decision for itself.
His bill was approved by the state Assembly and is now being considered by the Senate. Sept. 14 is the Legislature’s last day to approve all bills in its current session.
Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed similar legislation, SB139, in 2019. At the time, he said local jurisdictions already have the power to appoint independent redistricting commissions, and he felt that the mandate contemplated by the bill should be considered during the state’s annual budget process.
Newsom hasn’t indicated whether he would be more likely to sign Bryan’s legislation. A spokesperson for the governor’s office said in an email that he would “evaluate the bill on its merits if it reaches his desk.”
Even if the governor vetoes Bryan’s AB1248, Melgar said she thinks San Francisco voters should consider a redistricting ballot measure because “it’s the right thing to do.” She said she wants to implement changes that will “make the process easier, more transparent and less contentious than what we just went through.”
Cynthia Dai, a San Francisco elections commissioner who has been spearheading the body’s study of potential redistricting process changes, made a similar point.
“Whether the rest of the state goes along or not shouldn’t really matter to us — we should want a fair process in San Francisco,” Dai said.
The Elections Commission can’t propose a ballot measure itself, but it can recommend process changes to the Board of Supervisors. That is expected to happen through a Dai-led committee that will make suggestions to the full Elections Commission, which can then refer them to supervisors. Dai said she’s not sure when the committee will advance its recommendations, but the group meets again Aug. 24.
Not everyone is on board with Dai’s efforts. Lily Ho, one of Mayor London Breed’s appointees to the last Redistricting Task Force, said the work of Dai’s committee and the consideration of any potential San Francisco ballot measure should wait until the fate of AB1248 is settled at the state level.
“That sense of urgency is purely manufactured,” she said.
Ho said she was also skeptical of the Elections Commission because she thought it worsened the chaos of redistricting last year when it contemplated removing a third of the task force working on the new map. She also criticized the commission for its unpopular attempt last year to consider replacing the city’s widely respected elections director, John Arntz.
“The Elections Commission is no longer a trusted body,” Ho said.
Alan Burradell, a longtime San Francisco resident who closely followed last year’s redistricting process, said he didn’t think the city should be forced to change its redistricting process, either by AB1248 or a local ballot measure. He said he liked having politicians who are “directly accountable to the people” shaping the makeup of the Redistricting Task Force and worried about what might happen if that power instead was placed in the hands of unelected bureaucrats.
“I’d rather have my politics out front where I can see them, as opposed to behind closed doors where I can’t,” Burradell said.