Boring? Nope, the Meeting was quite interesting last night.

I traveled down to the Board of Supervisors Chambers in Auburn, Placer County last night to ne part of a meeting.  I didn't expect it to be well attended because the meeting was called by the California Citizens Redistricting Commission (CCRC).  The CCRC was formed by Propositions (11 and 20) by the people of California.  The people finally yanked the duty to draw the lines for all our Congressmen, Assemblymen, Senators and Board of Equalization out of the tainted hands of the Legislature.  Go HERE for the CCRC website.

Well, the place was packed, standing room only.  The 14 members of the CCRC were their sans one.  The lady from Stockton.  She is the only Inland Northern California person on the Commission.  They said she was watching on the cam.  When I arrived for the 6-9 PM meeting I signed up to speak.  My number was 45 out of about 52 speakers.  There were about 150 people I would guess and this was the only inland meeting the CCRC was having in Northern California (Santa Rosa is next).

The attendees came from mostly Nevada, Placer and El Dorado counties. There was a couple of  folks from Chico.  The discussion centered around the drawing of the boundaries and mainly concerned the speakers wanting to have the CCRC leave our districts alone.  There was general consensus we are desirous of staying within our present lines because of similarities of the counties and their people.  Small towns, foothills, west of Highway 49.  The high country folks, led by Ted Owens of our county and Supervisor Nutter from El Dorado, talked about the uniqueness of the Eastern peoples of the Sierra's.  What became clear to all though is we don't have enough population to garner more seats unless we want to go into and connect to the urban and highly suburban areas of the valley.  No one wanted that and when it was discussed, the crowd got pretty vocal against the idea.

There were some people I knew who did not speak but their attendance showed the amount of interest we have in our corner of the state.  Kim Pruett was there for I think this had a big affect of the CCRC members. (Kim Pruett attended for our Congressman).  They did ask speakers a few questions which in my view .cemented the consensus of wanting us to have them leave our districts alone.  The meeting was transcribed and filmed and will be available on their website later. The CCRC said the speakers could supply additional materials up until May 23, 2011.

My little ditty to them was simply a reminder that I along with many other people worked hard to pass the Propositions which created their Commission.  We did the hard work to try and fix the mess and that one party rule is no longer acceptable in California.  The democrats have controlled the Legislature for 50 years except one, 1995.  That has to end since we all now see what a mess things are in.  I reminded them of the redistricting of 1991.  We Republicans had recruited Pete Wilson to run for Governor so he could veto the democrats gerrymandering of our state based on the 1990 census.  He beat Dianne Feinstein and lo and behold, the democrats did gerrymander the lines and Pete vetoed the travesty.  Well, under the law the job then passed on the the "Special Masters", a three retired judge panel.  When they finished the lines the democrats were apoplectic and the republicans were cautious.  Well, in 1994 the California voters put the Republican in control of the Assembly by one vote.  I told the CCRC to go back and review those lines.  In 2001 things were returned to democrat control, done with the help of sellout RINO's and that spawned the Propositions we now have.  The people are simply fed up and hopefully this will bring fairness back into the process of elections.

The CCRC members introduced themselves and each told us how transparent all this is.  They must finish by the end of July and their decisions are final.  I asked them if they can be sued since this is California and there were number of lawyers in the audience.  The Chairman said nope.  We will see.

So, my hope is voting fairness will return to California.  Democrats make up about 44% of the total votes but the have over 60% of the seats in the three representative districts. Republicans have 31% and the rest are mostly Independents.  Looks like a effective gerrymander and the real losers are the Indies.  Go HERE for the latest numbers and click on Historical Voter Registration. Nevada County is 39% R, 31% D and 20% Indie. The rest are minor parties like the Greens, the largest at a little under 2%.  Nevada County's Indies usually vote R so we are still a "Red" county in my view.

So we will see what these folks come up with and hopefully they will succeed.  I always remember the Tammany Hall Boss Tweed quote "The number of ballots is not as important as who counts them". The CCRC will hopefully only concern themselves with openness and fairness and not be affected by outside forces. Just for fun here are the latest breakouts in our county. Total voters, then democrats then Republicans.

Nevada County Supervisorial 1		13,569	5,008	5,033	384	342	118	26
County Supervisorial 2		12,958	3,534	6,611	391	100	77	18
County Supervisorial 3		10,750	3,859	4,092	358	157	77	17
County Supervisorial 4		12,925	3,991	5,495	440	318	114	48
County Supervisorial 5		9,909	3,813	2,799	370	182	109	18
		60,111	20,205	24,030	1,943	1,099	495	127
Percent			33.61%	39.98%	3.23%	1.83%	0.82%	0.21%