The Gavilan Joint Community College District is looking into redistricting in an effort to make sure it complies with the California Voting Rights Act of 2001.
Although the act does not require community colleges to redraw district-area boundaries for trustees, it does insist that the district pick up the bill for all the litigation costs if it loses a voting rights-related lawsuit.
“Districts have a definite motivation to look at that (census) data and to use their best judgment,” said Kimi Shigetani, the vice president for the Community College League of California, which has been helping colleges across the state assess the present district lines and risks of litigation.
While the act went into effect in 2001, the topic re-emerged recently after Gavilan College Trustee Tony Ruiz alleged that six of the seven board members voted illegally in closed session to change the trustee election process from an “at-large” system to a “by district” one and didn’t alert the public of their decision.
Gavilan is one of 72 community college districts across the state that could potentially find itself in the middle of a voting rights-related lawsuit because of the California Voting Rights Act of 2001.
The language of the Voting Rights Act was designed to ensure protected minority groups such as African Americans, Latino/Hispanics, Asian Pacific Islanders and Native Americans are able to elect members of their groups into office.
Due to the language of the bill, some districts changed from at-large elections, where all voters in the district vote candidates into office, to by district ones, where individual areas within the district elect their own representatives. The act does not require districts to change to by district elections. There is a potential for voting rights-related lawsuits if protected minority groups can show they are unable to elect members of their groups into office in an at-large system, because the population of the entire district would dilute the voting power of the minority groups.
Gavilan College currently has an at-large system, which means trustees are nominated for office by the district area in which they live, but voters from all three of the district areas vote the person into office.
Census data comes out every 10 years, presenting trustees and school officials with a snapshot of their population – and causing most districts to rethink district lines every decade.
Just looking at the census numbers has been educational for many communities, Shigetani added. For instance, the city of Compton in southern California considered itself as a place with a high African American population, but this was not its most influential group in the 2010 census.
“When you look at the data, it’s majority Latino,” Shigetani said. “I think it gets very easy to think you have one population and, when it gets drawn down, you have another.”
Redistricting gets more difficult in rural communities – such as San Benito County – since each district area must have the same number of people. It can be difficult to divide sparsely populated areas without splitting up people living in the same cities, neighborhoods with strong cultural identities, or counties, Shigetani said.
“They’re wise to take their time and to really consider what the needs of the community are, as well as what the demographics are,” Shigetani said.
