Photo courtesy of San Luis Obispo Tribune.

  This past Tuesday, November 30, San Luis Obispo County’s board of supervisors finalized the supervisorial district maps for the next ten years, and ultimately, the Patten map won in a 3-2 vote among the board, which many suspect will cause electoral unfairness among political parties. 

  Arroyo Grande resident Richard Patten proposed his map, which has drastic differences compared to the one that the SLO Chamber of Commerce has drawn, which is quite similar to what is currently in place. Patten’s map is largely supported by conservatives while the county’s map is widely promoted by liberals. 

    It is clear that these changes on the map were made in order to put Democrats, who make up a majority of registered voters countywide, at a disadvantage.

  Liberal board members Bruce Gibson and Dawn Ortiz-Legg voted for the county’s map while conservative members Lynn Compton, John Peschong, and Debbie Arnold rejected it and picked Patten’s map instead. 

  Patten’s map radically shifts boundaries to give Republicans an obvious electoral boost. The redrawing of District Three, which has chunks of SLO and Morro Bay, will cause an unfair disadvantage because the residents that live in both cities will result in the district’s supervisor to have a smaller workload and other supervisors to have more to do, which will ultimately cause inadequate representation.

  “If you drill down into District 3, what you’ll see is that it actually has a total population of unincorporated residents of about 1,300. That’s malapportionment,” liberal board member Ortiz-Legg said, according to the SLO Tribune.

  Furthermore, North Coast residents who live in unincorporated communities will be broken into three districts, causing even more inaccurate representation, especially for those in Cambria, Cayucos, and Morro Bay. 

  It is obvious that the conservative supervisors on the board lacked effort when it came to reaching a compromise. District Four will now exclude Oceano and add more conservative communities into the area, to make it easier for conservative supervisor Compton to win next year’s reelection. 

  “I have confidence that this county, this Board of Supervisors, everyone will be represented well, as historically has been the case,” conservative board member Arnold said.

But this is anything but the case. The new map was built specifically to create electoral inequality. 

  SLO’s Republican Party worked hard on this map in order to help themselves– in other words, they took everything they possibly could without considering the lasting impacts of such actions.

  SLO County’s conservative politicians have, once again, proven to the people that they care more about catering to their supporters and securing political power rather than respecting democratic values as a whole. 

Sources: San Luis Obispo Tribune