News Clips

Congressional apportionment decisions and individual states’ redistricting plans. Common Cause pioneered redistricting reform by driving California’s 2008 Voters First Act, also known as Proposition 11, which put the job of determining the boundaries of the state legislature’s 40 senate and 80 assembly seats into the hands of a bipartisan commission of 14 non-politicians (wedrawthelines.ca.gov).

"When politicians feel brazen enough to not just admit but to openly declare that they are drawing political lines to rig the elections and punish certain voters, we need the Supreme Court to step in and say enough is enough," said Kathay Feng, a lawyer representing the challenges from Common Cause.

Hey, California voter, way to go! People may say you’re sun-baked, a bit too laid back and, when it comes to picking presidents, largely irrelevant. But thanks to you, the state is sitting dead center in the November fight for control of Congress.

No Cambodian-American serves as an elected official in Long Beach. Residents and activists for the Cambodian community there — the largest in the nation — want to change that. They're pushing the city to draw up new council districts that could effectively give them their own representative.

Dan Vicuna, Common Cause's National Redistricting Manager, and Sylvia Moore, Southern California Organizer for California Common Cause appeared at Equitable Redistricting for Cambodians community forum on redistricting reform in Long Beach at the MAYE Center, Aug. 4, 2018. The Long Beach City Council is poised to ask voters to end political gerrymandering in its city by placing the proposal on the November ballot.

Sylvia Moore, the Southern California organizer for Common Cause, said at Tuesday’s meeting that if Long Beach were to create a redistricting commission, it would be a “milestone” achievement for California because half of the state’s 10 largest cities would have such a system for drawing districts.“ Long Beach would be a statewide leader in good governance,” Moore said.