Governor Newsom and the California Legislature have put Proposition 50, a congressional redistricting plan, on a special election ballot this fall. Prop 50 aims to give California Democrats several additional US House seats as a response to redistricting in Texas that gives more seats to Republicans. To achieve this objective, Prop 50 supporters want to temporarily set aside the legal requirements that helped shape the existing plan. We have already evaluated the new plan’s partisan impact. Here we assess two factors that the current plan—drawn by California’s independent Citizens Redistricting Commission (CRC)—is required to consider: racial and geographic representation. Because voters are being asked to suspend these requirements, it makes sense to evaluate the proposed map’s impact in these areas.

The CRC’s map had to satisfy the requirements of the Federal Voting Rights Act (VRA), which include drawing districts for voters of color who hold politically cohesive views and are numerous enough to make up a majority within a single geographical area. Historically, Latinos are the only group to clear this bar for the congressional map. The CRC’s current congressional plan includes 16 majority-Latino districts, as does the Prop 50 plan. Neither Black nor Asian Californians have a majority district in either plan.

Districts can also have shares of voters of color that are large enough to “influence” (or help decide) electoral outcomes. Here, we use 30% as the threshold for influence. The CRC plan includes 6 Asian American, 2 Black, and 7 Latino districts that are at or above this threshold. Here, too, the proposed plan matches the current one almost exactly: it adds one more Latino influence district but otherwise replicates the status quo.

The CRC is also required to consider certain geographic criteria: district compactness (simple shapes rather than strange ones) and the number of cities and counties split into separate districts. (It must also keep “communities of interest” whole, but since there is no consensus definition of this term, we do not analyze it here.) The Prop 50 plan is also very close to the CRC plan on these dimensions. The CRC plan keeps one more county intact (31) than the proposed plan (30), and the two plans include the same share of intact cities (88% in each, though the lists of split cities differ). According to one popular measure of compactness, the Prop 50 map is slightly less compact than the existing plan. However, it is worth noting that the current CRC plan is also less compact than the previous CRC plan.

The proposed redistricting plan has a single overriding goal: to elect more Democrats. While its supporters propose to set aside current legal requirements, the Prop 50 map largely matches the existing map on the sort of criteria the CRC was required to consider. The metrics considered here are statewide, so they do not speak to representation for specific communities. The CRC listened to many hours of testimony about community interests, while the Prop 50 plan was drawn quickly and without such input. As such, some communities may have complaints about specific lines drawn by the proposed plan. But the plan as a whole is very similar to the current one in most respects: it deviates mostly by creating more Democratic seats.