Defeat Prop 50: Let’s not revisit the ribbon of shame

October 8, 2025

OPINION by ANDY CALDWELL

Please Vote No on Proposition 50 to stop Gavin Newsom from rigging elections in California for the next several years. Your ballot is being mailed to you any day now.

What is this all about? Well, even the ACLU understands that “redistricting is the process of drawing the lines of districts from which public officials are elected. When it’s conducted fairly, it accurately reflects population changes and racial diversity and is used by legislators to equitably allocate representation in Congress and state legislatures.

When politicians use redistricting to manipulate the outcome of elections, however, it’s called gerrymandering — a practice that undermines democracy and stifles the voice of voters. Voters should be picking their politicians, not the other way around.”

Every ten years, after the US Census, the boundaries of districts which comprise the geographical areas from which representatives are elected to legislative bodies, such as the U.S. House of Representatives, are adjusted. Redistricting ensures that all representatives represent the same number of people.

In California, these lines are drawn by a voter-initiated independent citizens redistricting commission which Gavin Newsom is trying to sideline. Newsom doesn’t want to wait for the next census, and he is trying to sabotage the independent work of the California Citizens Redistricting Commission that voters established.

He and his fellow democrats are trying to justify this effort to eliminate as many republican congressional seats in the California delegation as payback for Texas redistricting mid-census. However, what Texas did was fix a map that was not in compliance with how districts can legally be drawn.

By voting no on Prop 50, you will be preserving the current California law that voters approved that took redistricting away from politicians and placed this authority with a citizen’s commission that has been doing a reasonable job of creating fair districts.

The principle here? Most people believe that when they vote, they are choosing their representatives. But when politicians are drawing the boundaries of their own districts, it is they who are choosing their voters!

One of the worst examples of this phenomenon known as gerrymandering happened right here on the Central Coast, courtesy of former Congresswoman Lois Capps. Her district has been used as an example of gerrymandering nationwide as her district lines were accurately referred as “the ribbon of shame.”

The district ran up the coast some 200 miles from Oxnard to the Monterrey County line. The boundaries of the district ran along the shoreline until they went in to capture a democrat majority community and then the line returned to the shore. The lines for Capps’ district disappeared during high tide!

The ribbon of shame violated every single principle of what a district is supposed to look like, including being compact, binding together communities of interest, and using established boundaries, such as city limits, as a dividing line between one district and another.

The purposes of these principles, among others, is to keep communities together so that they can rally together as a political force as it relates to electing someone who will truly represent them. Divided communities can’t do that.

And guess what? No surprise here. Gavin’s new maps for California bring back several versions of that ribbon of shame. As Tom Del Beccaro reports, if Proposition 50 is approved, California’s Modoc County on the Oregon border, which has two people per square mile living on its ranches and farms, will be joined together in the same district as densely urban San Francisco some six hours away.

What does that mean in practical reality? The needs and wants of the people in Modo will never be considered by their representative who will spend all his/her efforts on San Fransisco. The residents of Modoc and the communities in between there and San Fransisco are simply redistricting cannon fodder.

Please put a stop to Newsom’s raw power grab. Preserve the California Citizens Redistricting Commission by voting no on prop 50.

And please do share this column with the many people who are not paying attention to much of anything happening in this state.

Andy Caldwell is the executive director of COLAB in Santa Barbara County and host of The Andy Caldwell Radio Show, weekdays from 3-5 p.m. on  FM 98.5, FM 99.5, AM 1240, AM 1290 and FM 96.9.