California’s proposal to redraw its congressional maps mid-decade, instead of waiting until after the 2030 census, will officially go to voters in a Nov. 4 special election.
The measure, known as Proposition 50 or the Election Rigging Response Act, will ask voters to temporarily bypass the independent California Citizens Redistricting Commission and approve new maps that could net Democrats up to five more seats in the 2026 midterm elections.
Gov. Gavin Newsom, along with Democratic state lawmakers and party leaders say the move is necessary to counter Republican redistricting in states like Texas, where GOP lawmakers recently approved legislation to add five more Republican seats in 2026.
But California’s contentious proposal has drawn pushback from Republicans, supporters of independent redistricting and some former members of the state’s independent commission, with concerns over representation, political maneuvering and potential damage to long-term election reform.
Meanwhile, some good-government groups like Common Cause and the League of Women Voters of California have walked back initial opposition to Prop 50 and are taking no position, instead saying the issue should be decided by voters.
Paul Mitchell is a Sacramento-based data consultant and heads the demography firm Redistricting Partners, which has worked with the state’s redistricting commission in the past. Mitchell’s company drafted the map proposals that California voters will decide on later this year.
Mitchell spoke with Insight Host Vicki Gonzalez about the process and rationale behind the redistricting effort, as well as his thoughts about stepping into the partisan gerrymandering fight between California and Texas.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Interview highlights
Would you call your work nonpartisan? Are you contracted across party lines?
My work has always, in the redistricting space, been in a non-partisan way. Sometimes I'm advocating for partisan interests in front of an open process like the state redistricting commission, but I've never done an actual partisan redistricting. I've never been in a position where I'm drawing maps for an agency and I'm looking at things like partisanship.
When I go to a city council or school board, I’ll tell them I will not have any private meetings with board members. I will not do any closed sessions. I will not talk about redistricting matters outside of a public meeting, and I don't want to know where any of the incumbents live. We do a process that's purely nonpartisan and following the state’s transparent FAIR MAPS Act process.
When did California Democrats reach out to you about this mid-cycle redistricting push, and ask you to help redraw these maps?
The first questions came months ago. We had people coming (and) asking me, because I'm known as one of the redistricting experts in the state, “would it be possible?” And I was saying no, that’s just not possible. I had that attitude until Gavin Newsom did his podcast where he said, “we're going to do this.”
I actually did some polling to look at whether or not voters would support something like this, and I was shocked. I was shocked that you found in one survey question 70% of them said they support the commission. And then when you told them what's happening in Texas, asked them, “would you be willing to support something that would put the commission maps on hold in California, and impose new lines to confront what's happening in Texas,” that same population… were 55-60% in support of setting those lines aside. When I saw that, and when I started talking to more people, it became apparent that this was potentially real.
There was a lot of interest, as it first started, that this was kind of a bluff. We started having meetings, potentially drawing maps, and we thought, "OK, if this looks serious enough, Texas will stand down.” They'll know we're going to go through this rigmarole in Texas to try to create five districts, and California can just offset it with a snap of the fingers. When it became clear that they weren't backing down, this thing just got more and more serious.
Since your work at Redistricting Partners has long been nonpartisan, were you ever conflicted about participating in what is a partisan gerrymandering fight?
When I came to it, I came to it with my lens … can we push back on Texas, pick up five seats for Democrats and not break the entire redistricting plan? Can we do it following the good governance, good redistricting principles and criteria that the commission has — the same criteria material that's used in local redistricting — and do something that would reflect the communities of interest, protect cities and counties, and do these other things that we follow in all our local redistributing?
Once I proved to those folks that we could do that … and we don't have to create crazy districts that bridge Santa Monica to Hemet, and San Francisco to Redding. Once I realized we could do it, and still do a good clean redistricting that I don’t personally consider a gerrymander because we’re not splitting up communities, we’re not doing crazy lines that go 30 miles down freeways like they do in Texas or Illinois, then I felt more comfortable about it.
There isn’t consensus among former members of the independent redistricting commission on Prop 50. We recently had a member on Insight who is opposed to it because they believe it undermines the pursuit of fair elections and can cause long-term damage to election reform. How do you respond to that?
I have a lot of respect for people who share those values, I share those values as well. Sarah Sadhwani was one of the commissioners who’s kind of taking a leading role here. She not only served on the commission, before that all of her election research, her academic work, has been in election reform … she has been as tied to this independent reform process as anybody.
But at the same time, she feels that there's this existential threat, that what’s happening in Texas is not something that should be allowed. And that by doing this in California, we're potentially offsetting that rigging of the election. As a result of that, for this one moment we can’t be so married to the process values, and we should be married to the outcome values.
And it is interesting to me that voters get this, that voters will say, "I support the commission," And then say, "I'm willing to set it aside." I think it was really smart by the governor to characterize this in his first discussion … as: ‘we can do this right now to confront Texas. We can do it in a measured approach.’ Just pick up five seats, not try to pick up nine or do something crazy. We can do it in a way that reinforces our push for national redistricting reform, and brings back the commission in 2031.
By doing that I think it gives a permission structure to people like me to say, ‘OK, we're doing this right now. And hopefully by 2031, we can get back to norms-based democracy that we can feel more comfortable in.’
If you had said no to helping with the redistricting, would Prop. 50 have moved forward?
There are a lot of good redistricting consultants around the country. I think we were uniquely positioned because we've done redistricting in so many of these communities that we’ve tracked the redistricting process at the state commission for the last two decades. I think we were uniquely qualified to help put something together … but also not split key communities.
There's a lot of different communities that have been active in redistricting that we’re more keyed into, and so that made it easier for us to do this. I've been really proud of the fact that the NAACP came out in support of this after initially being opposed to it, because they were afraid that it would cause a lot of split-up of the districts they cared about. The UCLA Center for Asian Studies just put out an analysis that showed that this district is increasing Asian voting power.
Where do you ever have gerrymandering in some state that people say actually creates positive outcomes? So I think there are positive stories to be told in this redistricting … but I don't have such a big ego to say that it wouldn't have been done without me here, I think they would have been able to do something if it wasn't for us.
It might be tough for some people to swallow the distinctions you’re creating behind California and Texas’s maps. Maybe they’re a Republican or a principled supporter of the independent redistricting process, regardless of circumstance. How would you talk to them about how you see these maps as fair, if they don’t feel they are?
There’s clearly a desire in these maps to push back on what Texas is doing. So if someone is opposed to that pushing back … then I don’t think we’re going to convince them just because we unified Martinez and Vacaville. But for those who really do love the commission process and feel like that's something they value, and are maybe on the fence, I think looking at the maps … they can see the fact that our process respected the Voting Rights Act. Our process respected communities, even districts that they’re “attacking.”
Kevin Kiley’s (new proposed) district, that comes in here to Sacramento … You can look at that and say “well OK, maybe we don’t know why it’s coming to Sacramento,” but we also know that it used to go all the way down to Kern County. I lived in Independence as a kid, and I’ll tell you we never went to the mall in Roseville.
You can look at a lot of these districts, and there's ways to look at them and say objectively they are improvements in some areas. So if we can do something to push back on Texas … without breaking the commission map, and see commissioners actually come on and support this … I think that’s a real win. I’d hate for us to kind of throw the baby out with the bathwater here and say, “we need to fight back on Texas so let’s just put our maps in a blender.”
There are fewer cities split in our maps than the commission maps, and districts that have been created makes sense. Honestly, most of the state hasn’t been touched. 80% of voters are going to find they're in the same district now as they were before. That’s unlike Texas where all but one of the districts was redrawn. There's a lot of things here that can assuage any concerns that people have about the quality of this redistricting. But if their real core concern is the partisanship and electing Republicans, there's not a lot there for them to like.
In the days since these maps were finalized and unveiled, what kind of response or criticism have you received?
What has been interesting was when they first mapped, I got some angry text messages from Republicans who are working for the other side saying there wasn't a lot for them to attack. They were hoping that we'd done a bunch of stuff like put incumbents back into their districts, we didn’t do that anywhere in the map.
I haven’t heard a lot of pushback on the maps themselves. And part of my goal is that I want these maps to essentially be vanilla enough that they can fall into the background, because from here on out … this campaign isn't going to be about maps. This campaign is going to be about pushing back on Trump, who is trying to call into Texas and say, “I want five more districts.” It's a breaking of our democratic norms, and without those democratic norms we don't have a true democracy.
If voters approve this proposition in November the promise is that California’s independent commission will resume after the 2030 census. But do you think there is a scenario where this could be bypassed again, maybe for similar reasons?
No, I think the hundreds of millions of dollars that they're going to spend on this campaign would be enough deterrent for anybody trying to do this again. And I’ll tell you, the polling is that if there wasn’t this Texas threat right now, nobody would want to do this. I wouldn't want to do this. Voters don't want to get rid of the commission process. They believe in it, but they also see a threat. They understand this is the thing they can do to push back, and so I think you’re seeing a lot of voters who are going to be willing to support this, but they’re not going to be willing to support it on a permanent basis. When I did a (poll) asking if you want to get rid of the commission entirely, it came in at like 18% support. This is a one-time thing.
Do you think it is opening a door that can't be closed? Is this fight between California and Texas changing the future landscape of redistricting?
I think not pushing back would open a door we can't close. What I mean by that is that if California does not push back, we see these Republican states go ahead and pick up eight, nine districts around the country … and we go into the 2026 election and it’s this big landslide for Republicans because they win these districts, everybody around the country is going to look at commission states and say, “you guys are suckers.” It would, I think, permanently derail the movement to try to do independent redistricting.
This is an unfortunate fight that everybody's in. I think it's a righteous fight to be in right now, but at the end of it I hope that Governor Newsom has (already) signaled he wants to work on national redistricting reform. I hope Charles Munger, who's currently against this measure, will work with him and other people who are reform-oriented … and we can get a big national push.
Zoe Lofgren (Chair of the California Democratic Congressional Delegation), she authored a bill to create national redistricting reform, no Republicans are voting for it. Right now I bet Kevin Kiley and other Republicans would be voting for that. He’s got a bill to try to ban mid-decade redistricting, a lot of Democrats would be supportive of that, I’d be supportive of that. But I think maybe out of this process, we might find ourselves in a position where Democrats and Republicans can agree. Let's not do that again, let's try to do something nationally that will fix this problem.
So this is a one-time thing for you, you wouldn't do this again?
No, we'll not do this again.
