Last week, the Anaheim Union High School District held a series of community forums “seeking community input into the boundaries that will be established under the new by-trustee-area method of electing the Board of Trustees” according to an e-mail sent out by the district.”

Earler this year, AUHSD Board decided on a policy of pre-emptive surrender to the possibility of being sued by marauding bands of California Voting Rights Act litigants, and voted to replace its at-large election system with a by-district system. Unlike the City of Anaheim, the AUHSD doesn’t need to hold a city-wide election on the question but can make this switch by a board vote and obtaining a waiver from the state Board of Education (which grants them without hesitation). As the AUSD missive puts it:

The Board’s decision was the culmination of a lengthy process during which a demographer reviewed voting patterns over the past 10 years to determine whether the at-large voting method complied with the California Voting Rights Act.  Under the act, an at-large voting method is not permissible if it impairs the ability of a protected class to elect candidates of its choice as a result of dilution or abridgment. The analysis showed that the at-large voting method did appear to impair the ability of a protected group from electing candidates of its choice. To correct this, the Board modified the election method to a by-trustee-area method to provide greater opportunities for representation of all constituencies within the District.  

The District has drawn up several draft trustee area maps in accordance with these criteria:

  • Shall contain a nearly equal number of inhabitants
  • Must be drawn to comply with the Federal Voting Rights Act
  • Should be compact and contiguous, as much as possible
  • Should respect communities of interest, as much as possible
  • Should follow man-made and natural geographic features, as much as possible
  • Should respect incumbency, as much as possible
  • Should respect local considerations (i.e., attendance boundaries, feeder districts)

Here is one conceptual map:

AUHSD concept trustee areas

You can see the rest of them and more by clicking here.

Even this surrender strategy isn’t enough for those in the race and ethnicity business. Here’s Art Montez of LULAC in the OC Register:

Art Montez, public policy director for the League of United Latin American Citizens, said he didn’t like any of the district’s map options. Montez said the voting districts should be drawn so racial minorities – particularly Latinos – could easily elect a candidate they prefer.

art montez guaranteed resultSo it’s not good enough that AUSHD is implementing a single-member district system for which there was no public demand because maybe it appeared that not enough Latinos were being elected. Montez wants a virtually guaranteed electoral outcome by draw trustee areas in a way that Latino candidates have an advantage of non-Latino candidates. [NOTE: last year, Montez was defeated for re-election to the Centralia School District Board of Trustees.]

It’s funny. School children nowadays are incredulous when they learn about “white only” and “colored only” restrooms in the segregated South. Decades later, the self-appointed arbiters of racial equality are demanding de facto “Latino only” elective offices. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

Where’s Jose Moreno and the ACSD?
As I have noted several times, Jose Moreno of the Anaheim City School District’s Governing Board is suing (along with the ACLU) the City of Anaheim to impose single-member council districts. At the same time, he has refused to push for that in his own school district, even though the conditions his lawsuit denounces exist in an even more pronounced fashion in the ACSD.

The AUHSD is moving to single-member district, but in the ACSD, the at-large system continues with Moreno’s silent consent. It’s a good thing for Moreno that none of his friends and allies in the push for single-member Anaheim council districts calls him out for his double-standard.

[NOTE: for all of his rhetoric about the urgency of electing more Latinos to office in heavily-Latino jurisdictions, Moreno supported a non-Latino (Al Jabbar) over a Latino when the AUSHD needed to fill a vacancy on its Board of Trustees].

Race-Based Governance, Brought to You By Left-Wingers and Their Dupes
We been observing the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s assassination. It was also 50 years ago that JFK spoke these words in an eloquent and moving televised speech calling for a federal civil rights legislation:

“Next week I shall ask the Congress of the United States to act, to make a commitment it has not fully made in this century to the proposition that race has no place in American life or law.”

50 years later, not only does race still have a place in American life and law, in the vehicle of the California Voting Rights Act it is driving public policy in the form of lawsuits like the Jose Moreno/ACLU litigation against the City of Anaheim. Anyone claiming that effort is not race-based isn’t just intellectually dishonest, but willfully blind.

The Moreno/ACLU litigation against Anaheim continues, as do the calls from those like Cynthia “I was against district before I was for them” Ward to run up the white flag because, gosh, it’s just too darn hard to fight against this raced-based policy.