Matthew Leslie

Map 8A Berlin Wall

Can you follow this border without getting dizzy?

Aside from somehow managing to not come up with a majority of Asian Citizen Aged Voter Population in its District 1, containing the largely Korean-American Amerige Heights, one of the most remarkable things about the bar owners’ Map 8 (and it’s now updated version 8A, below) is the quirky little isthmus of territory that juts westward from its District 3, on the East side, into its District 2, to the West. Take a look at the map above.

The entire map is so gerrymandered to achieve the pointless goal of connecting all districts to Downtown Fullerton that one might easily miss the finer points of its corrupt design. One of these mildly subtle features is the inclusion of about half of a neighborhood just north of Rolling Hills Drive into the Cal State Fullerton eastern District 3. Why is there a curved line here, instead of a straight line that follows St. College Blvd. to the city’s border?

Berlin-Wall-in-Fullerton-copy

Like Fullerton’s own Berlin Wall, needlessly dividing a neighborhood.

With so many other eccentric boundaries lines in place in Map # 8A, one more might not seem out of place, unless one considers that Councilmember Greg Sebourn lives just above Rolling Hills Dr., just east of the line that cleaves his neighborhood in two. This curious residential division places his house in a different district than that of his fellow council member, Doug Chaffee, against whom he will have to run for city council once again in 2018, should they both decide to seek new terms in office. During the May 17 meeting of the Fullerton City Council, Mr. Chaffee even made light of the possibility that he and Mr. Sebourn might end up in the same elections district, joking that the two of them could just endorse one another. (Of course, it is entirely inappropriate, to say the least, for members of the city council to even bring up the subject of their own residences while considering which map to adopt for district elections, but more about that subject later…)

Map # 8A won’t have either of them worrying, as It provides a cozy little niche that keeps Mr. Sebourn not only away from Mr. Chaffee’s district, but also separates him from anyone else in the vast and wealthy Golden Hills/Raymond Hills region, District 2 in this map, that has spawned so many other past and current members of the Fullerton City Council. This egregious example of gerrymandering is just one reason to vote against Map # 8A, which is being championed almost exclusively by bar owners, whose map would rob the residents of the greater downtown area of a collective voice by dividing their district five ways. Mr. Sebourn should stand up for residents of the city he represents, and not be tempted by the geographic morsel offered up for his support of what is easily the worst map up for consideration on June 7.