*The populations for the Area Planning Commissions are approximations based on estimating the APCs as closely as possible using Dave's Redistricting App. The demographic percentages provided are based on the Voting Age Population (VAP) of that area.
In order to form an Independent Redistricting Commission (IRC), it is possible to utilize some form of geographic pooling in order to ensure that randomly selected applicants are reasonably representative of the city's population. As the first part of a two step process, many local jurisdictions pool applicants by region, and randomly select one candidate from each region. This offers a level of geographical balance to the commissioners who will select from the remaining applicants to fill out the commission.
One of the methods proposed by the Ad Hoc Redistricting Commission is to utilize the 7 Area Planning Commissions for this geographic pooling. These planning areas vary greatly in population, with a total deviation of over 100%. The largest planning area is smaller than a single council district, with a population of just under 200k, while the three largest planning areas have populations spanning 714k-771k. South LA would have a population greater than the two coastal planning areas combined, yet the latter would receive twice as many commissioners in the initial lottery draw of commissioners. The Valley is also severely underrepresented. Even though The Valley boasts nearly 40% of the city’s population, it only has two planning areas and would be represented by less than 30% of the initial lottery draw of commissioners. These planning areas fail to give us a rough geographic balance in the first set of commissioners, which in some ways defeats the purpose of such geographic pooling.