This post was updated Nov. 4 at 1:56 a.m.

Voters will decide the future of Los Angeles’ redistricting process this November.

LA City Measure DD proposes to create a brand-new Independent Redistricting Commission responsible for drawing district maps. Born from political scandal, the proposal is designed to remove the influence of elected officials from the current decennial redistricting process.

No official opposition arguments were submitted against the measure.

Under the proposed system, residents over 18 can apply to be part of the commission when maps are drawn every 10 years. Half of the commission’s 16 members will be chosen randomly by the City Clerk, and those members will then select the other eight members from the applicant pool.

The commission will then host public meetings as it redraws the maps, publishing its final map alongside a report documenting its process.

Currently, those with redistricting powers are appointed by elected officials, including the City Council members who approve the final map and whose districts are determined by the reapportionment process.

The proposal will prevent self-serving redistricting from council members who wish to choose who they represent, said Russia Chavis Cardenas, a voting rights and redistricting program manager for California Common Cause – an organization supporting the measure.

“For over 100 years, LA has been on one trajectory where elected officials get to draw their own boundaries,” she said. “That’s no longer the case here in LA if these are passed.”

Alejandra Ponce de León, senior manager of the political voice team at Catalyst California – a racial justice organization – said the limited requirements for commissioner eligibility, including the lack of requirements regarding immigration status, will allow community leaders more opportunity to take part in the commission, better representing LA’s constituents.

“The process of having it be independent and really run by the community, without any influence of elected officials, … is going to enable us to have more fair maps at the end of the day,” Ponce de León said. “They may not be the perfect maps, but they’re much more fair and actually much more reflective of the communities.”

Additionally, members will be held to standards aiming to prevent conflicts of interest, including restrictions on holding office immediately before and after their commission tenure and limitations on communication or personal relationships with elected officials.

Former Councilmember Zev Yaroslavsky said the commission will not entirely prevent inappropriate redistricting practices. People will still bring their biases to the commission, and those lacking political experience may not have sufficient context about LA’s districts, potentially leading to decisions that would split communities, he added.

“To suggest that people who are in an independent redistricting commission don’t have political biases or agendas is very naive,” said Yaroslavsky, who is also the director of the Los Angeles Initiative at the Luskin School for Public Affairs.

Yaroslavsky also said his experiences observing LA County’s most recent independent redistricting process raises concerns. He added that those with political experience on the commission largely ran the process, while those without experience had little control.

Additionally, even with open meetings and a transparent process, last-minute shifts in the supervisorial district boundaries arose because of internal politics, Yaroslavsky said.

But Yaroslavsky said he voted for Measure DD, adding that he believes it is the right thing to do considering the city’s recent reapportionment scandal.

The measure comes two years after a leaked recording among several former councilmembers and the former LA County Federation of Labor president captured closed-door conversations about redistricting voters by race and class to preserve the councilmembers’ elected positions, as reported in the LA Times.

The leaked recordings also captured racist remarks from then-City Council President Nury Martinez, who resigned after public backlash.

Councilmember Paul Krekorian said he previously worked on a motion to create an independent redistricting commission, but the idea failed to even get a committee hearing. Once he was elevated to City Council president following Martinez’s resignation, he created an ad hoc committee on governance reform – and the first item on the agenda was crafting an independent redistricting commission, he added.

Krekorian said the problem with the recording was not just the racist language used but also the light it shed on the redistricting process.

“In that conversation, even if it had been one that used polite language, it still would have been about trying to change the maps of city council districts in a way that would benefit the three councilmembers who were part of that conversation, at the expense of entire communities of people,” Krekorian said. “That fact made clear to the members of our council and the public as a whole that this system had to change.”

Former Councilwoman Ruth Galanter, who represented the 6th District from 1987 to 2003, said she saw other councilmembers – whom she described as better dealmakers than herself – peel off wealthy neighborhoods from her district when she was on the council.

“What happens when the elected officials do it (reapportionment) is they cut good deals to suit themselves,” Galanter said. “If the elected officials do the appointing, they’re not going to appoint anybody who’s too stupid to remember how they got picked.”

After a unanimous vote in April to place Measure DD on the November ballot, no formal opposition was filed against the charter amendment, something Chavis Cardenas attributes to the sense of urgency generated by outcry from the leaked conversations.

“I think this (redistricting policy) would have eventually happened, but I do think that the leaked recordings were a blessing in disguise,” she said.

Ponce de León said this ballot measure is uncontroversial among the voters and policy experts she has spoken with.

“If you’re in opposition, you’re basically saying that you approve the status quo, which means, ‘Let’s have elected officials have the power and the last say on how lines are drawn. Let’s allow them to choose their voters,’” Ponce de León said. “That does not make sense. That’s antidemocratic.”

But Galanter said the effectiveness of the measure will ultimately be determined by those within the commission.

The independent commission is set to handle its first reapportionment in 2030 if the measure passes. Roughly $6,150,000 will be spent on the commission over its lifetime, according to a financial impact statement written by City Administrative Officer Matthew Szabo.

This election cycle, Ponce de León said she encourages everyone to learn about the electoral and political importance of LA’s districts.

“With redistricting, it may seem very abstract. We draw lines, what does that mean at the end of the day?” Ponce de León said. “They determine which communities are going to be taken into account and which communities are going to be ignored. They determine if communities stay together or if they will be divided, and therefore their voting power diluted.”

Contributing reports by Dylan Winward, News editor.