The City of Palmdale’s expert, Doug Johnson, posted some comments to the EL Listserv in response to the earlier David Ely comments posted on this blog. He has agreed to let me repost them here:

As one might imagine from reading the ruling and remedy order in Palmdale, there are many, many complex issues going on here. As one of the City’s experts, I’ll save the details for court, but here are just a couple examples of the complexity of this situation: (these are already in the record):

• My friend Mr. Ely mischaracterizes the Defense view of the racially polarized voting evidence. But he is correct that it is possible to draw a district that is over 50% Latino CVAP – but that’s obvious, as the City as a whole is now over 50% Latino CVAP (this is in the record from the remedy hearing, though the 2012 one-year ACS data, which indicated the City was over 49% and that the Latino % of CVAP was continuing to increase 2-3 percent per year, was not until after the original trial testimony).
• The November election, whose certification the court blocked, elected the City’s first African-American Councilmember. At the time the injunction was requested it was known that election was guaranteed to elect either an African-American or a Latino, as two seats were up for election and only one Anglo was running (against a Latino former Councilmember and two African Americans).
• All of the incumbent Councilmembers (except one who did not run for re-election but who stays in office while the injunction against certification is in place), along with the newly-elected-but-not-yet-certified African American Councilmember, and along with the Latino former Councilmember who lost his effort to rejoin the Council in this recent election, are drawn into a single district (District 2) in the court plan.
• The Court directs the City to consolidate its elections with statewide November even-year elections, but LA County has recently barred jurisdictions from consolidating for the technical reason that the LA County ballot has no more space on its ballot card for any more local elections.

An interactive ArcGIS Online version, in color, of the district plan ordered by the court is available at the link below for anyone interested in a version easier to read than the black & white map in the ruling. The large unshaded areas in the middle are unincorporated county islands.

http://bit.ly/1izbGFG

(If you use this map for professional or academic purposes, please attribute it to National Demographics Corporation).

This case is likely to remain interesting as it winds through the judicial process.

UPDATE:

On the third bullet  point, Ely responds via email: “This is true. It is also true that District 2 represents a clear distinctive community of interest with 1/4th of the City’s population. That community has a much lower minority population than the rest of the city. The fact that 3 of the 4 current incumbents, and all 4 if the recent election was certified, live in this one community, clearly illustrates the problem with the at large election scheme. The fact that the 3 incumbents mentioned would each have their own district in the City proposed plan further illustrates how that plan would be a poor remedy for the violation.”