“We hoped that the Supreme Court would recognize that these maps violated the law and unjustly diluted community voices here in Yakima,” said Giovanni Severino, a Yakima organizer with Progreso: Latino Progress.

Kamau Chege, director of Washington Community Alliance, said the commission “lacks credibility and their final maps are a stain on our democracy that can’t be ignored. Washingtonians deserve better.”

But legislative leaders generally praised the court…

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Margot Spindola, another RJW co-director and an organizer of the Latino Community Fund, criticized the lack of transparency around the process…”First, the commissioners told us they voted on a ‘framework,’ then they said it was a ‘redistricting plan,’ and then we learned that the chair of the commission didn’t see any maps until they were uploaded to their website a day past the deadline, according to her sworn declaration,” Spindola said in a statement. “But here’s what we do know: These maps are illegitimate, the process violated the spirit of the Open Public Meetings Act, and independent analysis demonstrates they will violate the voting rights of Latinos in the Yakima Valley…”

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While People of Color make up about 35% of the State’s population, only one of the State’s 49 legislative districts — the 37th, which includes much of southeast Seattle, from the Central Area to Renton — currently has an eligible voting population that’s majority People of Color. It’s a similar story among U.S. House districts in the state: Only voters in the 9th District, which overlies much of South Seattle as well as southern Bellevue and all of Mercer Island, are majority People of Color…

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Andrew Hong, lead organizer for Redistricting Justice for Washington, a progressive coalition that had pushed for the majority citizen voting-age Latino legislative district — said it was “unfortunate” that the Republican commissioners did not agree to such a plan, “and showed no intention of doing so throughout the process.”

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In a statement Tuesday, the coalition said the commission’s final meeting “lacked transparency and was full of confusion.” Additionally, the RJW coalition said it is prepared to take legal action, if necessary, to ensure the state’s new redistricting maps comply with the federal Voting Rights Act. In recent years, voting rights cases brought in the city of Yakima, as well as Yakima County, have led to changes in voting systems that aim to ensure Latino voters can elect their preferred candidates…
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Andrew Hong, the statewide director for Redistricting Justice for Washington, said he was concerned about how the meeting was handled. “My initial thoughts are I think we’re all disappointed with the lack of transparency and the confusing nature of last night’s meeting…”
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“To me, this whole mess shows that bipartisan is not the same as nonpartisan,” said Aram Falsafi, a resident of Seattle’s Columbia City neighborhood, criticizing commissioners from both political parties during Monday’s public meeting. “If this process fails the residents of South Seattle, some of us are going to work extra hard … to make sure the next redistricting commission is actually nonpartisan with no political hacks…”

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“We see that Washington State is roughly 35% People of Color,” said Andrew Hong, the group’s co-director, who grew up in Columbia City and now attends Stanford University. “So by proportionality, 35% of state legislators and congresspeople should be elected by Communities of Color.”…When analyzing districts, Hong uses a measure called citizen voting age population, or CVAP…
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xA coalition called Redistricting Justice for Washington is pushing for communities of color, and especially working class communities of color, to be better represented. The coalition hopes to put the 9th Congressional District, which now ranges from Tacoma in the south to Bellevue in the north, on track to have a majority-minority voting-eligible population within the next few years. Another priority is to strengthen and create more majority-minority legislative districts around the state, from the Yakima Valley and the Tri-Cities to South King, Pierce and Snohomish counties. To these ends, the coalition has proposed some maps of its own…
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…there's room for improvement all around. Andrew Hong, a spokesperson for Redistricting Justice for Washington (RJW), which aims for greater representation of POC in this process, said the group would like to see the commissioners draw the Muckleshoot nation into the 47th LD. "That's a community of color that’s been drawn into a very white rural district that doesn't share the same interests and priorities with the 31st LD," he said
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If you have lived in King County for more than ten years, you wouldn’t need the 2020 U.S. Census data to notice the radical shift of demographics in Seattle. As the city’s population drastically grew over the past two decades, many low-income BIPOC families were displaced due to gentrification. I experienced this phenomenon firsthand in 2010…
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Some advocates want the state redistricting commission to 'stop focusing on preserving incumbents’ and instead aim to keep communities of color together…
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When I tell people I’ve just met that I was born and raised in the South End of Seattle, a set of ideas of where I come from and what I’ve experienced step between us, coloring what I say next. Before I even finish my introduction, I can see in their eyes how they’ve already begun to tell a story of who I am. Sure, they see me—but they’ve heard stories. And, more often than not, they make "cultural" assumptions about the people I call my family and my neighbors….
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