Political redistricting: empowering the citizens

California, the most ethnically diverse state in the nation, has not yet\ud had a redistricting complaint taken to the Supreme Court. Perhaps this??\ud success stems from caution inspired by previous cases. This article examines\ud the legal context of redistricting, the criteria utilized in this process,\ud and then examines post-1990 Census redistricting in five California\ud cities of similar size, all with significant minority populations. The main\ud focus concerns the issues of effective representation and minority involvement\ud in the process itself. Even within this small sample group, redistricting\ud exhibits a surprising variety of methods and outcomes