Like most states, the once-a-decade process of drawing new legislative boundaries in California was hardly an exercise in participatory democracy. The redistricting process was historically controlled by the state legislature and maps were drawn in secret, designed to extract maximum political advantage for incumbent officeholders. The results were clear. In 2002, the first election cycle for the US House of Representatives in California using the state’s then-newly adopted legislative boundaries, saw not a single incumbent in California’s 53-person large congressional delegation...