A County Map in Search of a Problem

Deschutes County government is embarrassing itself. Earlier this month, the Deschutes County Board of County Commissioners voted 2-1 to put a map, dividing the county into five districts, before voters. In a subsequent 2-1 vote the Board voted to put that map before voters in November. The Commission could have gotten this painful map process over with and added it to the ballot this May, but instead decided to extend this protracted process further into the future. Strategically, the decision to extend the map to the midterm elections is likely to bring higher turnout. It’s not a presidential year, but disillusioned voters intent on flipping the House and Senate will likely turn up in great numbers and somehow, some commissioners believe that this will benefit their desire to see the map pass.

There are currently a great many concerns surrounding the County’s new segmented voting map. The entire county commission listened to a myriad amount of testimony about the lopsidedness of the county district map, the increase in partisan tensions around the map and of course the exorbitant cost that adopting this map will bring about in staff time litigating the map. And yet two of them still decided to put the map before voters.

It may not matter to the pro-map commissioners. One of them, Patti Adair, is leaving the commission to run for the U.S. House. The other, Tony DeBone, will likely see his commissioner race decided in the May primary cycle before the map is voted upon. If the map goes down in flames it is no political skin off their political nose.

But if the map passes, all of Deschutes County taxpayers will have things to concern themselves with. There will be the almost-inevitable legal challenges to the map, which will cost the County dearly. Some estimate that bill will run into the hundreds of thousands. There will be the hundreds if not thousands of voters in at least one of Bend’s districts that experience disenfranchisement when they discover that the votes of Central Oregon’s largest city — with roughly half the population — have been watered down to two of the five votes on the Commission.

And that’s not even taking into account the partisan animosity that this fabricated process has already caused. Voters in an earlier election said they wanted a non-partisan commission – just more of them. Five to be exact. The low-level gerrymandering antics being thrust on the County in the form of a splintered map are now only more ironic when you consider that the initiatives citizens have successfully brought forth and seen passed in recent elections were intended to have a more professional, non-partisan and representative government.

When the committee that drew up the series of proposed maps was doing its work, they deliberated at length about what demographic data to use to draw the lines. They ended up using voter registration data. But voters are not the only people who deserve representative government. In the case of the district that would be in southeast Bend, the decision to use voter registration data meant that far more people were lumped into that district, since it contains so many families.

During the meeting in which they decided on the maps, commissioners could have voted to create a process that requires redrawing the map lines again when the results of the next Census are released. They directed County staff to look into the options, and again kicked another can. Adding that requirement would give many voters some solace that the map is not intended to privilege one certain type of voter over another.

When voters, via citizen initiative, approved the idea of making the Deschutes County Board of Commissioners a five-member board, we thought we were getting more representative government. What we have are amateurish politicians creating maps that truly divide us. The people of our region, whatever their political leanings, are not so very different and deserve better.

A long time from now, in November, the county’s voters will get to decide on this flawed map. We hope voters will see this as the problem in search of a solution that it is and reject it.

This article appears in the Source February 12, 2026.