There is a claim — strike that, an outright lie — popping up on social media sites that the Manteca City Council districts were “gerrymandered” to create a Hispanic majority district.

Given based on 2020 Census that 40.59 percent of Manteca’s population — the highest ethnic group beating out white alone at 34.61 percent identified as Hispanic, it would have been hard for there not to be a Hispanic majority district.

There, however, is not one.

The highest percentage, though, is District 2 represented by Dave Brietenbucher. It has the highest concentration of Hispanics at 47 percent.

The district encompasses most of pre-1975 Manteca. It includes downtown Manteca, Spreckels Park, Doctors Hospital of Manteca, Manteca High, and the Mission Ridge shopping center anchored by Walmart.

It also has the highest concentration of households that speak Spanish at 26 percent. It is also top in renters with 48 percent of the households as well as the largest number of adults making less than $25,000 a year.

Manteca has been steadily dropping in terms of percentage of the populace that is white only for the last 30 years. It was 64.06 percent in 2000, 46.91 percent in 2010, to 34.61 percent in 2020.

Meanwhile, Hispanic has gone from 25.1 percent in 2000 to 37.3 percent in 2010 and 40.59 percent in 2020.

The fastest growth in Manteca ethnic groups is Asian (includes the India subcontinent) as it has more than tripled going from 3.37 percent in 2000 to 13.92 percent in 2020.

Blacks have almost doubled. They represented 2.71 percent of the city’s population in 2000 and 4.16 percent in 2020.

San Joaquin County’s largest ethnic group is Hispanic at 38.9 percent versus white at 35.5 percent based on the 2020 Census.

Hispanics in March of 2014 became California’s largest ethnic group at 39 percent.

And it might surprise some that California, admitted to the union in 1851, is the only state that published its original constitution in both English and Spanish.

The constitution also required all laws be published in Spanish and English until 1879 when a state constitutional convention dropped the Spanish requirement.

Now let’s address the gerrymandering accusation.

When the city was moving toward district elections in 2021, the demographer presented them with four map options that created four districts, each with 25% of the city population.

The option the council took was the least “convoluted”, meaning — for the most part — common boundaries used major arterials such as the 120 Bypass, Louise Avenue, Main Street, and Yosemite Avenue.

One assumes the posting on social media was designed to make a point about the federal Voting Right Act of 1965 central to the current Congressional redistricting flap.

That is not the act that guided Manteca’s decision to go to district elections.

It was the California Voting Rights Act of 2001.

It’s core goal was to push local jurisdictions, such as city councils and school districts, to go from at-large elections to district election by making it easier for ethnic groups to argue at-large elections were diluting minority votes.

The expansion on the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965 gave ethnic groups a mechanism to sue to force a switch to district voting.

Court decisions since 2001 have come down 100 percent on the side of challengers to at-large elections.

The hammer that the California Legislature built into their Voting Rights Act of 2001 was large penalties that challengers could collect if jurisdictions didn’t acquiescent. Several cities racked up $1 million in legal costs and penalties.

Manteca’s elected leaders opted to get ahead of a no-win situation and go to at-district elections.

And in terms of what the California Legislature in its infinite wisdom expected to happen in Manteca, it backfired spectacularly.

Manteca in 2020 had two Hispanics on the council — Jose Nuno and then Mayor Ben Cantu — along with two whites, Charlie Halford and Mike Morowit. The fifth was Gary Singh, who fit the Census perimeters of being Asian.

It was almost proportionately representative of Manteca’s ethnic breakdown.

Today, there are four whites — Regina Lackey, Morowit, Breitenbucher, and Halford — along with Singh.

There are no-Hispanics.

You could argue it is an indictment of those that believe districting to take into account ethnicity will lead to “balanced representation”, whatever the heck that means.

An argument can be made again and again people don’t vote on ethnicity but do so on their values and viewpoints determined on a spectrum ranging from being conservative to middle of the road to liberal.

And in the case of local elections, it’s who they entrust to best run the government that most directly impacts their day-to-day lives.

There is no gerrymandering in Manteca.

But there is no shortage of people twisting the facts to pursue their consuming dislike of various council members.