This polygon shapefile depicts boundaries for Congressional Districts 18 and 20 for the County of Santa Cruz, California. Portions of Districts 14 and 17 also reside in Santa Cruz County. Current Congressional District boundaries were drawn in 2011 by the California Citizens Redistricting Commission and took effect with the 2012 election. California is the most populous state in the United States, so has the most representation in the United States House of Representatives, with each Representative representing one Congressional District. The United States is divided into 435 Congressional Districts — 53 in California — each with a population of about 710,000 individuals. Each District elects a representative to the House for a 2 year term. This layer is part of a collection of GIS data created for Santa Cruz County, California. The Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Unit falls under the purview of the County of Santa Cruz Information Services Department. The GIS Unit serves all County departments and external customers and provides data on land, features and people of Santa Cruz County. Santa Cruz County encompasses 4 cities and approximately 265,000 people. This coverage can be used for basic applications such as viewing, querying and map output production, or to provide a basemap to support graphical overlays and analyses of geospatial data. These data were compiled from many different sources; therefore, the accuracy of the individual layers varies significantly, and some layers do not align exactly with others. In the urban areas, data are generally accurate within five to ten feet of their true geographic coordinates, but in the rural areas, data may be accurate to only within three hundred feet. With these limitations, the County of Santa Cruz disclaims any responsibility for the accuracy or correctness of this data. This disclaimer is exclusive and in lieu of any warranties, fitness for particular purpose, and/or any other type of warranty, whether expressed or implied. This layer is presented in the WGS84 coordinate system for web display purposes. Downloadable data are provided in native coordinate system or projection.
