SACRAMENTO — Reapportionment, the political blockbuster with almost as many sequels as some popular Hollywood horror movies, may be making another appearance next year at a voting booth near you.

In case you're a bit hazy on political science, reapportionment is the drawing of new state, local and congressional election districts every 10 years to reflect population changes revealed by the federal census.

It's a highly controversial process because the way districts are drawn can determine the partisan makeup of the Legislature and a state's delegation to the House of Representatives for a decade or more.

And the partisan split in the Legislature and Congress can determine the fate of bills dealing with environmental protection, school funding, crime, consumer rights and myriad other subjects.

Republican and Democratic reapportionment battles reached the California ballot three times in the 1980s, and it could happen again in 1990.

Six reapportionment initiatives are targeted for the ballot next year, measures that would either take away the Legislature's power to redraw legislative and congressional districts or limit or eliminate the majority party's ability to dictate district lines.

There is a good chance that a couple of those proposals will get enough signatures to make next June's ballot, creating the potential for the same type of confusing, expensive, multi-initiative battle that voters faced last year when they decided the fate of five insurance-related measures and two political reform initiatives.

And there is a slim possibility that the Legislature will join the fray with a compromise proposal of its own.

The looming ballot battles stem from the early 1980s, when Democrats, then in control of both houses of the Legislature and the governor's office, pushed through reapportionment plans that maximized the number of Democratic seats in the Legislature and California's delegation to the House of Representatives.

Voters, acting on Republican-backed referendums, overturned those plans in June, 1982.

But in November, 1982, voters rejected a Republican proposal to give reapportionment duties to an appointed commission. And in December, 1982, the Legislature and Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown enacted slightly revised redistricting measures.

Another GOP bid to create a reapportionment commission was turned down by voters in 1984.