Redistricting and Gerrymandering

12 Key excerpts on "Redistricting and Gerrymandering"

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  New Directions in Congressional Politics

  • Jamie L. Carson, Michael S. Lynch, Jamie L. Carson, Michael S. Lynch(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Given the proximity to the next round of redistricting and the highly contentious nature of the process, in this chapter I begin with some background information on redistricting across the states. Next, I turn to a discussion of some myths and realities surrounding the redistricting process and its consequences. I then outline the current state of redistricting in light of recent legal challenges and state initiatives. Finally, I conclude with a discussion of what might be expected during the next round of redistricting and the ensuing congressional elections.

  The Context of Redistricting

  In order to understand the role redistricting plays in congressional elections, one must first understand what redistricting is and is not. As such, it is important to distinguish between Redistricting and Gerrymandering. Redistricting is simply the process by which states redraw their existing congressional boundaries at least once a decade. As the population within a state changes or a state gains or loses seats within the House of Representatives, it becomes necessary for mapmakers to construct a new map that accounts for these changes. There is nothing inherently partisan or political about redistricting. Conversely, gerrymandering is the political exploitation of the redistricting process, typically to achieve a partisan goal. Mapmakers throughout history, especially within state legislatures, have exploited the redistricting process to construct district lines that favor their party’s candidates in subsequent elections. In short, every new map is a product of redistricting, but not every new congressional district has been gerrymandered.

  Numerous measures have been employed in order to determine if a map has been gerrymandered. One of the most common metrics is “compactness.” Though there is disagreement over how to best measure compactness, the logic behind each strategy is the same. The most compact shape is a circle, which means the more a district deviates from this shape, the less compact it is. Though there are reasons why a district may be irregularly shaped – such as natural geography or adherence to other existing political boundaries – largely non-compact districts are generally indicative of the presence of gerrymandering.

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  Gerrymandering Texas

  • Steve Bickerstaff, C. Robert Heath(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Texas Tech University Press

    (Publisher)

  Technology improves each decade and plays a major role in redistricting. Computers with GIS (geographic information system) software can calculate data and display proffered redistricting plans in seconds that only three decades ago took hours of work and reams of paper to construct. Specific software for redistricting is being used at every level of government in the United States. This technology makes redistricting easier, faster, and more accurate for those charged with the task, but it also has the same benefits for people wanting to gerrymander districts.

  Gerrymandering

  Since the word itself has crept into the explanation of the redistricting process, here is an opportune point at which to define gerrymandering. Gerrymandering is the design of the boundaries of electoral districts so that an incumbent or a dominant political party has an election advantage. In some instances, it has meant the failure to redistrict at all. Changing districts to accommodate democratic changes may be divisive, even among members of the same political party. With this political infighting, one may understand why maintaining the status quo is often the easiest option. For many decades, Texas, like many other states, was gripped by legislative gridlock over redistricting because any change in district boundaries was contrary to the self-interest of those making the decision.

  Essentially, a gerrymander occurs when self-interest is substituted for the public’s interest. Texas has not avoided this practice. Both major parties have engaged in it. Sometimes it has achieved its purpose, and sometimes not.

  In recent years, there has been an outcry in the United States against gerrymandering electoral districts. Opponents of the practice charge that voters should choose their politicians rather than allowing politicians to choose their voters. This aphorism is a general truth but is an oversimplification of the complex processes and competing interests that affect the redrawing of election districts. Gerrymandering is about power, control, and political survival and has been reconstituted across our history for the needs of each particular moment.

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  Gerrymandering the States

  Partisanship, Race, and the Transformation of American Federalism

  • Alex Keena, Michael Latner, Anthony J. McGann McGann, Charles Anthony Smith(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  Then, we discuss our research design – how we estimate the partisan symmetry of state legislative maps, and how we collect data on the partisan composition of all state legislative districts nationwide, before and after 2011 redistricting. We conclude by reporting the findings of this investigation and analyzing some descriptive trends. .    “”? “Gerrymandering” is a concept that means many things to many different people, but most commonly refers to the deliberate manipulation of legislative district boundaries in order to achieve some political or per- sonal objective that serves the interests of those in power (or those who have been charged with drawing the lines). Gerrymandering occurs in electoral systems that assign seats in a legislative body to geographically localized constituencies. Gerrymandering is a phenomenon that is typically associated with electoral systems that employ single-member districts, such as the 16 What Happened in 2011? The Other “Great Gerrymander” United States or the United Kingdom, and which have two parties. However, in principle, any electoral system that assigns representation based on the spatial demarcation of constituency boundaries may be vulnerable to some forms of gerrymandering. The term “gerrymandering” borrows its name from an American politician, Elbridge Gerry, who used his power as governor of Massachusetts in 1812 to approve a state senate district plan that served the interests of his political party, the Democratic-Republicans. However, the practice of manipulating the geographic boundaries of electoral dis- tricts predates the founding of the United States. Early forms of gerry- mandering can be traced to Great Britain, as early as the 1700s, when politicians would draw “rotten boroughs” for which a single neighbor- hood or city block – or even a single estate – would be drawn into one district, represented by a member of Parliament.

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  Turkey's Electoral Geography

  Trends, Behaviors, and Identities

  • Edip Asaf Bekaroğlu, Gülsen Kaya Osmanbaşoğlu, Edip Asaf Bekaroğlu, Gülsen Kaya Osmanbaşoğlu(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Historically, gerrymandering, to a large extent, flourished in the US, which is the very basis of the term itself; it is derived from Massachusetts’s Governor Elbridge Gerry’s name for his intentional distriction. Indeed, the word is actually a combination of his name and the word “salamander”, as his reshaping of electoral districts in favor of the Democratic-Republican Party had the appearance of such; the term was first used in the Boston Gazette on March 26, 1912 (Bickerstaff, 2020, p. 10). Gerrymandering refers to the deliberate manipulation of electoral districts and borders for political gain on the basis of division, concentration, malapportionment, and such calculations based on demographic presumptions. Gerrymandering turns the one person, one vote principle into “one person, one vote, one mess”, creating a kind of electoral bias in which a small percentage of a particular voting population can significantly affect the election results (Niemi & Deegan Jr., 1978; Grofman, 1983). Yet, it remains difficult to unequivocally determine when gerrymandering has occurred. Current election laws and judicial standards are not sufficiently specific or uniform to detect gerrymandering in most cases. As Browning and King note, gerrymandering became a justiciable issue in 1986 in the US, as per the Bandemer case in the literature (1987, p. 305). A decision issued in 2004 by the US Supreme Court attempted to curtail the partisan gerrymandering activities in the US that began with the 2010 redistricting process (McGann et al., 2016). Although gerrymandering is not defended by the courts in general, well-defined standards for detecting gerrymandering in the US remain undefined.

  Gerrymandering is seen a barrier to equal representation of the citizenry with the potential to damage the popular representation aspect of a democratic system. Even in consolidated democracies, gerrymandering continues to exist as a method used to manipulate election results by a governing party or opposition, as Balinski (2008, p. 98) observes: “Gerrymandering is widespread and decidedly ecumenical: both parties indulge”. Sometimes the motives behind gerrymandering can be based on the mode of economic production, as Malesky (2009) observed for the Venezuelan subnational division case. On the other hand, in the Slovakian case, nationalism that stemmed from ethnic and religious identity shaped the gerrymandering activities rather than using districting as a reflection of functional economic means (Halás & Klapka, 2017, p. 1572). Here, one should also remember that the Congress Party of India also utilized gerrymandering as a unifying strategy to maintain its majority power in religiously and linguistically divided India (de Mesquita, 1978). Researchers have observed that the effectiveness of gerrymandering varies according to the type of electoral system; however, gerrymandering is more effective in a simple majority system.

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  Site Matters

  Strategies for Uncertainty Through Planning and Design

  • Andrea Kahn, Carol J. Burns, Andrea Kahn, Carol J. Burns(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Districting need not necessarily result in one party receiving an unfair advantage over another. This process could instead be viewed as an opportunity – to improve land-use patterns; to establish a social context for spatial planning at all levels of government; to inform, make transparent, and democratize public decision-making relative to issues such as the uses of free speech and free assembly; and even to raise fundamental questions about social and political values in a democracy. These opportunities extend well beyond the need to insure partisan neutrality.

  Consider the many ways locally drawn lines for use in public decision-making have come to be created and used in the past, exclusive of gerrymandering:

  • Constitutional (re)districting, a process by which electoral boundaries are changed with no purpose other than meeting the mandatory requirement of reestablishing district boundaries every ten years following the decennial census, subject to two agreed-upon constitutional requirements: that each district has approximately the same number of people and that each voter has an equal say with their vote (1:1)5
  • Redistricting, by which existing divisions are changed for the sole purpose of enabling voters to most conveniently cast their ballots
  • Simple redistricting, a process by which existing boundaries play a major role in assessing the appropriateness of new lines
  • Voluntary redistricting, by which electoral district boundaries are changed to take into account demographic change (used specifically to reverse or adjust the effects of gerrymandering)
  • Natural districting, by which district boundaries are established following some perceived “natural” or plausible topographic lines of territorial division (the opposite of gerrymandering)6

  Other possibilities, while not currently in use, are worthy of consideration, if only to stimulate thought regarding the real purpose and effects of districting approaches:

  • Justlymandering

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  Malaysia's 14th General Election and UMNO's Fall

  Intra-Elite Feuding in the Pursuit of Power

  • Edmund Terence Gomez, Mohamed Nawab Mohamed Osman, Edmund Terence Gomez, Mohamed Nawab Mohamed Osman(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  What do these findings suggest? Simply stated, malapportionment continued to provide the BN with fundamental advantages in GE14. The redelineation exercise perpetuated previous biases: whereas voter density was a clear factor in determining district boundaries, partisan bias almost certainly kept districts in BN-leaning areas smaller than those with similar attributes in opposition-leaning areas. Without the advantage this provided the BN in the translation of votes into seats, PH would have secured an even larger seat margin in GE14. The boundaries ultimately were most disadvantageous to PAS, which was competitive only in districts that previous redelineation exercises had allowed to grow far larger than appropriate based on their geographic and demographic attributes.

  Gerrymandering

  Gerrymandering is the strategic manipulation of district boundaries to the advantage of one party or coalition without substantially altering the number of voters in the district. As noted, it has two potential objectives. The first is to increase the efficient usage of votes for the incumbent while decreasing the efficiency for the challenger. This is achieved by either “packing” opposition supporters into districts where they form an overwhelming majority (increasing the opposition’s surplus votes), or “cracking” areas where opposition supporters form a majority into new districts where they do not (increasing the opposition’s wasted votes). The second objective is strategic and involves altering the composition of district demographics to align with the incumbent’s strategic orientation.

  There is ample evidence that both objectives were pursued in past redelineation exercises, as well as clear indications that they also impact the boundaries used in GE14. However, the effects of gerrymandering need to be viewed in a broader context. Gerrymandering as a means of affecting the translation of votes into seats is less powerful than malapportionment; as such, the effect of gerrymandering is overshadowed by malapportionment in contexts like Malaysia’s where there are few practical limitations on variation in district sizes. An application of Brooke’s method in Oliver and Ostwald (2018) suggests that the vast majority of the partisan

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  Red and Blue Nation?

  Characteristics and Causes of America's Polarized Politics

  • Pietro S. Nivola, David W. Brady, Pietro S. Nivola, David W. Brady(Authors)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • Brookings Institution Press

    (Publisher)

  Gerrymandering—the political manipulation of legislative boundaries for par-tisan or incumbency-protection purposes—provides an almost irresistible account of how self-interested incumbent officeholders and political parties dominate the redistricting process to diminish competitiveness and build ever-safer partisan enclaves in legislative districts around the country. These skewed districts, in which the threat of competition in the primary election becomes more worrisome than the general election, turn into breeding grounds for politicians operating at their party’s ideological pole. The shockingly low level of competitiveness in the two U.S. House elections following the post-2000 round of redistricting—as well as the colorful (and appalling) story of Tom DeLay’s successful mid-decade re-redistricting in Texas—has reinforced the widespread view that gerrymandering is responsible for partisan polarization. But is gerrymandering really at the crux of the polarization problem? And would reforming the practice actually make a substantial difference? The fore-going account of the historical evolution of partisan polarization raises doubts. And as we shall see, the weight of scholarly evidence comes down on the side of those who argue that redistricting is not the sole or even a primary cause of polarizing the house of representatives 265 1. Jacobson (forthcoming 2007). polarization. But that does not mean it is irrelevant. Gerrymandering may con-tribute marginally to the decline in competitiveness (and, in turn, to the collapse of the center), but most of the important developments in democratic politics are shaped at the margin. In addition, gerrymandering increasingly may be less of a cause and more of an effect of polarization, providing a means for intensely competitive and ideologi-cally polarized parties to maintain or achieve majority control. It may, in other words, accelerate a dynamic that was set in motion by other forces.

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  Geography of Elections

  • Peter J. Taylor, Ron Johnston(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  The result was that black politicians argued on both sides of the case and hence confused the racial issue (Dixon, 1968). In this situation, despite the racial gerrymandering precedent of Gomillion v. Lightfoot, the court really had no option but to find in favour of the defendants. The plan was finally overturned on malapportionment grounds, but there remains no example of courts penalizing boundary discrimination of voting districts. Quite simply ‘the Supreme Court had refrained from condemning partisan gerrymandering as unconstitutional’ (Dixon, 1968, p. 485). We make no apologies for going into details of these court cases in a geography book, because the issues raised are of basic importance to understanding the geography of representation in the U.S.A. Furthermore, this legal airing of geographical boundary problems has implications for plurality elections beyond the U.S.A. Its major purpose in the context of this chapter, however, has been to illustrate the complexity of what, at first sight, seems to be a quite straightforward topic. Gerrymandering is not the equivalent of the pre- Baker v. Carr era of the malapportionment example. Litigation in gerrymandering is different in kind from litigation in malapportionment. There are not going to be any ‘breakthrough’ cases leading to its eradication. There is no easy solution to the districting problem in America or elsewhere. In the next chapter we will show that boundary discrimination can only be overcome by adopting far more fundamental changes in electoral law than merely tinkering with the cartographic ground rules. 8   Electoral Reform Electoral abuses spawn electoral reformers. The rate of reform activity and its variable success depends upon many factors, not least of which is the perceived level of abuse. As abuses gradually get worse, as with American malapportionment, or just become more apparent, pressure for reform rises and the electoral status quo is forced onto the defensive

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  The Mathematics of Voting and Elections: A Hands-On Approach

  Second Edition

  • Jonathan K. Hodge, Richard E. Klima(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • American Mathematical Society

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 12 Choosing Your Voters Focus Questions In this chapter, we’ll explore the following questions: • What is gerrymandering, and what are some recent examples of ger-rymandering in the United States? • What are some of the laws and regulations that govern redistricting? • What is compactness, and how is it related to gerrymandering? What are some different ways of measuring the compactness of a congres-sional district? • What are some ways to measure the partisan fairness of a districting plan? • What is the efficiency gap, and what kind of information does it provide about partisan fairness? • What are some possible solutions to the gerrymandering problem? Warmup 12.1. In Figure 12.1, suppose that each circle represents a voter, with the filled circles representing Republicans and the unfilled circles rep-resenting Democrats. (a) If you had to divide the population into five congressional dis-tricts, each having an equal number of voters, how would you do it? Where would you draw the district boundaries? (b) In the plan from your answer to part (a), how many districts would have a majority of Republican voters, and how many would have a majority of Democrats? 207 208 CHAPTER 12. CHOOSING YOUR VOTERS Figure 12.1. A redistricting example (c) Suppose you are a Republican who wants to make sure that your party has a majority in as many districts as possible. Where would you draw the district boundaries, and how many districts would your party control? (d) Repeat part (c), but this time assume that you want to maximize the number of districts in which Democrats have a majority. As we learned in Chapter 11, changes in the U.S. population, as mea-sured by each decennial census, may lead to states gaining or losing seats in the House of Representatives. In addition, shifts in population may cause congressional districts to have unequal numbers of residents.

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  Voting in America

  Examining the Facts

  • H. L. Pohlman(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • ABC-CLIO

    (Publisher)

  The original caption under the cartoon called the district a “horrid Monster” that had appeared during the last session of the state legislature. In the aftermath of the 1812 election, the term “gerry-mander” quickly became the catch-term to both designate and denigrate this technique of maximizing a political party’s electoral influence. Accordingly, the origin of the term reflects the long and somewhat unsavory role that partisan gerrymandering has played in the political history of the United States.

  Figure 4.1 A broadside printing of the Gerry-mander map of Essex County in Salem, Massachusets in 1812. (Library of Congress)

  It is important to appreciate the degree to which partisan gerrymandering is a direct attack by one party on the other party’s ideology and influence. Other forms of electoral districting, such as malapportionment or racial/ethnic districting, may inflate or deflate the electoral influence of citizens based on the place of their residence or their minority status. Often the effect of such districting is to indirectly augment or burden a political party because most people who live in certain areas, such as the inner cities, the suburbs, or who are of a certain racial or ethnic minority, belong to the affected party. But such an indirect effect often has an uncertain impact on a party’s chances to win an election.

  The difference with partisan gerrymandering is that it strikes directly at the political ideology of the opposite party by one of two basic methods: “packing” or “cracking.” Packing consists of concentrating likely supporters of the opposite party into a few electoral districts, thereby ensuring many wasted votes in the supermajorities of the opposite party. Cracking, in contrast, consists of spreading likely supporters of the opposite party into many electoral districts. This dilution of their voting power ensures that the party to which they belong is a minority in each district, thus greatly reducing their prospects for winning district-wide elections. These techniques obviously violate the spirit of democratic principles, but they are both effective means by which a political party can insulate and entrench its electoral dominance by undermining the value of the right to vote by members of the opposing party.

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  Institutions and the Right to Vote in America

  • Martha E. Kropf(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  C h a p t e r 9 Choosing Voters: Redistricting and Re-Apportionment If there is any electoral institution in the United States where the rules affect outcomes, it is in redistricting and reapportionment, yet it is one of the least under- stood parts of the electoral institution. The formal rules created in every state in the nation (each of the 50 states create districts in varying ways with varying laws) also affect citizen participation in electoral decisions. Citizen votes translate into public policy via representation at the federal, state, and local levels. Within states, congress members represent approximately equal numbers of individuals, but not between states. 1 Within states, state houses and senates are typically divided into equally populated geographic districts. In the 1960s, a series of Supreme Court decisions determined that legislative bodies at all levels should be equally sized in terms of population. Thus, somebody must draw the lines to determine geographic districts of equal population size from which repre- sentatives are elected. Within cities and counties, legislative bodies are often also drawn into districts. One can probably imagine how policymakers may draw legislative lines to benefit themselves or hurt the electoral prospects of the minority political party: simply move the lines such that more core voters are in one district rather than another. When our framers created this arrangement, they probably expected some clashes over choosing representatives. And, relatively recently, observers have called redis- tricting the “blood sport of politics” (see Engstrom, 2001, citing Aleinikoff and Issacharoff, 1993: 588), but perhaps hand-to-hand combat is not what is meant by that. The history of the United States does include occasional gun duels, but a voter in 2015 should reasonably expect that to be a thing of the past.

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  Party Lines

  Competition, Partisanship, and Congressional Redistricting

  • Thomas E. Mann, Bruce E. Cain, Thomas E. Mann, Bruce E. Cain(Authors)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • Brookings Institution Press

    (Publisher)

  This is especially true when entire counties are used to build districts. The irregular geographies of counties not only produce irregular shapes in districts, but their use also prevents redistricters from 62 Micah Altman, Karin Mac Donald, and Michael McDonald slicing off smaller pockets of desirable communities. Consequently, line drawers are also less likely to achieve a “perfect” political makeup in a dis-trict because larger units of analysis inevitably mean more people, with often larger variations in their political affiliations. Given a choice between drawing a district that is too competitive or one that is not competitive enough, redistricters err on the side of caution and draw districts that are less competitive. Similarly, a more compact district might be achieved by slicing a county in two, whereas adding an entire county may unnecessar-ily increase the perimeter of a district. Redistricters may also anticipate complaints about the compactness of the districts that they draw and there-fore use the tools available to them to draw compact districts that still achieve their political goals. Conclusion Adapting an old National Rifle Association slogan, we might observe that “computers don’t gerrymander, people do.” A systematic analysis of the extent and effect of computer use in redistricting reveals that the courts’ fears and pundits’ claims are somewhat overblown. The use of computers did not change dramatically in the last round of redistricting—nor did the capabilities of redistricting systems. While there has been a dramatic decrease in the cost and increase in the speed of computing, there have been marginal changes only (with the exception of limited automated redistricting) in the range of features supported and in the power of the analyses provided by computers.

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