8 Years to Reform Redistricting in the United States
By Lucas Eaves on 01/24/2013 in Democratic Party, gerrymandering, gop, Redistricting with 14 CommentsRead Time: 4 - 6 minutes
Since the official results of the election have been published, a lot has been said about the disparity between the popular vote in which the Democratic House candidates received a majority of the votes and the results that gave the House to the GOP. Attempts to reform redistricting are becoming more popular, as the practice of manipulating redistricting significantly damages the democratic political process.
These results have been explained by gerrymandering, which is the practice of abusing the process of redrawing electoral districts to create an advantage for a particular party or group of people.
Electoral districts are redrawn for two reasons. Firstly, because the Constitution requires states, following the census, to allocate seats in the House of Representatives per state according to a state’s population. When a state wins or looses a seat, the districts must be redrawn.
Secondly, in the 1960, the Supreme Court ruled states must make sure their congressional and state legislative districts need to have roughly the same population. Thus, even if a state does not win or loose a seat, they must still redraw the lines of the districts according to the demographic evolution.
The task of redrawing the electoral boundaries, however, has been subject to partisan manipulation for decades. 37 state legislatures have primary control of their own district lines, and 42 legislatures have primary control over the congressional lines in their state. In the other states it is either a politician or an independent commission who are in charge of the redistricting.
Thus, in many states the party that controls the state legislature when the electoral boundaries have to be redrawn can control the redistricting process. Of course, both the GOP and the Democrats draw districts to their advantage when offered the opportunity.
A good illustration of this practice would be the 7th District in Pennsylvania, which was evidently drawn in order to transform a usually pro-Democratic district into a Republican-leaning district.
Credit: Brennan Center for Justice
Another example is the old 23rd district in California, the “ribbon of shame” as Gov. Schwarzenegger named it, which snagged along the coast of California for nearly 200 miles in order to avoid the GOP-heavy inland communities and favor Democratic Representative Lois Capps.
Credit: Brennan Center for Justice
There are examples of such illogical districts all around the country. The practice of gerrymandering is making the political field less competitive at many levels.
When one party takes the upper hand during redistricting, it can keep an advantage for a whole decade. Moreover, when parties are not competing, they often agree to make safe districts for each other for various reasons.
When a district is safe, parties will have to spend less money during the general election, an important factor for most politicians. Additionally, creating safe districts allows politicians to either favor their own reelection or that of their allies.
These manipulations have altered the political process because the people are no longer deciding the outcome of the elections, the politicians, line-drawers and bureaucrats are.
The districts have been set until 2020. This leaves 8 years for Americans to try to change the rules and regain some control over this process. Recent initiatives in California, which created an independent redistricting commission, and Florida, which added new “fair redistricting criteria,” have attempted to take away the process from partisan hands.
If it is too soon to know the extent of the impact such changes these reforms may have had, it is clear that without any change the gap between the will of the voters and election results will remain.
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14 Comments
Steven Curtis
01.24.2013
@kicker
There is a lot to be said for allowing districts to contain folks who are largely homogeneous as to politics. This way, the citizens can be sure that the person they elect is going to represent them.
Does it create a “safe” district, sure, but isn’t that what we want since it ensures representatives are truly representative of the politics of the folks in their district.
If you make sure districts are “mixed up”, then no matter who gets elected, about half the folks are going to feel their elected officials are not representing their interests. It also makes it more likely that a small special interest group could change the outcome of an election because the normal electorate is so balanced. In this case, you’d actually be undermining the democratic process by allowing small groups to rule the outcomes, and exercise inordinate influence in Congress, then they should!!!
Alex Gauthier
01.25.2013
@alexg
districts are comprised of citizens with like-geographical and cultural interests. A gerrymandered district will ignore these spatial and cultural factors in favor of one political party. The D or R next to a registered voter’s name does little to reflect the criteria i already mentioned. Just because they identify as one party or the other does absolutely nothing to ensure that a D or R representative actually represents them. I see your point Steven, but I think you’re giving too much credence to a party affiliation than to what a representative actually hears from constituents.
Steven Curtis
01.25.2013
@kicker
As I noted below, incumbents are re-elected more than 85% of the time, which means they have convinced their constituents they’ve done a good job of representing them. Seems that is a pretty good measure of representation.
The fact that you, or anyone, wants to change the system must mean that you don’t like the current results, and want to see another outcome. What is it, explicitly, that you want to see? It can’t be representation, because that is already a demonstrable fact, so it must be something else.
Lucas Eaves
01.25.2013
@lucaseaves
The fact that 85% of incumbents are reelected does not necessary mean they have done a good job and people are happy with them. A number of factors are creating a barrier to the entrance of new players. The gerrymandering is one. The primary system in which there is always a low voter turnout but has big consequences is another. The way campaign works which gives a huge advantages in terms of finance and name recognition to the incumbents. All these elements are to be taken into account when looking at the percentage of people who get reelected.
Steven Curtis
01.25.2013
@kicker
And a different redistricting system would address these issues how???
What I find interesting is that no one who has expressed an interest in changing the method of redistricting has told us what they’d like to see. From our experiences here in Ohio, what we found was that those most in favor of changing the method offered suggestions that would allow special interests to highjack the redistricting process with a very small, but politically active, minority. These folks didn’t like not being able to control the election process, so they wanted to change the system to give themselves and their friends more control.
So, would you like to tell us what you’d suggest that would truly be more democratic, as opposed to a system that is ripe for centralized control and highjacking?
Kelli
01.25.2013
Leaders should not be picking their voters. This is not democracy. Gerrymandering has skewed democracy even more so over the years because computer computations have become more sophisticated, where it takes politicians a matter of two minutes to draw a new boundary and see past voter results within the new boundary. They keep massaging until they get it right. People should be picking their leaders. Leaders should not be selecting voters.
Steven Curtis
01.25.2013
@kicker
Shouldn’t leaders represent the views and interests of their constituents, and doesn’t the fact that approximately 85% of all incumbents get re-elected indicate that, as far as the voters in that district are concerned, the elected official represented their views.
Seems to me that those wishing to redraw districts to make contests “more competitive”, or to reflect some other pseudo-characteristic are just trying to ensure that their particular special interest is more likely to prevail.
Simon Mayeski
01.25.2013
@simonmayeski
California’s redistricting following the 2010 census and and determined by 2 ballot propositions resulted in districts drawn by a 14-member commission, balanced politically, whose members were chosen in a manner that recognized skills thought to be important in such a project. The measure also specified quite clearly what characteristics of communities were to be considered in redistricting and how those were to be weighted in determining how the maps were to be drawn. Democrats were not very happy with this new way of drawing district maps (because they previously had control of the legislature) and Republicans loved it (because it removed the control of the legislature, in which they were the minority party. and they assumed they would get a “better deal”.) In previous district drawing, “safe seats” were given to both parties, and since that usually meant incumbent security, everybody went away pretty happy. Except the voters.
The parties still were able to “toss out” a certain number of the “semi-finalists”, but certainly not all, and there had to be a certain number of Democrats, Republicans, and “Neither of those two” finally appointed to the redistricting panel. AND the final maps had to be approved by a super-majority of the panelists. The panelists were required to hold a certain number of public meetings about how the maps should be drawn, could and would accept recommendations, suggestions and sample maps drawn by the public.
The result? A Democratic super-majority and a lawsuit (that went nowhere) by the Republicans. Formerly “safe” seats became competitive (although not many, because of the way that people tend to live with and near people like them, in socio-economic terms, and they tend to vote for one party or another.) Urban vs suburban vs rural voting patterns did not change. A number of legislators had to run against fellow legislators or move their residences (many did.)
In other states, of course, gerrymandering continued, particularly in states where Republicans won control of state houses in 2010, to the extent that although Democrats got more votes than Republicans in Congressional races, the House stayed Republican, although the Republicans did lose seats.
Steven Curtis
01.26.2013
@kicker
So let me see, we should expect that a group of 14 unelected individuals, selected on the basis of criteria derived from the perceived “characteristics” of the electorate in the subject districts, will produce a “better” result than the officials duly elected by the people themselves.
What I suspect is that, within a cycle or two, such a board would be stacked with special interest activists who would promote their particular agenda. For instance, during the first cycle, consideration is given to the minority vote, but few or no minority officials are elected during that cycle. Minority activists immediately demand that the board now contain someone to safeguard the interests of minorities since there was clearly racial discrimination based on the lack of success of minority candidates. And so it would go.
The result would be a board packed with political activists, each with an agenda, and the resulting districts would be the product of political coalitions. The redistricting process would be turned into a tool of social engineering, with the actual wishes, makeup, or interests of the electorate sacrificed to the “greater social good”.
No thanks!! We’ve seen this movie before, and it never ends well for the democratic process.
Simon Mayeski
01.26.2013
@simonmayeski
Yes, Steven, that is exactly what you should expect. Remember, the ballot measure that created this Commission and the rules under which it served was voted on “by the people themselves”, and these were the people of the entire state of California.
You can “suspect” all you want, but the methods of Commission candidate and member selection are clearly specified in the measure, and every interview, every application and every meeting in which candidates were filtered, screened and selected are part of the public record. All of the discussions, speeches by member of the public and decisions are available for review. (Compare that to a behind-closed-doors meeting of elected officials that result in wildly gerrymandered districts build primarily to keep incumbents in office.) These rules are built into the law, and your “suspicion” of degradation “within a cycle or two” is not possible unless the law is changed. You are cooking up possibilities that just can’t happen in California. Study the law, and you will see that the best thing for the 49 states who are NOT California to do to help ensure fair representation for all would be to adopt California’s law on this. Some states are looking into doing just that :)
Plenty of “minority” candidates have been elected in California, and the evolving demographics AND this law guarantee that more will follow – but there is no guarantee that a given “minority” candidate will necessarily be the best representative of a district and/or elected. All may compete, and may now compete more fairly with the lines being drawn by this Commission.
Independent voters (like those who write, read and respond on the Independent Voter Network) would find your support of redistricting plans that give all that power to the majority party (see Texas as an example of how well that works out for democracy) distasteful or worse.
Steven Curtis
01.26.2013
@kicker
Mr. Mayeski seems to feel the law of unintended consequences has been repealed in California, and doesn’t want to consider the many ways in which a well intended law might go astray. Of course, the same attitude guaranteed Johnson’s “Great Society” would end poverty as we knew it.
The system of checks and balances embodied in our constitutional form of government may be messy, but it helps to guard against such “mistakes”, and, when allowed, gives us a chance to self-correct.
Unfortunately, systems like the one implemented in CA, and advocated by Mr. Mayeski, do not. Once control has been seized by a particular interest group, it is highly unlikely they will yield it without a herculean effort by the public.
But, one of the beauties of the American system is that we have 50 states in which hair-brained schemes may be tried. Who knows, maybe this really is a good idea. Why don’t we wait for a few years to see if, in the end, CA really does end up better off because of it, rather than, as Mr. Mayesky seems to advocate, rushing full steam ahead in all 50 states. Let’s see what happens, or is that too much to ask?
Simon Mayeski
01.26.2013
@simonmayeski
Steven , referring vaguely to “the law of intended consequences” and LBJ’s Great Society of the Sixties is not enough. Your arguments grow weak and tangential – you need to be more clear. Demonstrate, please, how bad actors can succeed in corrupting the process.
“Checks and balances” in California redistricting have been limited to one branch vetoing another branch’s maps, and/or the third branch (courts) drawing a new map. Please refer to this excellent summary of California’s redistricting games since 1970 – quite a tale of woe, which is what happens when we let the politicians draw the maps and therefore select their own voters: http://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/focusareas/government_ethics/roundtable/redistricting-history.html We in California got really tired of that crap.
I keep telling you that the system in place prevents your vague “seizing…control…by a special interest group” while your favored redistricting method – the status quo for the last fifty years until now – guarantees such a seizing. You warn that seizing control back from the 14 independent Commission members – whose term has now completed – will take “a herculean effort by the public”. Changing this method only requires another ballot measure, and perhaps we will see one in the future; I welcome it and the validation its defeat will illustrate. Or maybe another ballot measure will improve the existing procedures; it is likely, as nothing is perfect.
Finally, unless you can point HOW the current California legislation allows for mischief on the part of the Commission, which seems to be your entire argument,I don’t know how much longer I can invest my time in this discussion :)
Steven Curtis
01.26.2013
@kicker
Simon, you seem very concerned that someone would point out potential pitfalls of the CA system. Seems very strange coming from someone who wants “better government”.
But, that said, let us explore the ways by which the process could be corrupted. To start with, we have the application process. First, the members of the CRC are drawn from a limited pool of applicants who have been “weeded” by CA State Auditor. In the past cycle, 5,000 qualified applications were placed in the pool out of more than 30,000. Since the State Auditor is a political position, the potential for one person dramatically skewing the CRC selection pool certainly must be considered.
The State Auditor also has the power to remove any applicants who they feel might have a conflict of interest. Would a highly partisan Conservative Auditor consider a person who made calls for Obama to have a “conflict of interest” and disqualify them…. Who knows, but the potential certainly exists.
Once we have the pool of applicants, we have the three auditors who are supposed to select the 60 “most qualified”. Once again, we have unelected bureaucrats selecting a “group” that may, or may not, be slanted towards a particular ideology.
Next we have the winnowing process by the Leaders of the Legislature, from 60 down to 36. Followed by a somewhat random draw. Certainly (tongue in cheek), we don’t have to worry about Legislature leadership trying to weed out those who might propose something with which they would disagree, do we, rather than simply selecting the “best qualified” candidates.
If I were going to corrupt this process, I would do it at the pool stage, by making sure I had a large number of applicants of all three groups, who supported by ideology. I wouldn’t expect to have total control of the CRC once the process was complete, but by working with my allied in the Legislature, I could be sure that my strongest opponents were eliminated, and my minions had majority control of the next redistricting cycle.
It is a pretty simple process, and has been proposed by several Progressive groups for things like FCC license renewal, community arbitration boards, etc. The idea is to just “stack the deck”, and then slowly increase control until the other side is squeezed out.
Simon Mayeski
01.26.2013
@simonmayeski
Steven, on the contrary, since you were happy with the existing (in most states) system wherein elected officials draw their own maps and choose their own voters AND you were claiming that the new CA system had the potential of being “taken over” by special interests AND I was arguing that the legislation offered strong protection against that I wanted you to give some actual reasons why you thought that was not true or sufficient .Thank you for finally doing that. Yes, I want “better government” but I don’t believe everything I’m told or that I read. I know that I don’t know everything – but I don’t take things at face value nor do trust or distrust politicians automatically.
On, then, to the process. Weeding through 30,000 applications to produce 5,000 is hardly an easy or effective way to cheat the deal. To arrange the cards when the deck is that large in a way to benefit anyone would obviously reveal the intentions of the manipulator. That is, to choose an overwhelming number of Democrats or conservatives or red-haired Southeast Asian young males from the Bay Area or whatever other kind of filter you choose would be obvious. Same would be true for the “conflict of interest” argument.
The State Auditor is an appointed position, not elected, but even so, it is a rather unique position in CA and other states too. Please review http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/California_State_Auditor to see what I mean. In particular: “The auditor’s role is unique in that he or she, while appointed by the governor with the approval of the Joint Legislative Audit Committee, is independent of both the executive and legislative branches. Theoretically, this gives the auditor the ability to evaluate the activities of all parts of state government without being politically beholden to any.” The current SA, an auditor by training and a CPA, has been a state employee for 30 years. This is NOT a political appointment like most in state government; that is WHY this person was given this responsibility. You can worry all you want about a radical whatever taking over the position and doing bad things but it is really difficult to see how this would happen. On the other hand (and I hope you looked at the CA last fifty years of redistricting report) giving this power to elected officials HAS resulted in ugly maps. And illegal. And contested.
You contend there is room for more trouble when the 60 “semi-finalists” are selected. Well, if you could find 20 Dems, 20 Reps and 20 other/DTS who would all be “in on the game” – not going to happen. But if it did, you would then need both the Dem and Rep leadership also in on it, because they each will bounce eight from each of those three 20 member pools, leaving 36, with 8 random draws (3 D, 3 R, 2 neither) You really think they could agree enough to choose…what kind of Commissioners? Fantasy land, Steven, you’re in fantasy land if you think this could/would happen. It is a really HARD process, not an easy one. You could NOT get large numbers of prospective commissioners across all three groups to support you AND have the SA choose them. The other boards you mention are not constructed in any sort of similar way and lack all the aforementioned controls and steps – they are bluntly political appointee boards, and generally much smaller.
Thanks for doing the research this time and for working through your scenario. Your position became stronger, although not persuasive.