Gerrymandering
Scott Hardie | November 27, 2014
It keeps getting uglier. Gerrymandering is evil.
Scott Hardie | June 27, 2015
I wonder if the following constitutional amendment would suffice to eliminate gerrymandering in a workable fashion:
1. No congressional district in a state may exceed by more than 10% the population of another congressional district in the same state. [plain English: Districts must have roughly the same number of people.]I don't know if the fourth point would be feasible, but it feels like as good as the first three steps are, they're not quite good enough to eliminate the problem. I really do like the first two points, though. Some people would complain that rural districts can be enormous while urban districts can be tiny, but it's the fairest way to make sure that all people are roughly equally represented. Forcing the districts to be rectangular prevents the insane shapes that many districts take now.
2. Each congressional district must have exactly four borders, two drawn along parallel lines latitudinally, and two drawn along parallel lines longitudinally, except where the border of a state makes such lines impossible. [plain English: Districts must be rectangular, except where that's impossible because of coastlines and rivers along the edge of a state.]
3. Re-districting is to occur every ten years, reflecting changes in population. States whose existing district assignments satisfy the two requirements above are not to draw new districts. [plain English: If it ain't broke, you aren't allowed to tinker with it.]
4. If re-districting is needed, the state has six months after the census to submit re-districting plans to a federal bipartisan committee who will review them for fairness. Failure to meet the committee's approval requires re-submission within three months, repeating as many times as necessary to receive approval, during which time the state is subject to penalties including fines and/or lack of representation in congress. [plain English: A neutral committee has to make sure you're not still gerrymandering even with the stricter limits above.]
Scott Hardie | January 13, 2017
I'm hopeful to see that a new legal strategy might weaken or kill gerrymandering. An algorithm seeking equality of "wasted votes" instead of an equality of people per district is an interesting tactic to pursue and probably a fairer and better one in the long run. Here's wishing them success, because the country needs it.
Scott Hardie | April 1, 2019
Slate just ran an editorial from a mathematician who just briefed the court about it, who somewhat alarmingly describes how badly the justices all misunderstood what was being asked of them. Fixing gerrymandering is not about equality of electoral representation, or about equality of electoral outcome; it's about deviation from a mathematical norm, to identify and eliminate deliberate interference in the process. That sounds to me like a pretty good standard to apply.
Scott Hardie | June 29, 2019
I am deeply disappointed in the Supreme Court's refusal to strike down partisan gerrymandering this week. Not only did they say it's not their place to interfere in state legislature's decisions; they said it's not the place of federal courts at all! That's your jobs. State courts can and should rule on the legitimacy of what seems like a case of partisan gerrymandering, but they get it wrong sometimes, and someone above them has to have the authority to fix those times when it's wrong. And furthermore, there should be a national standard for this, because clearly far too many states get it wrong, with no relief from their own state courts.
This is an appallingly bad decision, and I worry not just about it giving a free pass for more theft of democratic power for many years to come, but I worry that it's going to further the division of the country. In my estimation, gerrymandering is one of the major causes of our nation's worsening polarization, because the politicians can't be voted out of office and have to answer only to their bases instead of to the general electorate. Look at states without gerrymandered districts and you see politicians who are a lot more mainstream and moderate instead of being absurdly red or blue. Things are going to get much worse as a result of this decision.
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Scott Hardie | July 11, 2014
Now that a judge has declared Florida's gerrymandering illegal, it has gotten me wondering about the plague of gerrymandering across this country that is shaping elections and accelerating the split between conservatives and liberals. It's appalling. I'm curious: If the founding fathers had been able to foresee how partisan gerrymandering would eventually become a corruption of democracy, do you think would they have firmly forbidden it in the Constitution?