Why is redistricting a problem

Indeed, the redistricting problem can't be solved by any one state. No matter what states like California, Georgia and Louisiana do, we will be left with a mismatched patchwork of standards across the country.

What's fair in the context of one state can be nationally unfair if non-partisan redistricting is done only in one party's strongholds, while the other party runs wild in its strongholds. The lessons of our years of research on Congressional elections indicate that resolving the gerrymandering dilemma is only part of the problem. Redistricting reform can minimize the ability of partisan legislators to punish their enemies and reward their friends, but for competitive elections, legislative diversity, and other public interest goals multimember districts with proportional voting are needed to maximize the effectiveness of these reforms — and ensure all voters have choices and no strong prospective candidate is shut out of a chance to participate.

Reforms at the congressional level have gone nowhere due to the Senate filibuster. And Democrats failed to make much progress flipping state legislative chambers. According to a tally by Stephen Wolf for Daily Kos Elections , Republicans have sole control of line-drawing for 38 percent of House districts, and Democrats only have 16 percent. The rest of the country has either divided partisan control of the process or has handed it off to commissions.

Overall, then, the GOP will quite likely gain an advantage in taking back the House, but just how much of an advantage is still up in the air. These are the easiest to predict — Republican-controlled states will try to draw pro-Republican maps, and Democratic-controlled states will try to draw pro-Democratic maps. The problem for Democrats: Republicans simply control more of these states. Other GOP-controlled states: Republicans control the redistricting process in 14 more states, most of which are solidly red.

The party has the chance to knock out several Republican seats there — as many as five, according to the New York Times. Illinois is the only other big state where Democrats control map-drawing, but their gains there will likely be smaller. Other Democratic-controlled states: Democrats have full control over map-drawing in five more states, but they have fewer opportunities to make gains — those opportunities appear to be for one seat in Maryland where a Democratic legislative supermajority can cut out Republican Gov.

Larry Hogan from the process and one in New Mexico. States with divided partisan control: Finally, there are some states where the two parties are sharing power. Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and Louisiana each have Democratic governors and GOP-controlled legislatures, and that will mean some tense negotiations. A court could take a neutral approach, or act politically if the justices are so inclined for instance, Democrats have a majority on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, but conservatives have a majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

For another group of states — those using commissions to redistrict — partisan outcomes are more difficult to game out. The commissions used in different states vary quite a bit, and much may hinge on precisely who is selected to them. All of the arcane gamesmanship described above would be irrelevant if the House adopted proportional representation with multi-member districts.

In such a system, the seats in the legislature each party gets would depend on what proportion of the vote they win in the relevant area. Gerrymandering is so effective because the US uses single-member districts where there can only be one winner. With proportional representation and multi-member districts, a party winning 60 percent of the vote in a state would get about 60 percent of the seats in a state.

But that would be a major change in the way the House has long worked, with one member per district. Even Democrats were unwilling to go this far in their voting reform legislation. If this was not complicated enough, you likely live in local districts, too, such as city council, county supervisor, school board, and even districts like water and conservation districts, among many others. While it may seem difficult for you to discover all the districts that you live in, it is important to be able to determine who represents you.

Have a problem with your school? Contact your school board member. Your social security check is lost? Contact your member of congress. Most elected officials have staff to help you with these sorts of problems. They don't care which political party you are aligned with, as elected officials have learned that constituent service builds goodwill even with people of different political parties.

If you do not know who represents you, elected officials know who they represent. If you are a registered voter, around election time you may receive literature in the mail, phone calls, and visits to your door from people campaigning for office.

When you vote, you will find that you can only vote for candidates to the offices in the districts you live in. In single-member districts, like those for the U. House, voters elect only one candidate to represent their district.

In multi-member districts, voters can elect two or more candidates. Most United States governments tend to use single-member districts for legislative offices. In , the federal government passed a law requiring that congressional districts be single member. Single-member districts are not required by the U. Constitution, and they were not necessarily used in the past. Many states and localities also use single-member districts.

Some states have multi-member state legislative districts and some local governments use multi-member districts for local offices. There are different flavors of multi-member elections. If all the members are selected at-large , then voters vote separately for candidates to each office. For example, if two members are elected from a district, then voters would cast a vote for the candidates seeking the first seat and vote separately for candidates to the second seat.

Some states use bloc voting , where voters receive a number of votes equal to the number of offices to fill, all the candidates run against each other, and voters can vote for as many candidates as they have votes. Some localities may use uncommon - to the United States - proportional representation methods to elect multiple candidates from the same district. The up-shot of multi-member districts is that a legislature may have 60 seats, but if all members are elected from two-member districts, there may be only 30 districts.

Some states like Maryland and New Hampshire even allow the number of members elected from each district to vary. Why Do Redistricting? Redistricting is the redrawing of legislative districts. By federal law, redistricting must occur following a census for two reasons. First, new districts must be drawn when a state gains or loses congressional districts as a result of the apportionment of congressional districts to the states. The new measure could be the kind of clear standard that the Supreme Court has not yet found in other cases.

Lawsuits in North Carolina and Maryland also argue that manipulating maps for partisan advantage violates the First Amendment rights of voters. This burden or penalty, moreover, is entirely intentional. Indeed, even if the largest Democratic wave in a generation occurs, the plan will still produce a Republican supermajority. In North Carolina and other Southern states, Republican politicians have tried to justify biased maps by pointing to the Voting Rights Act of , or VRA, claiming the law required them to pack black voters into majority-minority districts after the Census.

States have to balance their obligations under both VRA and the U. Alabama legislators drew one district in which more than 70 percent of the voters were black—far more than was necessary to ensure black voters a fair shot at electing their preferred candidate.

The Supreme Court could continue providing clearer guidelines on unconstitutional racial gerrymandering in this term. In McCrory v. The Supreme Court has made clear that map-drawers must start by asking how to maintain districts in which voters of color can elect their preferred candidates. Politicians cannot use the Voting Rights Act as an excuse to pack black voters into a few districts and make the surrounding districts whiter.

The ongoing partisan gerrymandering lawsuits have the potential also to offer clear guidelines on how far map drawers can go in manipulating lines to benefit their political party. The U. Supreme Court is considering two redistricting cases this term and hears oral arguments on December 5. Redistricting maps are also challenged at the local level. For example, in , a lawsuit was filed in a federal court in Georgia challenging the district maps for the Gwinnett County Board of Commissioners and Gwinnett County Public Schools Board of Education.

To address the manipulation of maps by politicians, voters must look beyond the courtroom and demand reforms that take these decisions out of the hands of politicians. At the very least, the redistricting process must include proper constraints and clear guidance, as well as public transparency and input.

Some states have set up processes that minimize the power of politicians to manipulate the districts, including establishing independent redistricting commissions, creating clear legal guidelines for drawing district maps, and opening the process up to the public.

Several Western states use independent commissions to draw election districts using fair, neutral criteria. States and local jurisdictions should follow the lead of California and establish bipartisan independent redistricting commissions responsible for drawing congressional and local district maps.

Independent commissions offer several benefits, including eliminating the appearance of impropriety and making elections fairer. There are different ways to design independent or citizen-led redistricting commissions. These commissions should be comprised of an equal number of members associated with each major party, ensuring that at least one member from the opposing party must vote for any plan before it is implemented.

Missouri goes so far to require a supermajority to approve any final redistricting plan to ensure that all views are considered. In addition to partisan diversity, members of any independent commission should be representative of demographic differences to ensure that the commission is representative of the populations in the districts it is responsible for drawing. In California, 99 a panel of state auditors chooses 20 potential commissioners—with an even number of Republicans, Democrats, and independents.

At the local level in California, Sacramento and Berkeley residents recently approved ballot measures that establish independent redistricting commissions for drawing local city council maps beginning after the Census. Both measures are aimed at taking map-drawing power out of the hands of those who are elected through them. Arizona voters also approved a state constitutional amendment to take authority over drawing districts from politicians and put it into the hands of an independent, bipartisan commission.

Supreme Court rejected their argument. If elected officials are tasked with drawing district lines, there must be clear criteria by which they must abide. These criteria should be established under law either through individual redistricting statutes or by including them in the state constitution, as was done in Florida.

They must set out the basic principles of redistricting, namely creating fair and neutral district schemes by prohibiting manipulation to achieve partisan goals.

The criteria should include barring consideration of party affiliation and voting records and maintaining communities of interest and neighborhoods when possible. By doing so, much of the improper political maneuvering can be taken out of the process. In addition, there should be a clear standard against which voters can hold elected official accountable for the maps that they draw.

Some state constitutions also outline the criteria that legislators must follow when drawing election districts. The Legislature itself proclaimed that it would conduct the most open and transparent redistricting process in the history of the state, and then made important decisions, affecting numerous districts in the enacted map, outside the purview of public scrutiny.

The public should be an integral part of the process—for example, through public hearings on proposed district plans or by allowing voters to submit their own proposed plans. At minimum, proposed maps should be published online and in local newspapers for the public to review and analyze prior to implementation.

Those responsible for drawing district maps may also be required to justify, on the record, the reasons they drew the lines in the way that they did. Of course, allowing opportunity for public comment and public hearings over proposed maps requires additional time that would perhaps not otherwise be needed if maps were simply pushed through the legislature by a controlling party.

However, allowing such participation is important and necessary in ensuring that redistricting maps are fair and fully representative of the people they encompass. In many places, elected officials are still in charge of drawing the electoral maps that get them elected.

These officials should have the best interests of voters in mind when they draw district maps.