Designing electoral districts to favor one group over another is known as gerrymandering, named after Massachusetts governor Eldridge Gerry, who became notorious for the salamander-shaped district he approved in 1812. In the first half of the twentieth century, gerrymandering was widely used in an attempt to prevent African-Americans and other minorities from gaining true political representation. Another practice was to create at-large districts, in which the entire population of a large area would elect several representatives. The alternative, having several smaller districts that would each elect only one representative, would have allowed concentrated populations of minorities to elect their own representatives.
Under the requirements of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, jurisdictions with a history of systematic discrimination (such as a poll tax or literacy test) must create districts with majorities of African-Americans or Hispanics wherever the demographics warrant it. At the same time, they must avoid weakening existing "minority-majority" districts (districts "in which a majority of the population is a member of a specific minority group"). This law helped to eliminate some districts that had been designed to favor whites. At the same time, however, it superseded the traditional criterion of compact districts, and made for some oddly defined districts in the name of creating African-American or Hispanic majority districts.
Computerized Redistricing
By using computer software, today's gerrymandering has become highly sophisticated. Redistricters can now incorporate a variety of information—party registration, voting patterns, and ethnic makeup—from a variety of sources, including census data, property tax records, and old district lines. This information allows them to produce a number of potential scenarios in an instant. Contemporary gerrymandering techniques are called "packing," concentrating a group of voters in the fewest number of districts; "cracking," spreading a group of voters across districts; and "kidnapping," remapping so that two incumbents from the same party are now located in the same district and vying for the same seat. Gerrymandering in the past was essentially self-correcting; by attempting to control as many districts as possible, parties risked losing, should a small percentage of voters shift allegiances. Contemporary software, however, has become so good, and politics have become so partisan, that the idea of self-correction is no longer applicable. As a result, very few seats in the House of Representatives are now competitive, with incumbents enjoying a locked-in advantage that is almost impossible to overcome.
Challenges to Electoral Districting
Redistricting has become a major source of contention between Republicans and Democrats since the 2000 census. Texas lawmakers were unable to agree on new congressional districts because the Republicans controlled the state senate and the Democrats the state house of representatives. A compromise plan was forced upon the parties by a panel of federal judges, essentially leaving the current partisan balance in place. After Republicans took control of the state house in 2002, however, they sought to reopen the redistricting question, breaking an unwritten rule that remapping was to be a matter dealt with once every ten years in order to avoid incessant wrangling on the subject. To resist, Democrats in both the state house and state senate fled to Oklahoma and New Mexico to prevent the creation of a quorum (the minimum number of representatives present in order to conduct business) and thwart the ability of the Republicans to push through their redistricting plan. In the end, the Democrats gave in and the Congressional districts were redrawn, with the potential that the Republicans would pick up seven seats in the 2004 elections.
A redistricting effort in Pennsylvania also drew a great deal of attention. After losing two seats in Congress due to a drop in population, Pennsylvania redrew its districts, a process that the Republican majority in the General Assembly openly sought to benefit their party through the latest techniques in gerrymandering. Some of the unusually shaped districts that resulted were called the "supine seahorse" and the "upside-down Chinese dragon." Even though a Democrat won the governor's race in Pennsylvania in 2002, Republicans took twelve of the nineteen House seats.
Vieth vs. Jubelirer
The redistricting plan in Pennsylvania led to a federal lawsuit, Vieth vs. Jubelirer, which contended that Republicans went too far in their efforts to favor their own party in redrawing Congressional lines. However, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Pennsylvania map in a 5-4 decision in May 2004. Justice Antonin Scalia and others of the majority opinion maintained that it was the responsibility of Congress and not the Court to define fair districting practices. Justice John Paul Stevens, a minority opinion-holder, characterized the decision as "a failure of judicial will to condemn even the most blatant violations of a state legislature's fundamental duty to govern impartially."
User Comments Add a comment…