The Twisted History of Gerrymandering in American Politics



This is the best explanation of gerrymandering you will ever seeBy?Christopher IngrahamMarch 1, 2015Gerrymandering -- drawing political boundaries?to give your party a numeric advantage over an opposing party --?is a difficult process to explain. If you find the notion confusing, check out the chart above --??adapted from one?posted to Reddit this weekend?-- and wonder no more.Suppose we have a very tiny state of fifty people. Thirty?of them belong to the Blue Party, and 20 belong to the Red Party. And just our luck, they all live in a nice even grid with the Blues on one side of the state and the Reds on the other.Now, let's say we need to divide this state into five districts. Each district will send one representative to the House to represent the people. Ideally, we want the representation to be proportional: if 60 percent of our residents are Blue and 40 percent are Red, those five seats should be divvied up the same way.Fortunately, because our citizens live in a neatly ordered grid, it's easy to draw five lengthy districts??-- two for the Reds , and three for the Blues. Voila! Perfectly proportional representation, just as the Founders intended.?That's grid 1 above, "perfect representation."Now, let's say instead that the Blue Party controls the state government, and they get to decide how the lines are drawn. Rather than draw districts vertically they draw them horizontally, so that in each district there are six Blues and four Reds.?You can see that in grid 2 above, "compact but unfair."With a comfortable Blue majority in this state, each district elects a blue candidate to the House. The Blues win 5 seats and the Reds don't get a single one. Oh well! All's fair in love and politics.In the real world, the results of this latter scenario?are similar to what we see in New York, though there are no good examples of where a majority party gives itself a clean-sweep. In 2012, Democrats received 66 percent of the popular House vote. But they won 21?out of 27?House seats, or three?more than you'd expect from the popular vote alone. And from a purely geometric standpoint, New York's congressional districts aren't terribly irregular -- at least?not compared to other states.Finally, what if the Red Party controls the state government? The Reds know they're at a numeric disadvantage. But with some creative boundary drawing --??the type you see in grid 3, "neither compact nor fair" --?they?can slice the Blue population up such that they only get a majority in two districts. So despite making up 40 percent of the population, the Reds win 60 percent of the seats. Not bad!In the real world, this is similar to what we see in Pennsylvania. In 2012, Democrats won 51 percent of the popular House vote. But the only won 5 out of 18 House seats --?fewer than one third. This was because when Pennsylvania Republicans redrew the state's Congressional districts, they made highly irregular districts that look like the one below, PA-7, one of the most geographically irregular districts in the nation.Now, this exercise?is of course a huge simplification. In the real world people don't live in neatly-ordered grids sorted by political party. But for real-world politicians looking to give themselves an advantage at redistricting time, the process is exactly the same, as are?the results for the parties that gerrymander successfully.The easiest way to solve this issue, of course, would be to take the redistricting process out of human hands entirely.?There is?already software capable of doing just that?-- good luck getting any politicians to agree to it, though.The Twisted History of Gerrymandering in American PoliticsEMILY BARASCHSEP 19, 2012Outlandish districts created for electoral gain are a major distorting force in the contemporary U.S., but they belong to a long tradition.In the October issue of?The Atlantic, Robert Draper offers?an in-depth analysis of current instances of gerrymandering?in U.S. politics. The practice of manipulating the boundaries of electoral districts for party or class gain is as old as the United States -- though the term is not. But Draper argues that the U.S. is the only democracy in the world where politicians have an active role in creating voting districts, and says it plays a large role in the divisive nature of our politics. Here is a brief history of the practice.571506032500GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME REDISTRICTINGBefore the term "gerrymander" was coined and even prior to the U.S. Constitution taking effect, redistricting was already being employed for political gain. Late in 1788, just after Virginia voted to ratify the Constitution and join the union, former Governor Patrick Henry persuaded the state legislature to remake the 5th Congressional District, forcing Henry’s political enemy James Madison to run against the formidable James Monroe. The ploy failed and Madison won anyway, eventually becoming the nation’s fourth president. Monroe’s career wasn’t over, though: He succeeded Madison as president. (Library of Congress)37630106540500A PHRASE IS COINEDThe origin of the word “gerrymander” was a combination of “salamander” and the last name of Elbridge Gerry, who as governor of Massachusetts in 1812 signed into law a redistricting plan designed to benefit his political party. The term was put into print for the first time by the Federalist-leaning?Boston Gazette?on March 26, 1812. Printed alongside this cartoon, it described a newly formed district in Essex County, said to resemble the shape of a salamander. The portmanteau stuck. (Library of Congress)REFORM AND REAPPORTIONMENTFollowing the 1840 Census, the Apportionment Act of 1842 required that congressional districts be contiguous and compact. It set a ratio of one member of Congress for every 70,680 residents and decreased the size of the House of Representatives from 240 seats to 223. Prior to the act, many states elected their members of the House of Representatives at large, allowing for the majority party in a state to elect all of its congressmen. Significantly, the bill decreed for the first time, that states be split into congressional districts according to the number of representatives allotted to them and that a single representative be elected from each district.?REPUBLICAN TERRITORIAL TRICKSIn 1889, the Dakota Territory entered the union as two states, North and South Dakota. The move was orchestrated by the Republican Party, then in control of Congress, to promote the admission of more states in territories leaning toward the party. By the rules for representation in the Electoral College, each state carried at least three electoral votes regardless of its population, meaning Republicans could dramatically increase their presidential chances by letting in the greatest number of GOP-leaning states. (Wikimedia Commons)STATE-SANCTIONED GERRYMANDERINGAfter the Voting Rights Act of 1965 passed, some states created “majority-minority” districts, in which the majority of the constituents in the district are non-white, based on Census data. This practice, also known as “affirmative gerrymandering,” was intended to remedy historic discrimination and promote the election of minority politicians. Section 5 of the bill stipulated that a handful of states -- all of which had created districts that systematically disadvantaged minority voters, and most which were in the Deep South -- had to get the Department of Justice’s approval on any redistricting plan.?08191500SHIFTING PRECEDENTSIn the 1993 decision?Shaw vs. Hunt, the U.S Supreme Court found that North Carolina's legislature had violated the Constitution by using race as the predominant factor in drawing its 12th Congressional District's boundaries in 1992. But in?Hunt vs. Cromartie?(1999), the Court found that a redrawn 12th was constitutional because it was legal partisan gerrymandering -- designed to create a safe Democratic seat -- rather than illegal racial gerrymandering. (Wikimedia Commons)CHICAGO-STYLE POLITICS, OBAMA EDITIONIn 2001, with Democrats in control of Illinois redistricting, then-state Senator Barack Obama was apparently able to reshape his district to his own specifications. As Ryan Lizza?detailed in?The New Yorker, that included drawing in wealthy supporters from Chicago’s Gold Coast. The new redistricting maintained Obama’s Hyde Park base, then lunged northward along the lakefront and toward downtown. As in Obama’s previous district, African-Americans retained a majority, and the map contained some of the poorest sections of Chicago, but the new district was whiter, more prosperous, more Jewish, less blue-collar, and better educated. (Associated Press)TOM DELAY, THE KILLER DS, AND THE TEXAS 11Before an indictment for money laundering forced him to resign from Congress in 2006, powerful House Majority Leader Tom Delay played a crucial role in Texas’s contentious 2003 redistricting process and helped ensure Republican dominance in his home state. Though congressional districts had already been Census-adjusted in 2001, in 2003, Texas Republicans seized the opportunity of having a firm majority in the state assembly to redraw the lines to their advantage. Outraged Democrats claimed it was illegal to redistrict again. Fifty-one House Democratic representatives -- dubbed the “Killer Ds” -- fled to Oklahoma to prevent the state house from reaching quorum. Later that summer, a group of Democratic state senators, the “Texas Eleven,” went to New Mexico for the same reason. The Republicans eventually prevailed, and 10 Democratic congressmen saw their districts markedly changed, with five losing in the 2004 congressional elections. The case eventually reached the Supreme Court, where justices ruled that the redistricting plan was constitutional but that one of the new districts was illegally racially gerrymandered. (Reuters) ................
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