How to Tilt an Election Through Redistricting
26th September 2010
A fascinating exposition of the ways and means of gerrymandering.
Unlike what seems to be the rest of the universe, I have no objection to gerrymandering. Drawing election districts so that a maximum number of like-thinking people are included together seems to me to be one of the most pro-democratic (however much it may be pro-Democratic) things one can do in a political system that, for better or worse, depends on representational elections.
I give no weight to the media hand-wringing about how it makes e.g. Congressional seats ‘less competitive’, since the self-interest of those who would have nothing to write about were there no electoral fistfights ought to be obvious to the most casual observer. If I like Congressman X, then putting me in a district of like-minded people to guarantee that Congressman X will win elections as long as he chooses to run suits me just fine. The point of representative democracy is to make sure that people’s views get represented, and there’s nothing inherent in the nature of geographic propinquity that has any relevance to that.
In fact, I would prefer an electoral system whereby a representative has exactly as much voting weight as the number of voters who have signed up to be represented by him (or her). I vastly prefer it to a system where my ‘representative’ may be someone whose positions I loathe merely because I happen to live in an area that contains more of his supporters than people who think like me. Talk about disfranchisement!
September 29th, 2010 at 00:05
The problem is this – presume an area with, say, 10 representatives, and party A has a numerical advantage throughout the state over party B. Gerrymandering is exemplified by the attempt by party B to concentrate party A’s voters into as few districts as possible.
This gives party A an overwhelmingly larger advantage in one or more districts at the cost of giving party B the advantage in representatives for the larger area, even though party A has more voters throughout the area.
September 29th, 2010 at 07:07
So how is that a problem? It’s not a problem for A; they get a lock on the concentrated districts, and a competitive shot at the rest. It’s not a problem for B, since presumably they get the advantage in the remaining districts at the cost of a guaranteed loss in the A-dominant districts. This may be a tactical political problem for A or B but I don’t see that it’s any kind of problem for the voters.
September 29th, 2010 at 10:17
Lets say that A has a 60/40 percentage advantage in voting-age population in the wider area. If there are ten districts, you’d expect there to be 6 representatives from party A, assuming that the members of A are more-or-less evenly spread through the area. If party B can gerrymander the districts so that party A has overwhelming majorities in 2 districts, and are minorities in the remaining 8, then party A gets 2 representatives instead of 6. Forty percent of the population controls eighty percent of the representation.
Sure, you can say that within each district the results are in accordance with population, but gerrymandering, by definition, uses tortured district groupings in order to optimize locally while stealing globally, so to speak.
September 29th, 2010 at 12:40
‘If your right hand is on the stove and your left hand is in freezer, on average you’re comfortable.’
Unless the population is exactly evenly distributed between A and B, any territorial districts drawn will diverge from the strict 60/40 split you posit. If you draw the districts so that the 60/40 split is preserved, you’ll get ten from party A and none from party B, which doesn’t meet your ‘expectations’, nor does it serve the people from party B. From your point of view, districts ought to be drawn so that 6 representatives come from party A and 4 from party B. There is ABSOLUTELY NO GUARANTEE that any particular configuration of districts that produces 6A/4B will not look ‘gerrymandered’ to the average (i.e. ignorant) observer. And, until the actual election is held, you have no guarantee that the 60/40 split is accurate; that’s just a guess on your part — perhaps a well-informed guess based on history and current polling, but a guess nevertheless.
The only way to guarantee a result such as you desire is to have proportional voting, i.e. people vote throughout the entire region for parties rather than individuals and the parties pick the representatives. That’s what European countries typically do, with results as you see them. I prefer the way we and the Brits do it, imperfect as it may seem.