To create an inkblot, the kind used by psychiatrists to determine the emotional state of their patients, one simply drops a blob of ink in a random pattern on a piece of paper and folds it in half. The result is an unearthly shape onto which subjects can project their own hopes, fears and desires. Creating a gerrymandered congressional district requires complex computer algorithms, detailed census data and a whole lot of cynicism. The end result is much the same.
Gerrymandering, the practice of redrawing congressional districts to maximize political advantage for one party, is as old as America itself. The first example of this occurred in 1788, when Patrick Henry drew an unnatural district to defeat his rival James Madison in Virginia’s first congressional election. The practice is named after Elbridge Gerry, who, as governor of Massachusetts in 1812, signed a law allowing his party to draw the state’s electoral districts in his favor. One of these districts looked like a salamander and was therefore nicknamed “Gerry-mander.”
Today it is a central part of the political process. In theory, constituencies are redrawn every ten years to take new census data into account. This year, too, a redrawing of constituencies is scheduled to take place, which could have a huge impact on the political landscape in the coming decade.
The idea behind redistricting is that the boundaries should reflect the population in order to better represent it. In practice, however, this rarely works. In most states, they are not drawn by independent bureaucrats, but by the ruling party in the state legislature. This means that political partisans draw the districts in a way that makes it easier for the ruling party to win.
Today, Democrats control Washington, but Republicans have more state legislative seats and can therefore redistrict more to their advantage. The Republicans’ big wins in state legislatures in 2010, the last time redistricting was done, allowed the party to gerrymander districts across the country. In the November general election, Democrats were unable to curb that influence, and so Republicans have the ability to redistrict for 181 seats in the House of Representatives, while Democrats have only 49 seats.
Gerrymandering is achieved in two ways: by “cracking,” which is the division of a particular group of voters into two or more districts, thereby reducing their political power through dispersion, and by “packing,” which is the cramming of a particular group of voters into one district so that they become dominant in one district but have no voice outside that district.
These methods result in some truly absurd-looking congressional districts. In Ohio, there is the “snake on the lake,” connected at one point by a bridge. In Maryland, there is also a “pterosaurus with broken wings.”
The names may be funny, but gerrymandering is serious business. It disenfranchises people by weakening their voting power and has been used in the past to target voters of color. It excludes large parts of society from the political process.
Of course, an odd shape doesn’t necessarily mean a district has been gerrymandered. And some of the worst gerrymandered districts may look perfectly normal to the naked eye. But an odd shape should at least serve as a “red flag,” says Yurij Rudensky, a redistricting consultant at the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program.
“The key is to understand why the district looks the way it does. Does that follow the distribution of a community across an area? And that’s especially relevant for communities of color, which suffer from residential segregation and are often pushed to the outskirts of cities, or is it just an attempt to put as many people as possible who favor one party together in a single district?” Rudensky says.
However, at least one study has found evidence that the more “nested” a district is, the more likely it is to have been gerrymandered. Silicon Valley Data Science found that “constituencies are less compact (more nested) when one party controls redistricting” and “electorates in less compact districts tend to be skewed too much in favor of one party, providing some confirmation that the motivation behind the zoning of these districts is to achieve a particular voter distribution.”
So how should districts be drawn? Rudensky says independent commissions – which are already being used in some states – are the way to go.
“Redistricting should be people-centered and consider what political needs exist in different regions of the state. And try to use that as an organizing principle rather than trying to create a particular makeup for a congressional delegation or a state legislature,” he says.
“You don’t want individuals to be able to make decisions that affect everyone when there is a really strong personal incentive to achieve certain outcomes. That’s why the idea of appointing independent commissions of people who are far removed from politics to take on this task is so attractive to so many people.”
How did you do? Can you tell the difference between an inkblot and a gerrymandered congressional district?
