On Gerrymandering

Under the US Constitution, the federal government conducts a nation-wide census in every year divisible by 10 (most recently 2020, pandemic or no). And in the year or two after that, when the census results are available, every state in the nation is required to readjust the boundaries of its various electoral districts, for everything from city councils up thru state legislative districts and US Congressional districts (but not US Senate districts, since those are the entire state and not subject to subdivision).

If a state’s legislature and governor are all controlled by the same political party, they usually draw these new maps to favor their own party. This is done by “packing and cracking”. Packing entails cramming as many voters for the opposition party as possible into a few districts, leaving the voters who favor their own party in slight but secure control of many other districts. Cracking involves breaking a center of opposition politics into small pieces and attaching each of them to a larger chunk of territory which can outvote them.

Traditionally, both major parties have done this. But they did it inefficiently, using pen and paper, guesswork about allegiances, and maybe slide rules or calculators. Then along came computers with detailed, highly granular demographic information, and gerrymandering was raised from an art to a science. No longer was it necessary to come up with easily caricatured legislative districts like the original one, formulated by Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts in 1812:

Nope. Take a look at Wisconsin Assembly Districts 13, 14, 15, and 84 in southeastern Wisconsin:

Each one’s approximately rectangular, right? No obvious shenanigans, trickery, or bizarre contortions visible. But nonetheless gerrymandered, because they were purposely constructed so the ~55% to the west in conservative Waukesha County would always outvote the ~45% to the east in more left-leaning Milwaukee County. This is a classic example of cracking, and it’s why, as the Wisconsin State Journal reported after the November 2020 election, “Democratic candidates received 46% of total votes cast in state Assembly races, but ended up with only 38 of 99 seats after winning two new districts. In state Senate races, Democratic candidates secured about 47% of total votes, but only picked up 38% of the seats on the ballot and now control only 12 of 33 seats.”

Good-government advocates think this is unfair at best, undemocratic and subversive at worst, and they’d like to find a better way of doing redistricting than letting a single party control all the shots. (This is one of the few examples of bipartisan agreement in America. Democrats in Illinois are trying to tilt the playing field in their favor using the same techniques that Republicans in Wisconsin did a decade ago.)

And so those good-government groups are trying to raise public awareness of the issue by coming up with graphics like this one:

It’s easy to see that the red minority gains an unfair advantage (60% of the representatives based on the support of only 40% of the citizens) under the map at the right, with its oddball boundaries. What’s often overlooked is that the map in the middle is equally gerrymandered, except to favor the majority blue party (100% of the representatives from only 60% of the electorate). But those nice, neat boundaries are deceptive. Nothing jumps right out at you visually as indicating that there was nefarious intent. Compare these to the actual Wisconsin map above.

That’s what computers can do for you.

To our west, Iowa has had a non-partisan redistricting commission for 40 years, and Iowans love it. If such a commission (or an impartial court) in Wisconsin were to look at the above example, it might well come up with a map like this, in which the representation of reds and blues reflects the will of the people:

Unfortunately, politicians have thick skins and aren’t likely to experience much shame when confronted with the question “Why do you have to cheat to win?” Only when the citizenry takes gerrymandering to be a serious offense against democracy and turns it into a make-or-break issue when voting for legislators will we ever truly achieve the noble goal articulated by Sen. Robert M. La Follette Sr.: “The will of the people shall be the law of the land.” 

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Q1: Which of these have you heard the least about? 

 A) Cheating in the Olympics: doping 

 B) Cheating in football: deflategate 

 C) Cheating in baseball: stealing signals 

 D) Cheating in politics: gerrymandering 

Q2. Which one will actually make a difference in YOUR life?