Redistricting, the process of determining the boundaries of the districts in which people vote, is an important element of politics that has more impact than people realize. One Republican political consultant called this an election in reverse. “Usually voters choose politicians. In redistricting, politicians choose voters.”
In 33 states, Congress draws the lines for congressional districts. Under Article 8, that work is carried out by a commission independent of the legislature. In two states, both the legislature and the commission play a role in the map-making process. Her seven remaining states each have only one congressional district, so there is no need to draw district boundaries.
How district boundaries are drawn determines who wins elections and ultimately who holds political power.
With such high stakes, members of both parties have an incentive to create districts that give them unfair electoral advantages. As a result, one party or the other is generally dissatisfied with the redistricting process, and voters are left with districts that may not reflect their collective will. In some cases, the parties may not even agree on who will act as the tiebreaker or independent arbitrator to resolve the dispute.
Our research shows that politicians can choose their voters without falling into the extremes of partisan gerrymandering that occurs when redistricters create electoral maps that clearly favor one party or the other. I found a way.
Several states have undertaken efforts to combat gerrymandering, but results are unclear. Take, for example, the effort to draw new congressional districts in New York state. In 2022, the redistricting commission, which was supposed to be independent of the state Legislature, failed to reach agreement on maps, and the process returned to the state Legislature.
A map drawn by Democratic-majority state legislators was ruled by a court to be too favorable to Democrats. A court-appointed independent expert drew a new map that will result in several new Republican elected officials from New York state in November 2022. However, in December 2023, the court threw out the independent expert’s map and ruled that an independent panel should try again.
Our method, which we detail in a new academic paper, requires neither cooperation between members of the two major political parties nor an independent arbitrator to resolve disputes. Define-Combine Procedures (DCPs) allow both parties to control parts of the process and provide a fairer map than either party could draw alone. We’ve also created a website where you can try out our methods.
political impartiality
Many people have attempted to solve the problem of political fairness and redistricting in a variety of ways. Our approach focused on the age-old problem of cutting the cake fairly. How can the person cutting the cake ensure that everyone gets an equal slice? A parent can have one child cut the cake and her other child choose their favorite part? This often happens.
Using a similar approach, we propose splitting the redistricting process into two steps, each assigned to one political party.
The first step is for one party to draw a district on a map. However, unlike regular redistricting, which draws the exact number of districts needed, our process requires the first party to draw twice as many half-districts or subdistricts as hers. Like full electoral districts, these half-electoral districts must be equally populated and physically contiguous. Many states also have district compactness requirements, which also apply to this first stage of map drawing. Also, “doughnut” districts, where one district is completely surrounded by another, are not allowed.
In the second step, the other side chooses how to combine adjacent half-districts into a full-sized district.
The fact that the process is divided into these two stages makes each party’s Ambitions are suppressed to some extent.
test expression
We used computer simulations to explore how this process works for drawing congressional districts in 50 states. We find that our method significantly reduces the partisan advantage that would exist if only one party controlled the redistricting process.
For example, in the state of Texas, which has 38 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, it is estimated that if Republicans took full control of the map and acted selfishly, they could draw a map with 8 Democratic seats and 30 Republican seats. If the Democrats were in complete control and acted selfishly, they could create a map with 28 Democratic seats and 10 Republican seats. Which party controls the 20 seats in the Texas Legislature is determined by which party draws the map.
Using 2020 election results and census data, our method simulated the mapping process hundreds of thousands of times and found that Democrats won 17 seats and Republicans won 19 seats, with It turns out that only two seats will change. What part of the two-step process did you perform?
No matter who goes first, our method produces a more representative map. We also hope that reducing the number of seats that fluctuate based on party control from his 20 to his 2 will reduce the stakes and make the current process less dysfunctional.
Nationwide simulation
We also go beyond a single state and simulate how each party draws districts across the country, comparing what happens when either party draws districts unilaterally and when we use our method. showed how the results differ.
Traditional redistricting, controlled by one party, would theoretically result in 197 seats up for grabs, almost half of the 435 seats in Congress, depending on who controls each state’s redistricting process.
However, under our “combination determination procedure,” seats rotate on a partisan basis based on which party defines half-districts and which parties combine half-districts into a full district. The number of seats will be reduced to just 46.
Redistricting methods produce more fair maps. Regardless of which party is assigned the first step in the process, each party’s share of the district depends more on its level of voter support than on who controls the redistricting process.
Moving to a new method?
We recognize that the parties currently controlling the redistricting process are unlikely to relinquish that authority by adopting our process. However, there are important cases, such as New York State, where maps must be drawn by both parties or an independent commission. This happens, for example, when a judge orders states to redraw their maps after a legal dispute.
Our method may be particularly useful in such situations to arrive at a map where the parties can be equally happy or unhappy. We hope that a process like ours, if used successfully to guide the map drawing process, will become even more appealing.
In our view, fixing gerrymandering is critical to preserving America’s democratic promise. Although it is a difficult problem, it is not an unsolvable problem. We encourage mapmakers to go back to basics and take inspiration from the ways we teach children to treat each other fairly.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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