Gerrymandering can actually be a good thing

Gerrymandering is one of those words that carries a bit of a dirty, slimy connotation with it. Even if you don't know what it means, you've probably heard it before and you probably heard it in the context of everything that is wrong with our political system.

In short, Gerrymandering is the redrawing of congressional districts in order to favor incumbents or to give an advantage to one party. These districts are redrawn every time a US Census comes out and are often drawn by the state legislature. In order to effectively gerrymander the congressional districts, these legislatures will divide the state's electorate into districts such that the opposition party is either concentrated into districts they will lose or into districts they'll win by a landslide.

For example, let's say that a state is composed of 50% people who vote Democrat and 50% people who vote Republican. Let's also say that the sate has 10 representatives. If the state were accurately represented, it would have 5 Democratic and 5 Republican representatives. But let's say the state legislature is controlled by the Democrats and they draw the districts such that the Republicans are concentrated into three districts and so that they will have overwhelming margins of victory (greater than 30%). This means that if that state evenly distributes the remaining Republican voters into the other 7 districts, Democrats will have a majority of sympathetic voters in each of these districts (albeit a smaller majority than in the heavily Republican districts) and will likely elect Democrats from all of the seven. So now a state that was evenly divided between the two parties is a solid blue state. This is a bit of an extreme case but it illustrates the point and it's not far off.

When a sufficiently large number of districts are gerrymandered, it allows situations like in 2012 when the majority of the voters in the United States voted for Democrats in the midterm House elections but republicans were elected to a majority of the seats. Because the Census is only conducted every 10 years, the next redistricting will happen in 2021 and it is very likely that the House will be controlled by Republicans until and perhaps after then (it was dominated by Democrats for 40 years until 1998 due in part to gerrymandering).

What then might the US look like if there was no gerrymandering whatsoever? Well, it might look like this:

The United States of Polygons. Image courtesy of Vox.

This method is described by Andrew Prokop over on Vox and consists of splitting states into regions with roughly the same population using the shortest possible line. As a result, you get a lot of districts that are rectagular and very few stretched districts unless there are adjacent cities or wide uninhabited areas.

But is this any better than the current system? John Sides over at The Monkey Cage doesn't think so. What you gain in terms of being unbiased, you lose in terms of representation. Specifically, Sides' take on good representation is this:

Good representation happens when representatives are beholden to specific geographical communities, who are believed to have common interests.  This is a reason to draw districts that correspond to existing cities, towns, and the like.

Good representation happens when the largest possible majority of people get to elect the representative of their choice.  This is a reason to draw lopsided districts with large partisan majorities.

Good representation happens when groups who have been historically excluded from the electoral process — like racial and ethnic minorities — get to elect the representative of their choices.  This is a reason to draw majority-minority districts (like the snakey NC-12, the subject of Shaw v. Reno and subsequent Court cases).

Good representation happens when a district is politically competitive, which means representatives work harder to represent “the people” because there is always a good chance they could be thrown out of office.  This is a reason to draw districts with a partisan balance close to 50-50.

A straight-line system is unlikely to accomplish any of these in very many districts. Obviously in the map above, representatives aren't even beholden to specific states which could cause a lot of problems.

So is there a solution? Well maybe. Several other countries have set up independent commissions to redraw their political zones but it doesn't always work and they aren't always fair. For instance, in order to represent a minority in a country, it makes sense to create districts that are majority-minority, but these also tend not to be very competitive. So often the criterion for good representation are at odds with each other.

What's the take-home message? As in all things, the problem is much more nuanced than many would have you believe and there are rarely so-called "common sense" approaches.

If any of you have any possible solutions to gerrymandering, post them in the comments.