Not Only is Gerrymandering Corrupt, but it Also Dramatically Increases Corruption
By Amit Thakkar | LawMaker, Founder & CEO | August 15, 2018
I honestly never thought I’d have to write this article. However, in the past seven days alone, 11 educated adults (who all, incidentally, claim Facebook provides all the news anyone would ever need), have asked if I could maybe, “real quick when you have a second,” explain what gerrymandering is AND if it’s really a huge problem, AND ALSO how to know if their state is gerrymandered, AND IF SO what they could do about it — and “btw, hi, how are you, hope you’re doing well!”
::deep breath::
So, it was between writing this article or a biting critique of the US education system:
OKAY, HERE GOES — PAY ATTENTION!
In 2022, after the completion of the 2020 census, our nation’s political districts will be redrawn. Last month, many of us who pay attention to such things were thus very disappointed to hear that the Supreme Court sidestepped the chance to decide on the constitutionality of the creation of hyperpartisan political districts — otherwise known as gerrymandering.
Since the US uses a winner-take-all system rather than a more representative form of proportional representation, gerrymandering can distort power in immense ways. Plus, it benefits both major parties, to the expense of…well, everyone else. In 2018, we can see this in the Democrat-drawn map in Maryland and the Republican-drawn map in Wisconsin.
Yet, there is hope. Ballot propositions that could eliminate gerrymandering have been launched in Michigan, Utah, Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma — and more are likely to follow. But this means that voters like you will be left to decide how to deal with an issue that they don’t understand. So let’s fix that.
WHAT IS GERRYMANDERING?
We’ll begin with a simple truth: Gerrymandering is wrong no matter who does it.
When a government or party gerrymanders their state’s district lines, it means they are dividing voters into teams in an unfair way. If you were choosing teams for elementary school basketball, and someone put all the kids above four feet tall on one team, and all the kids below four feet tall on another team, you’d start to wonder if Coach Tyler had some money on the game.
(He did, and he’s in jail now — but enough about my childhood.)
When politicians gerrymander political districts, they distribute voters that vote for their party in a way that maximizes how many representatives they get, while distributing voters who support their opponents so they get as few representatives as possible. And gerrymanderers have becomes so good at this, they can actually take a state and create districts that come nowhere close to representing the actual political makeup of their voters.
HOW IS IT DONE? PACKING & CRACKING
To keep things simple, let’s focus on a two-party system with the Green Team and the Yellow Team.
If the Green Team was in power, and wanted to stay in power, they could take the population data from the 2020 census and make this happen. They have two easy tools at their disposal:
PACKING: Team Green could draw district lines so nearly all Yellow voters were packed into as few districts as possible. Sure, this would guarantee that the Yellow Team would win a few seats, but it would also guarantee that the Green Team wins far more, and fully controls that house of government, whether it be the state legislature or the US Congress.
CRACKING: Or, instead of consolidating opponents, the Green Team could break Yellow voters into as many different districts as possible, ensuring the they would always be outvoted by a majority of Green voters, winning few or no seats in government.
You’ll notice, that neither of these practices distorts the actual vote count. People still cast their ballots, and they are still counted, but the Yellow Team can never win a majority of seats. And, if done right, the Green Team is in power for another ten years to redraw districts again.
HOW DOES GERRYMANDERING IMPACT ME?
Gerrymandering reduces voters’ political power. And not just the power of voters who back the losing team. ALL VOTERS LOSE when districts are gerrymandered. The only winners are politicians and lobbyists.
How could this be?
On the losing side, it’s quite obvious. Yellow voters will, for the foreseeable long-term future, have fewer state or federal representatives than Green voters, and will rarely get to see their political priorities addressed in their state.
But this gerrymandered state is bad for Green voters as well. While consolidating Green power may ensure that Green politicians always win, it also means that Green political insiders and incumbents have tremendous ease winning elections. And the easier it is for politicians and parties to win, the less they need to pay real attention to their voters. The less they need their voters, the more they can cater to lobbyists, corporations, and interest groups that take them on luxurious junkets, pay for expensive meals, and provide jobs with million dollar salaries to the politicians (once retired) and their family members and friends. Let’s say this again:
When politicians don’t have to earn your vote, they can enrich themselves financially by writing laws for lobbyists, donors, and wealthy interest groups. Not only is gerrymandering corrupt, but it also dramatically increases corruption.
On top of that, gerrymandering prevents third and fourth parties from ever coming to power, and increases the number of extreme candidates on both sides. This exacerbates the polarization and gridlock in government that frustrates nearly all American voters.
HOW CAN YOU TELL IF A DISTRICT IS GERRYMANDERED?
Do you want the easy answer or the hard answer? The hard answer requires a look at the mathematical political breakdown in your state, and at least five decades of state political history…
Or instead, we could focus on the easy way: is the shape of your district really weird? When you squint your eyes, could it be a flamingo or a scorpion, or the wall after a three-year-old eats spaghetti? Do your districts look less like compact shapes and more like a tapeworm?
I kid you not — data scientists and political researchers have found that the wonkier the shape, the more likely your district has been gerrymandered.
The explanation is actually quite simple. Fairly drawn districts group people by rational criteria, such as city boundaries or natural divisions like lakes or mountains, all the while keeping the populations of districts nearly equal. Gerrymandered districts, however, prioritize the exclusion or inclusion of specific voter blocks to achieve a rigged outcome, so they are most often drawn like a octopus’ tentacles as politicians pick through neighborhoods, looking for ones that fit their intended partisan goal.
Scientific American wrote an amazing brief on the various calculations if you want a really deep dive.
The essence of all their math was this — in most cases, the more compact a district (closely resembling a square or circle) the less likely it has been gerrymandered.
If you want to see where your state lies along the gerrymandering spectrum, here is an interactive map showing the most and least gerrymandered congressional districts in the country (states with two or fewer congressional districts have been excluded). Darker shades of blue indicate higher degrees of gerrymandering, and lighter shades of blue and white indicate lower degrees.
SO WHAT CAN WE DO?
Here’s what we need to do as Americans who want our votes to count. We can demand that our states change how districts are drawn and how our votes translate into representation. Here are a couple different techniques we can use, and each state can and should adopt more than one of these:
INDEPENDENT & TRANSPARENT REDISTRICTING COMMISSIONS
The most obvious weakness with our current system is this: politicians with partisan goals have huge incentives to draw partisan maps. So, let’s take redistricting out of the hands of politicians. If they haven’t already, your state needs to create an independent and transparent redistricting commission that follows strict guidelines to ensure fair representation for all voters.
Independent redistricting commissions don’t eliminate gerrymandering altogether, but they are shown to dramatically decrease corruption and increase accountability to voters.
Can these commissions be corrupt? Yes. But by creating a commission made up of constituents with rules mandating transparent deliberations, calculations, and hearings, voters are better able to see corruption and challenge it.
YOU CUT, I FREEZE
But as we know, people are corruptible, and even independent commissions can be swayed. So, perhaps we should implement a process that acknowledges and counters the inevitability of partisan intent.
Does such a system even exist? If you had siblings, you most likely used a really good system when you were growing up.
How do two siblings evenly divide a brownie? Any parent can tell you. Let one child cut, and the other child choose.
The equivalent system for political adults is called “Cut and Freeze.”
In a cut and freeze process, one party is allowed to divide the state up into districts. The other party chooses one of those districts to freeze into the map. This second party then cuts the remainder of the state into brand new districts, and the first party gets to choose a district to freeze. And on and on, until the entire map is accounted for.
By allowing one party to cut, and the other party to choose in each round, there’s an incentive for the cutter to create districts of relatively equal political quality, lest the freezer find a uniquely powerful district and freeze it for the next ten years.
PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION
We have one more suggestion, and it’s a big one. And it strikes at the core of our assumptions about our democracy. I started this article with this sentence: “Since the US uses a winner-take-all system rather than a more representative form of proportional representation, gerrymandering can distort power in immense ways.”
This sentence alone shows how we’ve been trained to ignore a solution even when it’s right in front of us — proportional representation.
A winner take all system incentivizes gerrymandering because if each district gets one representative, parties will try to limit how many districts their opponents can win. But what if we allocated state representatives based on the actual political breakdown of the state’s voters?
Say your state was made up of 45% green, 30% blue, 20% yellow, and 5% orange voters. In a proportionately representative system, the makeup of your statehouse and your state’s federal delegation would reflect these numbers. This would mean that each voter in the state would have some representation in their state and in the US Legislature, even if they don’t share a majority opinion. And these numbers can fluidly shift with each election based on how voters feel their elected officials are doing, as opposed to being locked into place for a decade.
DID WE JUST ELIMINATE GERRYMANDERING?
Unfortunately, no. First of all, each solution above has its own flaws and peccadilloes, though we do honestly believe any combination of the above reforms creates a vastly better system than the one we have today.
But the reason we haven’t seen this solution, is because a winner take all democracy like ours requires a winner take all democratic movement in order to fundamentally change how it operates. And right now, the people in power, Republicans AND Democrats, want to stay in power and be as free to do what they want without being controlled by their voters. If you could do your job without your boss checking in on you and without the chance of being fired, wouldn’t you do everything to make that happen? That’s what our elected officials have done to us with gerrymandering.
A winner take all democracy like ours requires a winner take all democratic movement in order to fundamentally change how it operates.
If we actually want to see any of these changes happen, we have to build support. And the most likely people to support a change like this are people who don’t have tremendous political power — i.e. voters just like you.
So, now that you know there is a problem, let’s start fighting for solutions. Share this article, or come up with new solutions that haven’t been discovered yet. The key to this change is to get as many Americans as possible to demand it. The only way to ensure a fair distribution of power in an unfair system is to build so much political influence that your calls for change can not be ignored.
Call and write your elected officials, and let them know that gerrymandering won’t be tolerated. Propose a combination of solutions that makes sense to you and that ensures representative fairness.
Don’t worry, it won’t take you that long. Just start now — real quick when you have a second.
One Final Note: The best way to increase fairness in our democracy is to vote for representatives who have ethics and integrity. The 2018 midterms are fast approaching. Please check your voter registration and register to vote if you haven’t yet. Every vote truly counts.
