How to Prevent Partisan Gerrymandering with State Constitutional Amendments
Amendments to state constitutions could seriously limit partisan gerrymandering, if they reflected a deep technical understanding of how redistricting and gerrymandering work, but the language of amendments needs to be simple to be understood by voters. This is a dilemma.
Even when states pass constitutional amendments intended to prevent gerrymandering, congressional districts can still be gerrymandered. Florida is a prime example. The language in the amendment (Section 20 here) had to be watered down to be intelligible by voters to simply say no “district shall be drawn with the intent to favor or disfavor a political party.” Unfortunately, that kind of abstract language provides plenty of room to still gerrymander.
This article describes more detailed limitations that must be placed on the redistricting process to effectively curb gerrymandering and then suggests a way around the dilemma that the language of amendments must be simple.
The Structure of the Redistricting Process
To begin with, we need to understand the essential structure of the redistricting process. As Exhibit 1 shows, a map of congressional districts (output) represents a set of decisions (process) based on the data used (input) to create the districts. The decisions may or may not be written down, they may or may not represent a formal process (an algorithm), and they may be executed automatically by computers or be driven manually by humans, but, unless the decisions are random, redistricting maps are literally functions of the data used to create them.
This basic structure provides the framework for effectively proscribing gerrymandering.
Limit Data
In this context, gerrymandering can be understood simply as making decisions for partisan advantage about what pieces of geography to assemble into districts based on the characteristics of the people in those places, including direct indicators of partisanship (e.g., voter registrations, voting history) or proxies (e.g., race, ethnicity, income). Congressional districts reflect the data that were used to create them, on the one hand, but are also constrained to reflect only the data that were used, on the other.
Hence, one effective way to limit gerrymandering is to circumscribe what data may be used in designing districts. For example, a state could limit allowable data to “Total Population” from the Census for the various geographic shape (counties, VTDs, blocks, etc.). If a state can’t use data about people — can’t use measures of partisan affiliation or race, ethnicity, sex, etc. — then they can’t explicitly gerrymander congressional districts.
Constrain Criteria
Congressional districts also reflect the criteria that were used to make decisions and how those criteria were balanced to make the decisions that led to the districts. As before, congressional districts can only to reflect those criteria and that balance.
So, another effective way to constrain gerrymandering is to limit what criteria congressional districts may be optimized for in the redistricting process. For example, if a state can only optimize congressional districts for compactness and cohesiveness[1], then they also can’t explicitly gerrymander them.
For added protection, a constitutional amendment could limit both the data that may be used and the criteria that may be considered.
Make the Redistricting Process Transparent & Repeatable
Another level of robustness would be for constitutional amendments to require that the redistricting process be transparent and repeatable. This would make the redistricting body’s intent clear, preventing them from obscuring it.
To effectively reign in partisan gerrymandering then, constitutional amendments must:
- Restrict the data can be used (to census shapes, populations, and county boundaries; i.e., no data about people),
- Restrict the goals that the process can optimize for (to maximizing compactness and minimizing counties split across districts), and
- Require that the map-drawing procedure be transparent and reproducible (so intent can’t be obscured).
The baseline congressional districts described in a previous article adhere to these principles. As noted in my proposed standard for partisan gerrymandering which builds on the concept of baseline districts, the only reason courts (or states) should allow congressional districts to deviate from these process-neutral ones should be to reduce the partisan symmetry (efficiency gap) caused by the natural political geography in the state, to make districts more fair.
Like GAAP
To make the language in amendments detailed and prescriptive enough to have teeth and, at the same time, make propositions simple and intelligible for voters, the detailed requirements outlined above should be codified outside of amendments in something akin to GAAP for accounting that is simply referenced by the amendments.
These detailed requirements for congressional redistricting could be shared across states, just like GAAP standards are shared across companies.
This is the sixth in a series of articles on redistricting and partisan gerrymandering.
[1] “Cohesion” is shorthand for the traditional districting principle of respect for political boundaries & topographical features, e.g., regions, counties, cities, towns.
