USSC orders Alabama to add one more minority district

You are essentially asking for the Iowa model--it seems to upset both sides!!

A non partisan group--the Legislative Services Bureau--draws the maps with very specific rules in place. The legislature can vote it up or down with no changes. If down the LSA gets a second shot. The key is the very specific rules---as I recall all 4 Iowa CD's are within a couple thousand people of each other.

Drawing Lines Between Cornfields: Iowa’s Model for Redistricting - Brown Political Review

However, one state has utilized a unique system that has kept politics out of redistricting. The small state of Iowa uses a redistricting method that is purposefully nonpartisan and purely based on neutral district-drawing. But Iowa didn’t just decide to simply stop partisan gerrymandering, on both sides of the aisle. There is still political polarization and vitriol across the state, just not in the realm of redistricting. So how did they do it?

The answer lies in a piece of legislation from 1980 that established the vaguely-named “Legislative Services Agency” (LSA) in Iowa. The legislation passed under very specific circumstances: Republicans had majorities in both houses of the state legislature, but feared that they would lose these majorities in the 1980 elections. Democrats, however, had very little confidence that they would take the state legislature themselves, and expected the Republicans to maintain control.

Both parties feared that the other would take the state legislature and heavily gerrymander districts going forward, preventing the minority power from gaining any power in the foreseeable future. Thus, each side had an incentive to pass laws that would protect themselves if they didn’t gain the legislature; both sides wanted to lessen the powers given to the majority party in the form of redistricting reform.

 

I have always liked the idea of equalizing district populations while minimizing district border lengths.

The idea I just saw in here of gerrymandering districts to make as many of them as competitive as possible is intriguing. On its face it should limit the extreme candidates but I’m not sure it wouldn’t effectively disenfranchise a lot of voters. Say for instance, in a heavy R or D state could they make all the districts competitive or would the minority party simply be on the losing side of a bunch of semi-close districts?

 

Thanks. Efficiency gap certainly seems to have some promise, though that doesn’t mean that the USSC should accept it as a standard.

However, regardless of what the USSC agrees to, I think we humans living in this nation should be working toward something better than whatever some political party thinks we should be doing. Efficiency gap almost certainly would get my vote over the current system.

 

It’s a good point.

 

The USSC already rejected it implicitly. But understand why it was proposed. I could look all this up but I will go off the top my head. I don't recall the exact dates, etc., but in a redistricting/gerrymandering decision I think around 2003, the court rejected it as "nonjusticiable", meaning that there was no way to resolve the issue legally even if they believed it was unconstitutional, and I think in that decision they said it was unconstitutional, just could not be resolved judicially.

Anthony Kennedy was in the majority in that decision but said that if someone could come up with a mathematical formula that courts could apply in a nonpartisan manner, he would change his mind. Hence the efficiency gap, which was proposed to the Court in a case in the last few years, I think Rucho, but again not looking up. It was specifically proposed to address the issue. I don't think Kennedy had yet retired. But it was an attempt to give the Court a mathematical formula based upon prior statements from the Court that they would declare the maps unconstitutional if they had such a formula that could be applied by district courts. But like so much about this Court, when they had a chance to actually live up to their prior statements, they blinked.

gator_lawyer will probably clean this up for me. Defer to him on these issues

 

So the Very conservative Supreme Court did this? I thought they only went far to the right...

I hate gerrymandering. Want commonplace districts like most of Americans do. Politicians on both sides don't want this. Wonder why...

 

My definition of a good map would be relatively fair, relatively competitive, and not splitting up communities (to the extent possible). Even if it's the computer unintentionally doing the diluting of voting power, that doesn't change the effect of the map. Effect matters more than intent.

 

Fairness isnt really the goal though.

 

Personally I think if you simply removed the cap on districts/house representation, a lot of this stuff would matter less.

 

And then we’re bound by the controlling party’s definition of “fair.” We’ve seen how precarious that is.

Unless once drawn it can be shown to unreasonably impact one voting demographic I’d much rather go for a mathematical redistributing looking at population and minimizing overall district boundary line lengths. Start with the simple algorithmic redrawn districts and then challenge certain boundaries from there with a showing of unreasonable impact.

This would help as well.

 

Some might say in certain places, a fair map wouldn't be competitive

 

Not if we have independent commissions do the job. They've been successful in a number of states.

 

Is there a constitutional requirement that districts be geographical? Seems like that would eliminate a lot of consternation over "maps."

 

This is how both districting and the selection of judges should be done. TAKE THE POLITICS OUT OF SUCH THINGS.

 

I don't think people understand the community of interest requirement. I think people are confusing it with the racial equality considerations, but it's different. I cut and pasted some language from the Congressional Research document that collects state standards. There are other considerations as well. But if we just talked about cutting up a state without reference to the communities and how they divide, you get a lot of strange results that people don't like for reasons that are that are completely nonpartisan.


People are focusing on the overall partisan divide among 435 representatives. That's fair. So do I. But when you are dividing up a state, the community of interest considerations kick in.


I'll try to provide a very basic example that I'm personally familiar with. Pinellas and Hillsborough counties do not want to be represented by the same representative. There are a lot of historical reasons and resentments, which people may put differing value on. A lot of that is come up in disputes over stadium building for our teams, the way our teams are referred to, etc.


Pinellas thinks it has to have its own representative because, among other things, it expects its representative to advocate for its specific needs such as beach renourishment on the barrier islands. Hillsborough County is very parochial as well with issues like the port, MacDill Air Force Base, etc. Neither wants to be represented by a representative with split loyalties (though it still happens) or worse yet, a representative that owes their seat primarily to voters in the other county


There's a lot more but I’ll just use those broad examples. The point is, if you use a simple algorithm to split the state into roughly equal squares with roughly equal population and split those communities, a lot of people would be angry, perhaps justifiably, for reasons having nothing to do with partisan advantage. It's because they perceive their communities as different in a significant way that should be reflected by their elected representative.


Remember that each member of Congress has conflicting responsibilities. On the one hand, you are part of the legislature of the federal government, charge with acting in the best interests of the nation, taking an oath to the national Constitution. At the same time, you are supposed to be a representative of the constituents that elected you and represent their interests. Often these responsibilities conflict. But the latter responsibility is such that communities of the defined interest want their own representative.



Compactness and Contiguity Compactness and contiguity are both related to a district’s shape. A compact district represents a geographically consolidated area. Thirty-one states require compact congressional districts, but often, state laws do not specify precise measures of compactness. Typically, a compact district would tend to have fairly smooth boundaries or resemble a standard geometric shape; it might have an identifiable “center” reasonably equidistant from any of its boundaries. A district is generally thought to be contiguous if it is possible to travel between any two points in a district without crossing into a different district. For congressional districts, 34 states require contiguity.

Political Subdivisions and Communities of Interest Thirty-one states require consideration of existing political subdivisions (e.g., towns, cities, or counties). Often, it may not be possible to draw districts that are perfectly aligned with other political boundaries, given other redistricting standards, like population equality, that could take precedence. People within a community of interest generally share a background or characteristics that may be relevant to their legislative representation (e.g., a social, cultural, historical, racial, ethnic, partisan, or economic identity). Twenty-one states require preserving communities of interest. Sometimes, these communities are naturally preserved by following other criteria, such as compactness, or observing political subdivisions.

 

Isn't the USSC ordering the addition of another "minority" district gerrymandering?

 

All that could be input data for the model.