Redistricting and Representation

Why Competitive Elections are Bad for America

Thomas Brunell

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781135925208
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Pundits have observed that if so many incumbents are returned to Congress to each election by such wide margins, perhaps we should look for ways to increase competitiveness – a centerpiece to the American way of life – through redistricting. Do competitive elections increase voter satisfaction? How does voting for a losing candidate affect voters' attitudes toward government? The not-so-surprising conclusion is that losing voters are less satisfied with Congress and their Representative, but the implications for the way in which we draw congressional and state legislative districts are less straightforward.

Redistricting and Representation argues that competition in general elections is not the sine qua non of healthy democracy, and that it in fact contributes to the low levels of approval of Congress and its members. Brunell makes the case for a radical departure from traditional approaches to redistricting – arguing that we need to "pack" districts with as many like-minded partisans as possible, maximizing the number of winning voters, not losers.

Chapter 1
Introduction

On November 2, 2004 President George W. Bush was reelected to serve another four years in the White House. While the election was relatively close by historical standards, it was not the cliff-hanger that the country witnessed four years prior. Part of the election post-mortem was a discussion of the Blue State blues in which Democratic voters who were really hoping to end Bush's reign on Pennsylvania Avenue were depressed due to the outcome of the election. Senator John Kerry lost and the Democrats would be stuck with a Republican president for four more years.

Three days after the election, National Public Radio devoted a segment on their Talk of the Nation program to the discussion of post-election stress.¹ Doctor Emmanuel Maidenberg, a clinical psychologist from UCLA, was interviewed on the program and while he had not seen any academic studies done on the topic, he was convinced from his clinical experience that there was a real depression among people who had been hopeful that Kerry would win the election. One of the callers to the show said that the result was especially depressing because so many people did not think Bush had really won the election in 2000 and they had already waited four years to get rid of him and were now facing another four years before the next opportunity to elect a candidate that they prefer.

During this time, there were tales of liberals joining together to drown their sorrows at the local pub; or even people so fed up with President Bush that they were going to move to Canada. Indeed, in the days following the election it was reported that traffic on the Canadian immigration website more than tripled and that hundreds of Americans were paying $25 to attend seminars on Canadian immigration.² There were also reports that some Hollywood celebrities, such as Alec Baldwin, were promising to move to Europe if President Bush were reelected. While this mass exodus may not have actually happened, it is important to note the degree to which voters on the losing side were extremely disappointed and upset.

Electoral competition, like all other forms of competition, has winners and losers. And, naturally, losers are less happy with the result than the winners. This is true both for candidates who are running for office and for the voters who cast their ballots on Election Day. There is not much that can be done to reduce the proportion of losing voters in American presidential elections since there can only be one president and the electoral boundaries of the country remain static from election to election. For the last decade or so the country has been divided fairly evenly between Democrats and Republicans (or as it has become more popular to talk in terms of colors, between blue voters and red voters, respectively). While there is an active debate over whether or not the American public is polarized,³ virtually everyone agrees that the nation is roughly evenly divided between the two major parties.⁴ Given this divide, it is impossible for everyone to be pleased with the outcome of a presidential election, but the same is not true for all other elected officials to the state governments or the federal government. There is something we can do to improve the relative proportion of winners and losers in terms of elections to the House of Representatives and state legislative elections around the country. Rather than drawing districts to try to maximize the likelihood that elections will be competitive between the two major parties in the general election, we could draw districts with as little ideological diversity as possible to maximize the number of winning voters, and thereby, minimize the number of losing voters.

The issues taken up in this book include:

• Are voters in Congressional elections more satisfied with the outcome when the candidate that they vote for actually wins the election?
• Are winning voters more likely to be satisfied with their representation in Congress than losing voters?
• Are they more satisfied with Congress as an institution?

The answer to all of these questions is an unqualified "yes." While this finding is interesting, it is not earth-shattering news to be told that "voters whose preferred candidate won the election are happier than the losing voters." However, what is quite provocative are the implications from these findings with respect to the process of redistricting in the United States; namely, districts should not be drawn to maximize competitiveness, the approach commonly assumed to be best, but instead should be drawn in such a way that they are "packed" with as many like-minded partisans in each district as possible.

The redistricting process

Every ten years a census of the American population is taken—a process mandated in Article 1, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution. Originally, the results of the census were used to reapportion the House of Representatives, whereby states gain seats and others lose seats in the House based on their relative share of the population.5 While the House is still reapportioned today, the much more interesting and politically charged process that happens after each census involves the redrawing of congressional and state legislative district lines which occurs after the seats in House have been redistributed based on population changes.

The redistricting process happens at the state level, although there are many federal implications as well, including the Voting Rights Act and numerous Supreme Court decisions that affect what can be done in the map-making process. Each state with more than one seat in the House of Representatives must create a new map for their congressional delegation after every census, and all 50 states must draw new district lines for their state legislative bodies. While there are different processes by which states undertake the process of redistricting, the most common approach essentially boils down to passing a piece of legislation that delineates what the districts will look like for the next decade. Since the process involves political outcomes and since elected officials are at the heart of the process, naturally there is a significant amount of partisanship in the process. Some states, such as New Jersey and Iowa, try to make the process somewhat less partisan by involving bipartisan commissions to draw the new boundaries. While it is not possible to take the politics out of redistricting, it is possible to take the politicians out of redistricting. While some people think that this approach will lead to better electoral districts, it is not clear that any procedural reforms necessarily lead to better districts.⁶ District lines are artificial—it is impossible to tell, when driving across the interstate, when one has left one congressional or state legislative district and crossed into another. This artificiality gives us great flexibility in how we draw district lines. While there are some principles that guide how we draw district lines (which are covered in-depth in chapter 4), there is a significant amount of latitude in what congressional and state legislative districts end up looking like. Indeed, some folks think there is too much flexibility, which allows the elected officials who draw these lines to use this flexibility for devious and partisan purposes.

The term "gerrymandering" comes to us thanks to the actions of the Governor of Massachusetts, Elbridge Gerry, circa 1810–11. While Mr. Gerry had an incredibly distinguished career in early American politics—he was a signatory on the Declaration of Independence, he was a member of the Continental Congress, he attended the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, he was elected to the House of Representatives, and he died as the vice president of the United States serving under James Madison—he will be remembered as the man who engineered an oddly shaped district in his state to favor an incumbent from his own party. A famous political cartoon was drawn that showed the district to be in the shape of a salamander. Since then, pundits and politicians alike have invented ever more fanciful names or descriptions for districts with less-than-straight lines. In the 2002 map drawn by Pennsylvania Republicans, opponents referred to two different districts as a "supine seahorse" and an "upside down Chinese dragon."⁷ California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who headed a well-publicized but ultimately failed campaign to reform the redistricting process in the Golden State, remarked about his own state's districts that some look like they were drawn by "a drunk with an Etch-A-Sketch."⁸ Appearances do matter in redisricting and districts with rather tortured shapes invite derision from opposing political parties and the media.

While we may simply associate gerrymandering with districts that are oddly shaped, the meaning of the term has changed to mean something more nuanced. Modern gerrymandering involves one political party drawing districts in such a way that they dilute the votes of the other party and are thus enabling themselves to win more seats in Congress or in the state legislature than they would under different districting plan. Oddly shaped districts can be an indication that one party has gerrymandered the other, but funny-looking districts are neither necessary nor sufficient to enact a gerrymander. Depending on how voters are distributed across a state, one party can really put the other party at a significant disadvantage with nicely shaped districts which are pleasing to the eye. And on the other side of the coin, while really weird districts may mean something is amiss, a perfectly reasonable district plan can be drawn with jagged district lines that appear to have been drawn by a preschooler. The shape or appearance of electoral districts is significantly less important than the demographic and partisan composition of the districts.

Partisan gerrymandering is surely one of the biggest threats to a properly functioning American Congress. District plans ought to reflect the underlying partisanship of the state and any distortions from this reflection are unfair and undemocratic. This is particularly critical when you consider the fact that the founders of this country designed the House of Representatives to be the institution in the federal government that should most closely reflect the will of the people. Originally the House was the only part of the federal government that was directly elected by the people themselves. The president has always been elected indirectly through the Electoral College (and it is important to note that in many states the legislature picked their electors, which meant that "the people" had no direct say whatsoever in terms of who would be president). Senators were elected from each state by their respective state legislatures until the ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1913 which provided for their popular election. And the entire federal judiciary is appointed to lifetime terms. Moreover, the House represents the people, and thus seats were divided among the states according to their share of the population. Finally, in order to ensure that those people who were elected to the House remained faithful to the constituencies that elected them, the founders provided for the shortest terms between elections in the House—just two years. John Adams said of the House of Representatives, "It should be in miniature, an exact portrait of the people at large." While we can immediately discard the notion that any elected body could be "an exact portrait" of the people, the point is still quite important—the House of Representatives, more than any other federal governmental institution, should most closely represent the people of the country. Gerrymandering distorts the translation of votes into seats, and therefore threatens to turn the House of Representatives into what Sam Hirsch calls "the House of Unrepresentatives."⁹ A fundamental question to address then is how should the House of Representatives best mirror the population? Over the years there have been many different theories and approaches to answering this fundamental question of what representation is and even what representation ought to be. One of the most fundamental dichotomies in the discussion of representation is trustee versus delegate. The trustee/delegate debate centers around the motivating factors that guide how the representative votes. If the representative votes based on the wishes of her constituents, since they are the reason that she is a member of Congress in the first place, then this is the delegate form of representation. On the other hand, if after someone is elected they do not tend to weigh the wishes of their constituents in their voting behavior, but rather rely on their own good judgment to vote, or they vote on the basis of what is good for the country and not necessarily what is good just for the district, then this is a representative who is acting like a trustee. In the next chapter the various notions of what representation is and what it ought to be are addressed in depth.

Competition and redistricting

Competition is one of the underlying principles associated with the American way of life. People compete in virtually all aspects of life—from sports to business to school. Schoolchildren compete to see who can spell more words correctly than anyone else, or who is better at geography. Competition, we are taught, is universally good. Given the universality of the American appreciation for competition, it is no surprise that we highly value its presence in elections. Competitive elections are good we are told: they are good for the voters, they are good for representation, and they are good for the media that cover the elections (stories about uncontested elections are not going to sell any magazines). Moreover, without electoral competition, we are told, there is no basis for governmental responsiveness. If we do not hold elected officials feet to the fire every two years, they begin to feel very comfortable in their position and no longer care what the voters in their district think. The following quote is from the introduction of a book put together by two of the leading redistricting scholars that exemplifies the belief held by most pundits and scholars: "The essence of any democratic regime is the competitive election of officeholders. It is only by making candidates compete for their seats that politicians can be held accountable by the public."¹⁰ The common wisdom suggests that the absence of electoral competition is an indication of a democracy at risk.

It is not particularly difficult to find hundreds of examples of people extolling the virtues of competition—consider, for example, the following from a November 10, 2002 Washington Post editorial:

The magnitude of incumbency's triumph in last week's elections for the House of Representatives was so dramatic that the term "election"—with its implications of voter choice and real competition—seems almost too generous to describe what happened on Tuesday. Voters went to the polls, and they cast ballots, and they did so without coercion. Yet somehow, at the end of the day, 98 percent of House incumbents seeking reelection won—and by margins that suggest that many of the races were never serious.

Or as The Times Union newspaper of Albany, New York editorialized: "we need to focus more on redistricting reform. New Yorkers cannot influence the direction of government without competitive elections, and minimizing the influence of political decision making in the redistricting process will help bring this about."¹¹ It is clear that the common wisdom with respect to electoral competitiveness is that its absence is an indication that something is amiss with our democracy. The general sense is that politicians are drawing their own district lines which assure that they continue to be reelected by wide margins, which means that they do not have to be responsive to the wants and needs of the electorate. Virtually every incumbent wins, usually in a lopsided fashion, and the redistricting process is often portrayed as the culprit for the lack of competition. While it is clear that redistricting contributes to this process, it is not the only factor that affects competitiveness. In fact, the biggest factor affecting the competitiveness of an election, assuming an incumbent is running for reelection, is whether or not a high-quality challenger emerges to challenge the incumbent. Absent a good challenger, irrespective of what the district looks like, there will not be a competitive election.¹² And even if redistricting is to blame for the decline in competition in congressional general elections, is this decline really a problem? Competitive elections are an indication that the incumbent could be replaced, which supposedly is the main force that drives the member to actively pursue the interests of his constituents. But regardless of whether or not every election is competitive, the threat that the next election could be competitive is sufficient to keep members on the straight and narrow. As long as the potential exists for an incumbent member to be replaced, then responsiveness ought not to be a problem. And while it has been said before, it bears mentioning again, that noncompetitive elections could be an indication of a high degree of satisfaction with the incumbent among the voters in a district.

The desire for increased competition in American elections goes beyond the wishes of pundits and academics; various states have passed laws or amended their state constitutions to encourage the drawing of competitive districts. In 2000 the voters of the state of Arizona passed Proposition 206, which requires: "To the extent practicable, competitive districts should be favored where to do so would create no significant detriment to the other goals" (sec. 14, subsection F). Redisricting reform is a hot topic across the country and the general sense one gets is that the process of redistricting should be taken out of the hands of the state legislature and given to some other entity. Furthermore, there should be a purposeful effort to increase the amount of competition in elections when the district boundaries are changed.

In November of 2005 the voters in Ohio voted down (71 percent against, 29 percent in favor) a ballot initiative (HJR 6) that would have taken the process of redisricting out of the hands of the current partisan commission and created an "independent apportionment board" to handle the decadal task of redrawing state legislative and congressional district boundaries. There was an entire section (number 5) of the proposed reform dedicated to "adopting a redistricting plan to ensure competitive elections." The bill defined how to score different plans on their levels of c...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Theories of representation
• 3 Voters prefer to win elections
• 4 Traditional redistricting principles
• 5 Why competitive elections are bad and noncompetitive elections are good
• 6 Addressing the critiques
• 7 Conclusion
• Notes
• References
• Index