Cynical, Partisan, Squiggly, and Legal

by | Feb 5, 2015 | Carolina Strategic Analysis, Congressional Races, Features, National Politics, NC Politics, NCGA | 10 comments

Redistricting has been in the news lately. Why? I don’t know; it’s not required for states to change their district lines until after the 2020 census. It’s probably because Democrats want to have a redistricting commission in place by then, which will provide for districts that are more fair and balanced – even more “fair and balanced” than the current districts put in place by North Carolina Republicans in 2011.

A couple days ago, some legislators announced a bipartisan plan to end gerrymandering as we know it – bipartisan meaning all Democrats and a handful of Republicans. Unfortunately for the NC Democratic Party, an entity which has been staunchly in favor of nonpartisan redistricting since November 2010, such a measure doesn’t appear to stand a chance of getting by the NC Senate. Says Senate pro-tem Phil Berger:

“To set up a commission that you’re going to give this control, who appoints this commission? That becomes a political process in itself.”

Berger has a great point. In Arizona, they decided to go with a nonpartisan commission. Turns out, the person in charge was a partisan Democrat, and the result was a Democratic gerrymander. What’s more fair: Arizona, a red state, being gerrymandered by Democrats, or by Republicans? Arguably, the latter more strongly reflects the will of the people.

The point is that drawing the district lines is always going to be political and a nonpartisan commission isn’t a panacea. With one of those in place, you don’t know what you’re going to end up getting, and that doesn’t necessarily it’s going to be fair or that it won’t benefit one party over the other.

The most promising solution to gerrymandering is to use computer models that will draw compact districts that won’t look like a Rorschach test. With how advanced computers are getting now, it shouldn’t be too difficult to design an algorithm that will draw the required VRA districts, making them as compact as possible, and then doing the same for the rest of the state, keeping in mind whole counties, communities of interest, etc.

Interestingly, the NC GOP, thanks to court decisions in the last decade, were more restricted with the way they could draw the districts than the Democrats were twenty years ago. The current House and Senate maps are pretty ugly, but at least they keep counties fairly whole where the VRA isn’t concerned – not the case with the Democratic maps of old.

The real factor in the GOP’s favor is the VRA, allowing for highly Democratic districts that aren’t subject to the whole county provision. As long as the VRA is in effect, Democrats are going to be disadvantaged when it comes to redistricting – even if they’re the ones drawing the maps. The concept of retrogression may mean that a lot of these ugly, squiggly districts put in by Republicans are going to stick around for a while.

And gerrymandering as a whole is here to stay. Unless there’s some kind of court case ruling that gerrymandering is unconstitutional, we’re either going to need the legislators to voluntarily cede power, either through amending their constitutions or voting in a federal constitutional amendment. Given human nature, that’s not likely.

And that quote above? That wasn’t Phil Berger. That was Sen. Thomas Middleton, a Democratic state legislator in Maryland responding to a proposal by the new Republican governor to enact a nonpartisan committee for map-drawing. Needless to say, Democrats don’t seem too enthused by the plan, after drawing possibly the ugliest congressional map in the country. The map includes a district known as the “Pinwheel of Death” its inexplicable tentacles into various parts of the state, reaching into every media market, drawn, as the theory goes, so that current Rep. John Sarbanes will have an easier time getting support for a statewide bid.

Still, Middleton makes a good point. A nonpartisan commission, while nice in theory, has a number of problems, not least that we don’t know who would be on such a commission. Better to have districts drawn by legislators, directly accountable to the people, than by folks appointed by those same legislators who may not be accountable to anyone.

By the way, here’s a Roll Call article from back in 2011 on the five most ugliest districts in the nation. Personally I think that Maryland’s 3rd wins hand-down and North Carolina’s 4th is actually kind of pretty in a bizarre way. Looks like a genie coming out a magic lamp. The rest look kind of mundane. What do you think?

10 Comments

  1. Margie Storch

    Proportional Representation would better reflect the make up of voters.

    • Lee Mortimer

      Yes, Margie. You are definitely on to something. If all the politicians, reformers, computer programmers and journalists would just look at how most other established democracies elect their representatives, we could climb out of this redistricting quagmire. Any of several forms of proportional voting would keep communities of interest intact, assure fair representation for racial minorities and political parties, allow most people to be represented by a candidate or party they voted for, and make elections competitive. It’s just incredible that we’re now in the third decade of redistricting lawsuits with no end in sight. It’s no wonder America has the most dysfunctional politics of the world’s advanced nations.

      • Jimmy Rouse

        Dysfunctional politics does not stop the illegals from streaming across the border on a daily basis. With so many wanting to come here I somehow doubt redistricting is a problem for them.

        • Lee Mortimer

          America has always benefited from immigrants coming here. Fortunately, my grandmother didn’t let bigotry stop her from leaving Ireland a hundred years ago and coming to the U.S.

          • Jimmy Rouse

            From what I gather redistricting has not deterred many illegal immigrants.

  2. tagumcity27!

    ….who is the non-partisan computer programmer?

  3. Jimmy Rouse

    Will the writer of the software be a non-partisan independent? Or a wold in sheep’s clothes?

    I like the system as it is. It has served us for many decades without too many complaints……….well, complaints from those who really mattered.

    Best thing is for all the liberals to move to Chapel Hill and leave the rest of the state to the normal people.

  4. sp00klawlessPhil Lawless

    There is a lot of blame to go around. Before the 113th Congress, the Dems had provided some strong Gerrymandering. Unfortunately, Rucho-Stam went on record as not pairing incumbents in the same district. By the time the fiddles were in, that was no longer true, and the 12th district was even more bizarre than it had been. This has been shown mathematically. Tools are available to gauge compactness. Getting that into law is the problem.

  5. Mike L

    Wow that 2001 map was kinda bad…

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