In 1812, Elbridge Gerry, then Governor of Massachusetts, signed into law a bill creating a bizarrely implausible voting district in Boston that was immediately compared to a salamander, thus giving us for all time the indispensable word “gerrymandering.” But grotesque voter underrepresentation does not require the drawing of bizarre district lines. Let me go through a simple hypothetical example to show you why.
Currently, Congressional Districts have about 730,000
residents. Imagine, just for the sake of illustration, a state with 7.3 million
residents and therefore 10 Congressional Districts. Let us suppose that the
state has 5 million eligible voters and that the state, which is in the form of
a perfect rectangle, is divided into 10 exactly equal square districts. Suppose
further, that the population of the state is distributed evenly across its
territory, with each district having exactly 500,000 eligible voters. Suppose also that this is a narrowly Republican state in which 52% of the voters
vote for Republican candidates faithfully and 48% vote for Democratic
candidates equally faithfully. In addition, just to make the mathematics easy, assume
that all eligible voters actually vote. Finally, suppose that the 5 million
eligible voters are distributed evenly among the 10 districts so that each
Democratic voter has a Republican neighbor and each Republican voter (save for
a few) has a Democratic neighbor, with the 500,000 eligible voters in each
district split exactly between 260,000 Republicans (i.e., 52%) and 240,000
Democrats (i.e. 48%.)
In this case when an election is held, Republicans win all
10 seats, each by a 4% margin, and the 2,400,000 Democratic voters have no
representation at all in Congress. This consequence is not a result of partisan
gerrymandering. The districts are drawn mathematically without regard to the
political preferences of their residents. This is an example of what is usually
called “first past the post” voting in which all that matters to secure a win
is getting more votes than your opponent.
Now let us suppose that a strange redistribution of the
population takes place. For some obscure reason, all 240,000 Democrats in the First District decide to pick up and move to other districts, with exactly one
ninth of them going to each of the nine districts. Meanwhile, 240,000
Republicans, drawn equally from all nine districts, move to the First District.
The next time an election is held, the Republicans win District One by a vote of 100% to 0% – all the Democrats have left and have been
replaced by an equal number of Republicans. In the other nine districts, there
are a total of 2,400,000 Democrats equally split among the nine districts, but
there are now only 2,100,000 Republicans in those nine districts (evenly
distributed) because the other 500,000 all live in District One. The result? All
nine districts go Democratic and the Democrats, with only 48% of the vote
total, have won 90% of the seats. In
this case, the Republicans are suffering from what Harvard law professor Lani
Guinier many years ago called “wasted votes.”
Gerrymandering by state legislatures certainly distorts the
results in congressional (as well as in state) elections. But the real reason
why Democrats are underrepresented in Congress is that so many of their voters
have chosen to move to already solidly Democratic states. If several million
California Democrats would, as an act of political self-sacrifice, move to
states like Texas (as in fact some of them have been doing for many years now)
it would dramatically change the results of elections.
Why am I writing about this today? Because last night at about one a.m. I woke up and spent the next hour thinking about the subject.
31 comments:
When I wake up in the middle of the night and start thinking it never seems to work out well. For me or anyone else. You at least were able to turn those thoughts into a decent lesson about Gerrymandering.
Being named Jerry, I do get a little sensitive about what that process is called. I guess I will have to live with that. Jerry-rigged is another one, but I guess it is not all bad. I won't lose any sleep over it I hope.
The Supreme Court has wrestled with the issue of gerrymandering for 40 years, issuing several decisions. Generally, if the evidence indicates that the districts have been drawn in order to disfavor a voting class based on race, the district lines will be held to violate the Equal Protection Clause.
However, when it comes to district lines drawn on the basis of party affiliation, the Supreme Court has been reluctant to get involved, holding that it is a political issue beyond the scope of the Court’s constitutional authority to address. In the most recent decision on this issue, Rucho v. Common Cause (2019). Writing for the majority, J. Roberts discussed the history of the issue going back to the early years of the Republic, quoting Alexander Hamilton as stating that resolution of the issue resided primarily with the state legislatures. “At no point was there a suggestion that the federal courts had a role to play. Nor was there any indication that the Framers had ever heard of courts doing such a thing.”
J. Kagan wrote a robust dissent, closing: “Of all time to abandon the Court’s duty to declare the law, this was not one of them. The practices challenged in these cases imperil our system of government. Part of the Court’s role in that system is to defend its foundations. None is more important than free and fair elections. With respect but deep sadness, I dissent.”
If you are interested in reading the entire decision, you can find it here:
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/18pdf/18-422_9ol1.pdf
And the moral of the story is, I think, that FPTP is a bad electoral system.
Jerry, if it is any comfort, Gerry pronounced his name with a hard g.
Speaking of courts, the High Court in the U.K. just ruled in favor of extradicting Julian Assange to the U.S. where he faces espionage charges.
Assange is in the strange position that he pisses off Republicans because he revealed evidence about U.S. war crimes in Iraq and pisses off Democrats because he published emails from the Democratic National Committee, helping Trump, Democrats say, defeat Hillary Clinton.
So almost nobody likes him, although I do, if only because he pisses off so many powerful people. What do others opine about Assange?
Next the Repugs gerrymander Utopia and slice it up to Hell
AA, the problem with drawing from history is that the current technology for drawing district lines allows for quite exquisite slicing and dicing. Rucho (like Shelby) is part of the Republican plan to eliminate democracy. Baring some miracle, states like Wisconsin are no longer democracies. Texas just drew districts that were ridiculously granular. I believe it was North Carolina that recently drew a district that literally split a HBCU.
Any two person race going to be FPTP. FPTP becomes a thing when there are three or more candidates.
A further problem for us is that states like California have non-partisan redistricting. One side unilaterally disarmed while Conservastan still games the system.
Once again the genius of the Founders Who Built Better then They Knew dooms us.
No doubt FPTP electoral systems are problematical for a number of reasons, though I think it’s often said that they do tend to provide decisive results and so—though an anarchist may not put much value in this—allow for government to be established without too much post-election confusion and to function with acknowledged authority. Alternative electoral systems also have their downsides—e.g., affording far too much power to very small political parties. In short, no electoral system will ever make political exploitation of the system impossible.
But on to the off-thread but very important point brought up by s. wallerstein. I think his second paragraph is the important one. I’ve heard/read too many people who seem to want to make Assange suffer because they have been politically or morally offended by him. Republicans and Democrats are both guilty of this. And the British system ought to be condemned for playing their customary post-WW Two vicious little lapdog role in their legally dubious proceedings, where it has never been much in doubt that the establishment—including Starmer of the Labour Party—would hand him over to American revenge justice.
JW, there are several ways to set up balloting that resolve elections quickly and without the downsides of FPTP. The UK has districts and FPTP. In the last election the Tories got ~44% of the vote and won a solid majority in Parliament.
For those who watch the Supremes, this recent question from Amy Coney Barrett is some what disturbing:
"Is there any kind—I mean, how would you even know if a—if a school taught all religions are bigoted and biased or, you know, Catholics are bigoted or, you know—or we take a position on the Jewish-Palestinian conflict because of our position on, you know, Jews, right?"
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a38475535/amy-coney-barrett-jewish-palestinian-conflict/
Re: Assange, I was more concerned for the cat. SW, you may be interested to know that the Economist ranks Chile as a full democracy while the US ranks lower as a flawed one.
Jerry, you might be interested/amused to know that there actually is an author named Jerry Mander. (Not sure if it's a pseudonym, but I don't think it is.) He's a former advertising executive who went on to write some books arguing against television and capitalism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Mander
aaall,
As I recall, the Economist, to my surprise, changed Chile's ranking to full democracy after we began the process of drawing up a new Constitution to replace the 1980 Constition drawn up during the Pinochet dictatorship.
There was a plebiscite on whether we wanted a new Constitution, in which 78% of the voters voted in favor. That was over a year ago. Then in May we voted for the members of the Constitution convention, with assured 50% gender parity and special seats for Native-Americans. The convention began in July, it will last a year and after that it will have to ratified by another plebiscite.
We could use a constitutional convention.
Thank you, Michael. That guy has a more substantive cause for grievance than I do :)
A little background.
In October 2019 high school students began protesting a 5 cent price rise in the Santiago subway fare.
Then one day everything exploded. Subway stations were trashed and burned, the Santiago subway being a symbol of Chile's "successful modernization" process. There was massive looting and vandalism, huge demonstrations in Santiago and other cities protesting the abuses of the system, political corruption, in general against political and business elites, etc. The whole focus was so much leftwing in the traditional sense as anti-elite.
The demonstrations and the looting continued and some thought that rightwing president, Sebastian Piñera, a billionaire, either had to resign or to call for state of siege with the Army controlling everything.
However, in mid-November most of the political parties (not the far left which was betting on the masses to overthrow the government) got together and negotiated the idea of a plebiscite to determine whether people wanted a new Constitution, thinking that that would calm things down.
It calmed things a little, but the demonstrations and looting really only ended with the pandemic.
So it was a mass uprising that got us a new Constitution.
error: in the third paragraph I meant to say "not so much leftwing", but I wrote in mistake "so much leftwing".
Putting aside the issue of secondary causation (I wouldn't want you guys to think I've become a deist or something), the following quote I found interesting in the connection between the Coronavirus and politics (bold mine):
Astrophysicist, director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York, “Startalk” podcast host and occasional Twitter “intergalactic troll” Neil deGrasse Tyson on Aug. 31, 2021, penned a tweet he later deleted because he said it was “causing too many unintended Twitter fights.”
The deleted tweet compared the rate of COVID-19 deaths among “(unvaccinated) Republican voters” to Democrats.
“Right now in the USA, every ten days, more than 8,000 (unvaccinated) Republican voters are dying of COVID-19. That’s 5X the rate for Democrats,” the tweet read. The post also contained a drawing of a book titled, “How to Die Like a Medieval Peasant In Spite of Modern Medicine.”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/10/the-guardian-view-on-the-us-pursuit-of-julian-assange-set-him-free
Further to my comment,
I probably left out the most important part. The above I saw in a Reddit post appropriately titled "Voter suppression equalizer", which ties into the idea of gerrymandering. Here is link to the Reddit post:
Voter suppression equalizer
^^^ Good luck with that strategy - but by this year next time all of the vaccine casualties will more than make up for it!
AF, I'm sure the RNC has run the numbers and have found that they can easily afford those deaths. As long as those deaths are in the right places they are hoping for a Virginia effect. That and other factors - recall Comrade Stalin's observation about casting votes and counting votes.
s. wallerstein,
To your question, I find the American prosecution of Julian Assange very troubling. He is not an American citizen; he was not working as an employee of the American government when he received information that was classified as top secret by the American government. He should not be bound by what the American government regards as top secret. By analogy, if someone in America steels the merchandise belonging to an American citizen and sells it to a citizen of another country, and that citizen knows the merchandise is stolen, and then resells it for a profit, I have no problem prosecuting that individual for dealing stolen goods. But information is different. A citizen of another country who obtains stolen governmental information which that government prefers not be discloses or publicized is not bound by that government’s laws. Publishing stolen information, particularly information which discloses corruption or war crimes, is not the same as selling stolen merchandise, and Assange should not be prosecuted by the American government for doing what journalists are expected to do.
As a follow-up to my prior comment regarding Julian Assange, I note the following ironies. Today, Maria Ressa, the Filipino journalist who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for exposing corruption and malfeasance in the Phillippine government, and has been subjected to persecution and incarceration by her government, accepted the prize today and gave a powerful speech about the role of journalists in preserving democratic rights.
Today, also, President Biden announced the creation of a Summit on Democracy, to confront what he described as the attack on democratic principles throughout the world. Yet the United States government is preparing to prosecute Julian Assange for his publishing information he obtained as an Australian citizen, disclosing corruption and war crimes by the U.S. government. What hypocrisy.
Suppose an American journalist purchased state secrets regarding the Russian or Iranian nuclear arms program, violating Russian or Iranian law, and demanded that the journalist be expedited to Russia or Iran for trial, would Americans view this as a legitimate demand? Of course not. Yet this country is about to embark on the prosecution of an Australian citizen for doing something far less damaging to American security. American who believe in democratic values and free speech should picket the courthouse where Assange’s trial is scheduled to take place.
Another,
I agree with you completely on this, especially your commentary "what hypocrisy".
AA (or anyone else who knows anything about US law)
Is there any way at the present juncture that would allow Assange to ask an American court to intervene on his behalf since it is the US government that has to all intents and purposes kept him imprisoned in one form or another for roughly a decade?
Here's Glenn Greenwald on the latest ruling in the Assange case.
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/julian-assange-loses-appeal-british?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxODgzNjA1NCwicG9zdF9pZCI6NDUyNzc1NDMsIl8iOiJ2RWpLSCIsImlhdCI6MTYzOTE4MTg1OSwiZXhwIjoxNjM5MTg1NDU5LCJpc3MiOiJwdWItMTI4NjYyIiwic3ViIjoicG9zdC1yZWFjdGlvbiJ9.s5aVqDDaCPVC6LujyQK052ronJO9ILGGOmQz5hh6LBg
Ahmed, I doubt anyone who has read your comments will think you are a 'deist' or something. I do mostly enjoy discussing things with you even if that causes me to start questioning things I can't find answers for.
But I guess I will take it that God favors Democrats over Republicans at least in this part of the pandemic. Or something like that.
Back in the world I know a little about- I can't believe the partisan divide that has developed over vaccinations. I mean as far as I am concerned practically the only thing Donald Trump did right was having the federal government helping get these vaccines developed. Why his supporters are suspicious of what his greatest success was is beyond me. And I don't think God has much to do with this.
I am about to leave to see the new release of West Side Story, so this will be short.
I expect that Assange’s defense will be that prosecuting him as an Australian citizen for violating U.S. law when he was not in the U.S. violates due process under the 5th and 14th Amendments. However, since he is not an American citizen, as the inmates at Guantanamo have learned, application of the U.S. Constitution to non-Americans can be problematic. However, unlike the inmates at Guantanamo, Assange cannot be charged as an enemy combatant. I am going to contact the ACLU and find out if they will be defending him, and I would consider joining that effort.
All of a sudden, my computer is trying to prompt me into writing certain ways. And I rather like how I write without any prompting even if it isn't always exactly grammatically correct or whatever. Has this happened to others of you?
Damn the thing just corrected two words I mispelled. Make that three with misspelled. Well I don't like it
I don't like Julien Assange. I think what he did with Wikileaks was only half the way to good journalism. But what states that call themselves democracies have been doing for almost a decade to shut him down is a bottomless disgrace. The USA as the mastermind, Great Britain and Sweden as useful idiots, and everyone else just watching and keeping their mouths shut. Putin and his foreign minister Lavrov are bubble over with laughter.
Professor Wolff,
Very good explanation on the subject of gerrymandering. Albeit, I will probably have to re-read it a few more times because I am so slow. The only other person I know who has tried to explain gerrymandering is Glenn Beck in his book Common Sense.
Easy Solution to gerrymandering:
In the transition from the Articles of Confederation to the US Constitution, the Framers instituted many "checks" on democracy, given that small farmers in all 13 states had either gained control of the state legislators or were about to and were legislating such "wicked projects" (according to Madison) as paper money. Madison delightfully proclaimed in Federalist 10 that the Constitution would make "more difficult" wicked debtors and other such "licentious" types (a term frequently used by the Framers to describe their more democratic rivals, oddly) "to discover their own strength, and to act in unison with each other...."
One check on the licentious was to make Congressional districts much larger than they were under the Articles and if that did not prove sufficient, the Framers provided yet a stronger check, Article I, Section 4, Clause 1:
The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.
Voilà! There's the solution to gerrymandering (hard "g"); thank you fearful-of-democracy Framers. The Democrats could on a day of their choosing require of those badly gerrymandered states that all congressional representatives of said state be elected AT LARGE.
There's precedent, up until 1840:
Only five states elected all of their Congressmen from districts, while six used the at-large system. Georgia and Maryland used a curious combination of districts and at-large voting; each state was separated into subdivisions, yet citizens were able to vote on every Representative. https://bit.ly/30jWUA5
Why won't the Democrats, in a day, solve the gerry mandering problem?
Parties are coalitions of ruling classes factions. Today, the ruling class is essentially finance capital so the two parties tend to represent the same ruling class factions. Less conflict within the ruling class, the less differences between the parties. And it ought to be noted that Manchin and Sinema, more in tune with the values of the Framers, will happily check the checkers. Bottom line: despite all the posturing, voting "rights" in our Constitution are not "foundational."
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