Gerrymandering

One of the more irritating things about politicians is their habit of gerrymandering congressional districts. Gerrymandering is the process of drawing election districts to blatantly favor one political group over the other. If you have ever wondered why your U.S. Representative seems crazier or more unethical than the average person, gerrymandering is the reason (though I'd argue the absence of term limits has an effect as well). Tom Delay, the former Republican House majority leader, presided over the most ridiculous session of gerrymandering in recent history which resulted in, among other things, Texas State Senators fleeing their state for first Oklahoma and then New Mexico to prevent a vote on the newly proposed districts.

43 states have more than one U.S Representative (Alaska, Delaware, Montana, N. and S. Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming are represented by a single Representative), but of those 43, 7 states (Arizona, Hawaii, Idaho, New Jersey, Washington, Iowa, and Maine) use independent bodies to draw congressional districts. The other 36 have their congressional districts decided by the state legislature. This of course gives rise to some ridiculous looking congressional districts, but the use of independent bodies does not necessarily guarantee reasonable outcomes.

Take for instance the New Jersey 10th and 13th, each of which are comprised of 2 geographically separate areas, which alternate from North to South. Why is this might you ask? Well it turns out that the 10th district was drawn so that 58% of the population is African American and 15% Hispanic while the 13th is 48% Hispanic and 13% African American (2000 Census data). Take a wild guess as to the race of the Representatives from each district. I am not so naive to suggest that the race of citizens should be completely ignored when drawing congressional districts, but designing them to explicitly support one ethnicity over another seems to be at odds with our stated values.

In states where the legislature completely controls redistricting, the results are not surprising to the cynic. The New York 8th is comprised of two parts, the west side of lower Manhattan and a strip of Brooklyn. The New York 9th has 4 distinct parts, one of which is half an island within the Jamaica Bay Wildlife refuge. Both of these districts were designed to have predominantly (70-75%) white middle-class residents. A bordering district, the New York 10th, is 63% African American and has an average income roughly 2/3 that of the 8th or 9th. Basically, New York's legislature deliberately segmented the state's representatives by race and income in order to protect incumbent politicians. All three districts are represented by someone who has been in office for at least 10 years and generally the only time a new person enters office is when the prior representative dies, gets poltically promoted (becomes a Senator for instance), or goes to jail.

I will comment that I do not disagree with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which ensures that underrepresented minorities have a voice in Congress. However, state legislatures have managed to apply extraordinarily discriminatory policies in choosing districts, stratifying citizens on the basis of their race, socio-economic status, or political beliefs. If you are a politician or work in politics, this makes perfect sense since it allows you to easily manipulate your constituents. But for the poor voter it results in bitterly partisan representatives who spend the majority of their time preening for the press rather than serving Americans.

The hopelessly optimistic and doe-eyed solution is to require congressional district boundaries to match those of counties and be contiguous. For counties in which the population is very high, the county would be represented by multiple representatives. For example, each congressional district currently has about 640-650000 citizens as of the 2000 Cenus. Cook County (contains Chicago) has roughly 6M residents which would mean the county would have 8-9 representatives. This is obviously more difficult for voters who must choose 8-9 total representatives each election cycle, but it decreases the likelihood of re-electing incumbents while requiring the representative to serve a much more moderate constituency. My opinion is that the end result of such a system would be a more responsive and less partisan elected government. This solution is clearly difficult to impliment, and would require a constitutional amendment. The odds of getting a sufficient number of American citizens to take a break from dissecting the sex habits of Tiger Woods and Jesse James to focus on this issue is low, but a voter can dream.

Note: To see the maps of congressional districts in your state go here.