Gerrymandering And The 2022 Midterms
A review of the concept, a couple case studies, and some possible, if imperfect solutions.
In the recent 2022 elections, the results of which are (at time of writing) still up in the air, the best that could be said of the Democratic results was that it was not a “Shellacking.” To be sure, there’s some degree of refuge there: When faced with a historical trend of a sitting President’s party losing substantial seats in Congress, the “Red Tsunami” was really more like a red splash - enough to get over the cusp of the pier, but not enough to drown the city.
My only problem with using this fact as a source of relief is that, fundamentally, there were two other historic forces, best summed up as “atrocities,” working in the Democrats’ favor. First, there was the atrocity that was the January 6th Putsch, an in-the-flesh coup attempt broadcast on live TV. Second, there was the atrocity that half the population of the United States lost the Constitutional guarantee to control their own bodies.
I got to asking myself: “What’s really going on here?”
I think I’ve hit on something of an answer, and while its name won’t surprise you (it’s in the article title), its manifestations might.
How Is Gerrymandering Used To Control Elections?
This Washington Post video does a fantastic job of explaining how Gerrymandering works. Why reinvent the wheel?
The short version is that the party in charge can draw governing districts in such a way that it dilutes the voting power of the victimized group, while enhancing the voting power of the perpetrator.
All those really weird Congressional and State districts you see that vaguely resemble some kind of animal? Say, a salamander? That’s almost certainly a district drawn to create some kind of advantage for the people who want to leverage the system to their advantage.
Gerrymandering might be at its worst during a process called Reapportionment. Basically, as per the Constitution, every ten years a new census is taken and seats in the House Of Representatives, as well as state-level offices, are assigned based on population. This is, in principle, a good thing - if people move, either inside of a state or between two, they should take their voting power with them. Reapportionment means new districts - seemingly arbitrary lines on a map - need to be drawn in a process known as Redistricting.
That’s where the problem dwells.
Past And Present Gerrymandering.
After writing the first draft of this article, Elie Mystal published a fantastic stage-setting and analysis of the New York and Florida debacles I’m about to give my own take on.
In 2014, I evaluated a case in Florida where Gerrymandering was taking place. More recently, ProPublica published an article about how Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, intervened in the redistricting process of his state in 2022. The goal was simple: To break up Democratic (primarily Black - DeSantis isn’t exactly known for his anti-racist views, if you catch my drift) voting blocs so that they would be devoid of actual strength.
The result? Well, results are still coming in! But at time-of-writing it appears as if there will be twenty Republicans representing Florida in the House Of Representatives, but only eight Democrats. That is, according to MSNBC’s results thus-far, a change of four seats.
Next, let’s take my home state of New York. A liberal wonderland if ever there was one, right? Well, would you believe that the Democrats, apparently believing that turn-about is fair play, made an effort to Gerrymander the state? In June, Michael Li of the Brennan Center for Justice published an article explaining-in-detail what went down with New York’s Redistricting.
The short version is that the Democratic legislature made numerous and flagrant efforts to redraw districts in such a way as to give Democrats an advantage. “The accepted rule in both federal and state courts is that if maps get struck down, the legislature or commission that drew the map should have the first shot at enacting a fix,” Li writes.
“But for whatever reason, New York Democrats chose not to do the same, instead letting the opportunity to control the redrawing pass without action,” he concludes. The court took over Redistricting.
Spectrum News reports that the court assigned the task to Special Master Jonathan Cervas. Cervas is no small potato in the world of political Redistricting, though this was his first crack at the helm of the process. For a person critical to how political representation is established, he portrays himself as something of a mystery in a fashion that seems deliberate. “He says he hates politics,” the New York Times’ Jesse McKinley writes, but he’s also hinted that he aligns “more closely with one party than the other,” and has recently voted for the Republican party. The lack of straightforwardness is concerning.
It’s beyond my depth to know what lies in that man’s heart. Representative Hakeem Jeffries, an influential lawmaker, saw it thusly: “The unelected, out-of-town special master did a terrible job, produced an unfair map that did great violence to Black and Latino communities throughout the city, and unnecessarily detonated the most Jewish district in America.”
The end result: In their attempt to Gerrymander New York, Democrats may have Gerrymandered (or, perhaps, un-Gerrymandered?) ourselves. Instead of Democrats adding to their advantage, as expected, Republicans picked up four seats in the 2022 House Of Representatives, with one race left to be decided.
That’s more than enough seats to determine the balance of power.
So Going Forward, How Do We Combat Gerrymandering?
Some believe the answer lies in informational technology: In August of 2021, Siobhan Roberts of Technology Review discussed ways that data scientists are using mathematical formulas to essentially sculpt new districts. There is, however, the small concern that sometimes mathematics doesn’t take ideas like “This is one whole community you’re splitting in half” into account. Too often, that’s because an algorithm is only as anti-racist as the product of its programmers.
The same is true of independent redistricting committees. The failures in New York came in part because a committee’s Republicans chose to simply stonewall and not engage in the process. Gee. I wonder why they would do that?
The John Lewis Voting Rights Act sought to solve these problems pretty effectively, by the way. Only, two “Democratic” senators didn’t want to break an unwritten and oft-broken tradition just to actually have to vote on it. Goddess knows they might not have voted yes, if they were forced to vote at all.
Alas, there is probably no perfect answer. At some point, someone’s gotta draw a line somewhere. As someone who has literally been Redistricted from the house across the street from him, sometimes that line can fall in very unpleasant places. But the addition of a combination of the two above ideas, and less “one Special Master to draw them all” solutions would be nice.