“Americans Worry Democracy in Danger Amid Gerrymandering Fights, Reuters/Ipsos Poll Finds,” read a headline at USNews.com in August as the Texas Legislature began voting on new Congressional district maps for the Lone Star State.
The Reuters/Ipsos “poll found that 55% of respondents, including 71% of Democrats and 46% of Republicans, agreed that ongoing redistricting plans – such as those hatched by governors in Texas and California in a process known as gerrymandering – were ‘bad for democracy.’”
Why would so many people think moving one set of rather arbitrary district lines around on a map, lines that regularly are moved by legislatures or redistricting commissions, to be “bad for democracy?” Why would … moving one set of rather arbitrary district lines around on a map… be “bad for democracy?”
As long as Congressional districts contain about the same number of people, as is required, nothing changes to “democracy” when lines are moved. Strictly speaking, each person’s vote still counts the same in a newly drawn district as it did in the previous. So why is this seen as a threat to the democratic process by so many?
First, I posit that it is because most people only hear doom and gloom propaganda about so-called gerrymandering, district drawing to benefit one interest or another, from the nation’s media and other influencers who are loud with criticism when districts are drawn in a way perceived to hurt their partisan interests and near silent when such line drawing promotes their interests.
Gerrymandering, named after Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry who drew a salamander shaped district to benefit his political party in 1812, is a term that suggests oddly shaped districts on a map that favor partisan gain based on voter loyalties over cohesive community interests. The visuals of these maps often seem inherently unfair to people… It just “looks” wrong, or unfair.
The visuals of these maps often seem inherently unfair to people. They see districts in densely populated areas that seem to snake all around each other with little to no visual clues, such as geography or city limits, that would naturally recommend a district line on a map. It just “looks” wrong, or unfair.
Most who have not engaged in the legal act of drawing districts are unaware of how complicated is drawing district lines under the various legal mandates in place and, to explain even the most basics of such would introduce confusion unnecessary for now. And frankly, it wouldn’t make much difference in opinion because the reflexive idea that gerrymandering is bad comes from the natural processing of a visual on a map. There are plenty of district lines that look chaotic that were not drawn specifically for partisan gain.
I noticed in the national and state coverage of the recent redraw of Texas Congressional districts that there was much condemnation of partisan gerrymandering but very few map visuals in the coverage. Why was that given that a picture is said to be worth a thousand words?
Overall, especially inside densely population D/FW and Harris County, the maps redrawn by Texas Republicans look less gerrymandered than the district lines being replaced.
Take a look at the maps you will see.
(The “current” are those in place for the last election and the “proposed” are those redrawn and adopted by the Texas Legislature. Click on each map for a larger version. Thanks to State Rep. Hillary Hickland, HD55, for providing these comparative maps.)
I believe if those polled by Reuters/Ipsos had been given these maps to compare instead of only reading, or hearing, words that describe the new maps as partisan gerrymanders, far fewer of those polled would have been so deeply bothered by it all. In fact, I think if the maps had been presented without labels and the question had been asked to pick which map was the new Republican “gerrymandered” map, most would have picked the old map as the new and the new as the old.
UPDATE: From the court hearing over the maps in October, a good description of how the state’s mapmaker went about drawing the maps.
I recall a particular vote in my county that the lines seemed to be redrawn to benefit the passage of legally selling alcohol in that county. It did not pass at that time. We originally had four precincts, geographically equal, but not nearly equal in population. Gerrymandering, as we read in our history school books, was bad, but under-represented minorities, economic or otherwise, would not agree. Why would the Democrats complain when they are and have redrawn boundaries to possibly better represent their constituents? Thanks for your map examples. Good bull.