Mr Gerry

Consider the man Elbridge Gerry, an early American politician from Massachusetts, and his legacy.

His legacy could be that he was a member of the rebellious Continental Congress.  As such he was a signer of the Declaration of Independence.  As a member of the later Congress of the Confederation (under the Articles of Confederation), he was present for the crafting of the Constitution (although he initially opposed the final draft).  His opposition resulted in his helping give birth to the first ten Amendments to the Constitution, AKA the Bill of Rights.

His legacy could be that he was (eventually) elected Governor of Massachusetts, or even that he served as Vice-President of the United States, under James Madison.

What a legacy all the above would be! But no, his legacy is in the portmanteau that contains his last name.  “Gerrymandering” comes from a combination of Gerry and Salamander, since, as Governor, some of the districts he drew up for elected offices looked like salamanders. To gerrymander is to make elective district boundaries so contorted and twisted – always to gain elective advantage – that any sane and unbiased person would quickly recognize them as something that came from a Steven King book, or a House of Mirrors.

Most often used as a verb, or participle adjective, the root word, based on Gerry’s surname, is always used as a pejorative.  The practice of gerrymandering, i.e. producing gerrymandered districts, is still widely used today.  That is his legacy.

In fact, the practice has only gotten worse.  Later herein are shown several diabolical state Congressional District (CD) maps.  Last year the United States Supreme Court bowed out of the argument completely, saying they don’t have jurisdiction over how states draw their own CD boundaries.

Normally I’d agree with SCOTUS on this.  States do what states do.  They all have their own traditions, laws, policies, rules and idiosyncrasies.  Paraphrasing Justice Louis Brandeis: the states are 50 different laboratories of democracy.  However, as with voting rights, civil rights and individual liberty, sometimes it is mandatory that the Federal Government, with the blessing of the Supreme Court, step in to rectify wrongs.  Severe Gerrymandering is one such wrong.

I read with interest that recently the courts of individual states have stepped up to abrogate such newly drawn gerrymandered maps.  In New York, a very progressive state with historically progressive judges, a court has struck down a carved-up map that overwhelmingly favors progressive Democrats.  Good for them.  Similarly, the Maryland courts have tossed out a disturbing gerrymandered map (MD has had sliced-and-diced districts for decades).

Not to dump on just Democrats.  Republicans have often drawn just as contorted districts, unfettered by logic except to gain advantage. Recently, maps drawn by Republican legislators in Kansas, Ohio and North Carolina have also been tossed out by state courts.

There are surely a good many more such state maps, but in these their state courts seem unwilling to take action.  Texas, for example, has a few disturbing congressional districts that clearly favor whites (mostly Republican, at least in Texas) over Blacks and Hispanics (mostly Democrat voters). As in California, they have decades of judges chosen by and for one party, and they seem unlikely to overturn such maps.

These most egregious examples should and must be rectified very soon.  Districts are re-drawn to reflect the decennial census (the last concluded in late 2020 and data released in spring, 2021).  When the data are digested, the districts must be drawn in time for the next election cycle.  And this includes primary races, which are currently on the doorstep in all states.

A few states, like my home state Colorado, have adopted a “non-partisan independent” commission to draw the lines.  In Colorado, which could have been very contentious – since we gained a Congressional seat – this seems to have gone very well. It appears the split will closely trend with the political leanings of the voters, on average.  We shall see.  So far, few squabbles.

It appears Gerrymandering will be de rigueur in many states for quite a while.  What to do?

Not sure.  The Federal Election Commission, backed by SCOTUS, could step in, on the basis of civil rights and try to do what Colorado and other states have done.  If the congressional representation continues to deviate from general voter patterns, then I don’t think they have any option other than to take the districting responsibility away from those states.  Much like the voting rights act of 1965. To do nothing would be to leave millions with no practical voice in an election.

I do have an interesting option, which I have proffered before.  I’ll present it in terms of a hypothetical numerical situation.  First the Federal Government, say the Federal Election Commission (FEC) and the Justice Department, with support of SCOTUS, would have to step in and “help” states who draw such contorted districts.

Then a program kicks in which works something like this.  Suppose a state has 10 Congressional Districts.  And suppose ten million voters participate in the election of CD representatives.  So, on average, 1 representative for each one million votes.  [I know each CD has on average about 750,000 residents with many fewer voters; I use these numbers for simplicity].

Voters vote for party, not individuals.  But they know the preferred “winners” of each party as they would be published well before.

The hypothetical votes turn out as
Party A:  5.0 Million
Party B:  4.4 Million
Party C:  0.5 Million
Others:  0.1 Million

Starting with the first digit, we can assign Party A five seats, Party B four seats.  Subtracting those away we are left with
Party A: 0.0 Million
Party B: 0.4 Million
Party C: 0.5 Million
Others: 0.1 Million

So, Party C gets the 10^th seat.

Party A: 5 seats
Party B: 4 seats
Party C: 1 seat.

As far as which individuals get those 10 seats I have two general approaches, but each could be tweaked in the interest of appeasing the squealers.

In each case the parties submit a list of 10 candidates several months before the election.  They should be chosen by statewide primary.

In my first approach, the candidates are ordered one-through-ten, and they get seats as such.  In the hypothetical election, Party A’s candidates 1 through 5 get seated, and B’s 1 through 4, etc.

In my preferred approach, the party’s candidate names get written on ping pong balls and selected by pure chance, a la Lotto.  Pick ‘em at random, which has the benefit of likely ending some careers that span 20, 30 and 40 years.

This randomness would, perhaps, anger too many.  A compromise tweak would put in 10 balls for candidate #1; 9 balls for candidate #2; … all the way to a single ball for candidate #10.

It’s not perfect, but it takes the power away from the partisans and gives third parties a chance to get representation, especially in huge states like California, Texas and Florida.  [In my model CA gives 1 seat to a 3^rd party].

After a decade of this, the lizards in each state’s legislature might even pledge to play nice and do away with partisan district boundaries, … and dump on the legacy of one Elbridge Gerry.  Hey!  It could happen!

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Maryland’s CD map, 2012-2020.  Calling #3 a salamander is a gross misstatement.  It’s a blob, a creature from another dimension.  And #4 isn’t far behind.

Both major US parties accuse the other of such origami.  And they are correct. In fact, this problem is hardly limited to the US.

The UK has had a worse problem for centuries, only recently rectified. Constituencies for the House of Commons (like US congressional districts) didn’t have even close to the same number of people from district to district.  It was a very long-standing problem; I guess due to reluctance to re-draw boundaries and the uneven growth (in some cases shrinkage) of population.  Although this problem is now “fixed” (the UK now only requires that each constituency population be within 5% of the national average; whereas the US insists they be essentially identical within any state).  This has still resulted in gerrymandered constituencies (yes, even they use the word) and a result that leaves many unhappy.

Over in Hungary, Victor Orban’s power is secure.  Via gerrymandering his Fidesz party controls a slam-dunk legislative majority.  They have ²/₃ of the seats despite getting only ½ of the vote.

Back to the US and uneven distributions. I invested quite a bit of time evaluating the current splits in the House of Representatives, by party and by state.  For point of reference, I used the method I proposed above.  In the analysis a whopping 39 states, or 78%, have distorted distributions of congressional seats.  20 tip Republican and 19 tip Democratic.  Most are off balance by a single seat.  Only 11 states are unbalanced by more than one seat. ^[1] These are:

I have to give a bit of warning here.  The backdrop is that these states (as do most others with imbalance) have huge regions of rural low-density residents and a few compact areas of high-density population.  People tend to vote like the people around them and like the people they hang out with; the former group generally more conservative and the latter more progressive. Also, there is a high correlation between population density and how people vote. [Suburban and exurban areas can go either way, but they do still tend to fit the trend that people vote like their neighbors.  You can see this in most precinct level election results].

Because of very high and very low population density areas splashed across most states, the upshot is that almost any map drawn will have that look of being gerrymandered, even if it matches the theoretical perfect balance.  Urban areas will be cut up and parceled out to rural areas.  Some suburban areas will be smooshed in with a neighboring suburb, while being divided itself.

On a final note, the German system reaches about the best balance possible.  Bundestag elections have two separate elections.  Voters choose a candidate, and also vote for a party.  When all the votes are tallied in the candidate elections, and ministers are assigned to elective districts (598 are assigned initially), they then look to see if the distribution matches the party vote.  If it doesn’t then they simply add more seats, so that the overall representation matches the popular vote.  [Caveat: A party must reach a 5% threshold to get “extra” seats this way].  I don’t know how large the Bundestag can get, but in the current new coalition government it is at its largest ever, with 736 members. ^[2]

Or, Auf Wiedersehen Herr Gerry.

That’s my ramble, or rant, for this month.  On to happier themes for a while.

Take care

Joe Girard © 2022

Thanks for reading. As always, you can add yourself to the notification list for newly published material by clicking here. Or emailing joe@girardmeister.com

With gratitude to my wife, as usual, for pointing out typos, clunky wording, awkward flow and unnecessary words. With helpful suggestions, of course.

Footnotes and final musings.
[1] The most egregious seem to be Massachusetts, Maryland and Alabama.  I arrive at this conclusion by simply taking the ratio of the imbalance to total seats available.  States that have recently lost a seat have redrawn boundaries to make things worse; some are still pending court direction (NY, CA, IL).

[2] The German system is slightly more complicated than this but this explanation gives the gist.

Below: some districting examples for elections 2012-2020.  North Carolina surely looks sliced up by Edward Scissorhands, as does Maryland, shown in main body, above.

North Carolina, may I direct your attention to CDs #1 through 5 and 9?  This has resulted in +2 for Republicans recently.

Alabama looks innocuous.  By lumping almost all Dem voters into #6 (Birmingham area, AKA Alabama’s Blue Dot) Alabama is biased +2 for Republicans.

Texas has some serious distortions, which might get worse as Texas gets two additional seats.   Especially note #14, #26, #35. I don’t even see how this is all possible, given that districts must be contiguous.