The Forces Fighting for Fairer Elections

This year’s political buzzword? Gerrymandering.
Though the practice of redrawing voting districts to favor the party in power has been around for more than 200 years — and its merits debated for nearly as long — gerrymandering has recently become the cause du jour for Democrats. Last week, the Supreme Court heard arguments in Gill v. Whitford. At issue: whether Wisconsin’s Republican-controlled legislature manipulated districts so severely that Wisconsinites have essentially been denied their full right to vote. 
To be sure, extreme gerrymandering occurs on both sides of the aisle, though Republican victories in state legislatures during the past decade have put the GOP in charge of more maps. President Barack Obama highlighted the issue in his 2016 State of the Union address, saying, “We’ve got to end the practice of drawing our congressional districts so that politicians can pick their voters, and not the other way around.”
While the Gill case has the potential to reshape the way states, ahem, shape their districts, here’s a look at some of the innovative ways advocates are changing the debate on extreme gerrymandering.

1. THE MATHEMATICIANS

What if, instead of people drawing voting maps, we let simple math do the work for us? That proposition is what led Moon Duchin, a math professor at Tufts University, to launch the Metric Geometry and Gerrymandering Group (MGGG), which studies how to apply geometry and computing principles to create fair, compact voting districts. Through a series of regional workshops in 2017–18, Duchin and her team will train mathematicians and other academics to serve as expert witnesses in redistricting cases. The workshops, which kicked off with a five-day conference in Boston in August, will feature lectures by leading experts in mathematics, political science, law and civil rights, and will be partially open to the public as well as available online.
“We’ll be teaching them, but we’ll also be asking them questions,” Duchin said in an interview earlier this year. “At end of day, we want to produce something that leads to better standards.”

2. THE COMPUTER SCIENTISTS

Though a lower court ruled that computer algorithms were used in the Wisconsin case to give Republicans a disproportionate advantage, similar technology is also being employed elsewhere to do exactly the opposite.
Last month, data scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign published a paper  touting the algorithm they developed, which can engineer a voting district according to whatever parameters are set by the user, while still ensuring certain geographic standards are met. Likewise, a different team from the university last year developed an algorithm that evaluates “extreme redistricting plans” created by lawmakers that can easily suss out how partisan they are.

The word “gerrymandering” comes from a map drawn by Massachusetts Gov. Elbridge Gerry in 1812 with districts so convoluted they resembled a salamander.

3. THE CITIZEN CARTOGRAPHERS

If scientists and mathematicians fail, there’s always DIY redistricting. Open software like DistrictBuilder and The Public Mapping Project  is available to the public, as is Dave’s Redistricting, created by a Seattle software engineer. Such transparent mapmaking resources allow local and state governments, advocates, and regular citizens to kick the tires of proposed districts, to see if they are as fair as possible.

4. THE STATES

In an effort to reduce the impact of partisanship, some states have charged independent panels with creating election maps. Arizona, for example, has seen some of the most competitive races in the country since implementing its panel in 2001, producing statistically lower margins of victory compared to the nation as a whole. California’s 14-person panel isn’t allowed to consider partisan data when drawing its maps; the result has similarly increased competitiveness, with the average margin of victory 30 percent lower in 2011 than it was in 10 years prior, before the creation of the commission.
And then there’s Iowa, which relies on an advisory board to draft voting districts. The state legislature then gets final approval; if they reject it three times, Iowa’s highest court will intervene.

5. THE VOTING-REFORM ACTIVISTS

Ranked-choice voting, also known as instant-runoff voting, is used to pick Oscar winners, the Australian House of Representatives, and the presidents of Ireland and India. In this system, voters rank candidates in order of preference. If there’s no winner on the first round, the candidate with the fewest votes is removed, and the votes are re-tabulated. The result is a winner with a higher chance of representing the majority of voters. Maine voters approved the method in a ballot initiative last November, and while the state’s court later called the measure unconstitutional, it is still in effect.
FairVote.org, a nonpartisan group advocating for election reform, also promotes ranked-choice voting, and a bill calling for it in Congressional representative elections has been introduced by Don Beyer, a Virginia Democrat.

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While none of these possibilities remove fallible, political humans entirely from the redistricting process, each would probably be better than the flawed system we have now, and, with the fate of the republic at stake, merits consideration.
“What’s really behind all of this?” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg asked in court last Tuesday, before answering her own question: “The precious right to vote.”

Ohio’s Redistricting Plan Makes Fair Elections Possible

Each time redistricting voter districts enters the national dialogue, along with it comes partisan politics and gerrymandering. But Ohio is taking steps to quell the dissent and find a more balanced and lasting way to map out voting districts.
Recently, the Ohio House gave final approval to a plan to draw voter maps using a bipartisan process with the goal of making elections more competitive.
Legislatures draw voting maps in 37 states, while 13 states use commissions — with some independent and others politically appointed — to define districts that are meant to be less partisan. In Ohio, the Apportionment Board is made up of three elected state officials including the governor, auditor and the secretary of state, as well as one member from each party chosen by the legislatures, according to the New York Times.
But the new proposal adds an additional member from each party, and if the minority party members don’t agree with the map, the revisions will only last four years instead of 10. With statewide elections every four years, partisan control could shift, which means it would make more sense to come up with a compromise that the minority party approves of as well.
The new plan is focused on state legislative districts but may have an effect on congressional districts since they are drawn by state lawmakers.
There’s no guarantee, however, that the plan will bring a more balance approach, as more Americans have begun living in communities where they’re politically and ideologically aligned, the New York Times points out. This divide also increasingly applies to the rural and urban divide as well.

“There’s no perfect map, no panacea,” says Morgan Cullen, a policy analyst at the National Conference of State Legislatures.

But Ohio’s move is the first in the last few years to remove partisanship from the process, Cullen adds.

Some state Republicans are praising the move, calling it a step toward ending polarization in the General Assembly, according to Ohio secretary of state Jon Husted. Democratic Senator Nina Turner, who ran unsuccessfully against Husted for secretary of state in November, agrees that the plan would create more balance.
“I always say Ohio is conservative by design and not by desire,” she says. “This really is a tremendous deal.”
Ohio residents must vote to amend the State Constitution in a November 2015 referendum in order to implement the changes, which means they would not go into effect until the next redistricting in 2021.
MORE: The Simple Fix That May Change How We Vote Forever