Elbridge Gerry didn’t invent the manipulation of political boundaries for partisan advantage, but that tactic will forever be linked to his name.
As the Democratic governor of Massachusetts in 1812, Gerry approved a contorted State Senate district designed to exclude Federalist voters and to improve his party’s prospects in Essex County. Waggish journalists dubbed its salamander-shaped boundary a “gerrymander.”
Such irregular political boundaries have a long history in this country, where self-interested politicians are responsible for redrawing Congressional and legislative districts in most states.
In the last decade, however, computer-mapping technology and racial politics combined to turn the primitive art of gerrymandering into a state-of-the-art science, says Mark Monmonier, a professor of geography at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.
In his new book, Bushmanders and Bullwinkles: How Politicians Manipulate Electronic Maps and Census Data to Win Elections (University of Chicago), he explains how the last redistricting of Congressional seats created several dozen of the most tortuous gerrymanders the country has ever seen.
Those creative blobs prompted legal battles that have only just petered out, on the eve of the next round of redistricting. But they have also forced into the open a surprising question: How much does shape really matter anymore?
Once upon a time, mapmakers tried to draw districts that were reasonably compact and also honored existing county and town boundaries. That became harder after the courts ruled in 1964 that the principle of “one man, one vote” required districts of virtually equal population.
In the early 1990’s, however, many state legislatures charged with redistricting were caught in a uniquely tight squeeze. Black and Latino politicians wanted political mapmakers to craft as many districts as possible with a large majority of minority residents.
Moreover, says Mr. Monmonier, the first President Bush’s Justice Department saw those demands as an opportunity to improve Republican chances in surrounding areas. So the department used its authority over redistricting, especially in Southern states with a legacy of discrimination, to reject maps that failed to maximize the number of districts with a concentration of minority voters.
The elongated, ragged, or serpentine boundaries that resulted provided fodder for the sort of people who enjoy Rorschach ink-blot tests. Louisiana’s majority-black 4th District, which zigzagged for hundreds of miles along the northern and northeastern borders of the state, was dubbed the “mark of Zorro.” And to some, the two antler-like protrusions of New York’s majority-Latino 12th District called to mind Bullwinkle, the cartoon moose.
But critics of racial gerrymandering may have the most fun with North Carolina’s 12th District, which strung together black neighborhoods in Durham, Greensboro, Winston-Salem, and Charlotte along Interstate 85. Jokesters remarked that a driver cruising the freeway with his car doors open would kill many of its residents.
Legal challenges to that district four times went all the way to the Supreme Court, which finally approved the latest version of the boundaries in April. Now Congressman Melvin L. Watt finally knows where all his constituents live -- just in time for the 2001 redistricting process.
“Ironically, the sinuous district crafted by [Elbridge Gerry’s] cronies is far less troublesome in form, if not intent, than the cartographic manipulations encouraged by the Department of Justice under the Bush administration,” writes Mr. Monmonier. That’s why he calls them Bushmanders.
The challenge for political mapmakers in each state was to design districts according to nearly incompatible criteria: protect incumbents; create new districts with solid majorities of black or Latino residents, often more than 60 percent; and make all seats as nearly equal in population as possible. That, says Mr. Monmonier, is only possible with computer programs known as geographic information systems.
Mapmakers armed with those programs and precise census data can specify the population size and demographic characteristics of each district, and let the computer do the rest.
“The principal objection to these boundaries is that they seem to send a bad message that politicians have been involved in skulduggery here,” says Mr. Monmonier. And voters “end up with a district where people have difficulty figuring out where to vote.”
Does shape really matter? Does effective political representation require districts to be as compact as possible? At one time, Mr. Monmonier writes, it appeared that the Supreme Court thought so. Shortly after the redistricting of 1991, white plaintiffs in Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, Texas, and elsewhere challenged many of the racially gerrymandered districts as unconstitutional. Casting a skeptical eye on North Carolina’s so-called I-85 district in 1993, Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor called it “bizarre.”
Over the course of its many subsequent decisions on gerrymanders, however, a narrow court majority eventually decided that race, not shape, was the issue. Irregularity drew scrutiny only when it indicated that race had been impermissibly used to draw a district’s boundaries. Of the six or so urban districts in Texas that resembled bug splatters on a car windshield, only those for which race was the “predominant” factor in their creation had to be redrawn, while majority-white seats were untouched.
A new version of North Carolina’s 12th District, with a slightly lower proportion of black residents, passed muster this year. The mapmakers needed only to convince the justices that a high concentration of black voters reflected the partisan, not racial, goal of ensuring a safe Democratic seat. Black people, they argued successfully, are the most reliably Democratic voters.
Mr. Monmonier is disdainful of the manipulation of political boundaries, but he’s not sure that critics should be overly concerned about compactness. For one thing, it’s difficult to define. “Compactness is a bit like pornography,” he writes in his book. “Although we know it when we see it, individual sensitivities and community standards may vary.”
Geographers can, in fact, offer political cartographers and judges some quantitative tools for measuring the compactness of political boundaries. A “dispersion index,” for example, can distinguish thin or elongated shapes from full, round ones. A “perimeter index” measures the degree of irregularity in a district’s boundary; a perfect circle would earn the highest score.
One problem, however, is that natural features like coastlines and rivers can artificially distort a district’s compactness rating. More troubling, he writes, is that compactness measures “say little about how effectively a representative can represent a district.” Indeed, he says, the derisive nicknames and silhouette maps used to discredit gerrymanders often amount to “cartographic propaganda.”
Consider North Carolina’s 12th District. “Bound together by I-85, the district is more functionally compact than its silhouette suggests,” he writes. The freeway itself makes traversing the district much easier than it appears. A common interest in transportation policies, tourism, and the highway trust fund may be as legitimate a basis for districts as views on rent subsidies or affirmative action. And who’s to say that members of, say, a racial minority linked by 160 miles of asphalt don’t have a strong claim to political fellowship?
Other scholars echo that point. “The pursuit of compactness really muddies the waters,” says Benjamin Forest, a political geographer at Dartmouth College, because a district’s “communities of interest” are not defined solely by voters’ proximity to one another. “A voter in Rochester may have more in common with a voter in Buffalo,” he adds, “than with a voter in the suburbs of Rochester.” Moreover, Congressional districts now are so large -- more than 600,000 residents, on average -- that no boundary, however compact, can hope to enclose such a community.
Mr. Monmonier believes that the next round of redistricting, due before the Congressional elections of 2002, will produce fewer egregious gerrymanders. In a 1997 decision, the Supreme Court declared that the Voting Rights Act does not allow the Justice Department to reject a redistricting plan merely because more majority-minority districts could be created. And minority groups themselves may feel less pressure to insist on districts with overwhelmingly black or Hispanic populations.
For one thing, black and Latino Democrats now recognize that, at least in the South, concentrating minority voters in some districts hurts their party’s prospects overall. In 1990, before the last redistricting, Georgia’s 10-member congressional delegation had one Republican and one black Democrat.
By 1995, gerrymandering had helped elect two more black Democrats, as expected -- but the rest of the 11-member delegation was Republican. Political scientists believe that such gerrymandering across the South helped the Republicans win a majority in the House of Representatives in 1994.
Democratic and minority politicians have learned some other lessons, as well. In The Paradox of Representation: Racial Gerrymandering and Minority Interests in Congress (Princeton University Press, 1997), David Lublin, an assistant professor of government at American University, writes that black and Latino candidates have found they do not need an overwhelming numerical advantage to win -- a population that is about 55 percent minority will do in all but the most racially polarized districts. In districts that are heavily Democratic anyway, the proportion can be much less.
In districts where a minority constitutes only 40 percent or so of residents, minority incumbents have won easily, and white representatives have generally been responsive to minority interests.
Even in states with little interest in racial gerrymandering, however, the struggle for partisan advantage will continue to twist boundaries into risible shapes. And with each passing year, the technology for doing so becomes cheaper, easier, and more powerful.
Some hope that computer-mapping software may eventually prove to be a counterweight to partisan chicanery. We have almost reached the day, say scholars, when any interest group with a personal computer and access to census data can draw its own maps and offer them for public debate.
“We’re seeing the potential for a democratization of redistricting,” says Mr. Forest. “It’s a threat to political-party control. Now you can create wonderful districts that don’t provide an advantage to one party or another.”
“Buckle your seat belts,” he adds.
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