Configuring political districts to favor one party over another, known as gerrymandering, has its origins early in our nation’s history. The practice is named after Eldridge Gerry who was a Founding Father, merchant, politician, and diplomat from Massachusetts. Among his many accomplishments, Gerry signed the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution, and he served as Governor of Massachusetts and Vice President of the United States under James Madison. The Boston Gazette, on March 26, 1812, coined the term “gerrymandering” to describe the new Massachusetts Senate districts signed into law by then Governor Gerry, which the Gazette described as looking like a salamander.
Since that time, all political parties in our nation’s history have employed gerrymandering for their political gain. Gerrymandering is so common that, within limitations, it is accepted as the right of the majority in power in any State. In addition to being widely accepted, it is also completely undemocratic. Gerrymandering suppresses the electoral voice of political constituents to favor one party over another which makes State and Federal governments unrepresentative of the people as a whole. For this reason alone, gerrymandering should be legislated out of existence.
A founding principle of our constitutional republic is that the rule of the majority should not drown out the voice of the minority. Gerrymandering drowns out the voice of the minority in each State’s legislator and the US House of Representatives. To correct this undemocratic practice, our national government could pass legislation which mandates States use a standard methodology to more equitably draw political maps that better captures the voice of all constituents living in each State. The Federal government only has jurisdiction over Federal elections, so they could only mandate such a measure for Federal elections, which leaves State legislative districts vulnerable to gerrymandering, but it is a start.
The overall goal of this methodology would be for political maps to produce representation equivalent to party vote totals in the most recent general election within each State. In other words, assuming no electoral fraud, the number of seats held by any party at the State or National level would, ideally, be proportional to the total number of votes each party receives for the President of the United States in the most recent general election within that State prior to the redistricting process.
To achieve equitable political maps in each State, the methodology must have two main parameters: 1. preserve municipal boundaries whenever legally feasible; and 2. prohibit rural and urban areas from being in the same district.
Preserving municipal boundaries will limit politicians from imaginatively shaping electoral districts by prohibiting them from creating narrow corridors to link similar demographic communities that vote along their party lines. Politicians should only be able to split municipalities for two reasons:
- When a single municipality’s population is greater than the allowed district maximum, in which case they must split it along precinct/census-block lines.
- When maintaining municipality lines would make the 1965 Voting Act’s section 2 compliance impossible.
The 1965 Voting Act was created in the aftermath of the Thornburg v. Gingles US Supreme Court case. Thornburg was a unanimous opinion by the court to prohibit States from creating electoral districts that disenfranchised black voters from electing candidates of their choice. Politicians have an obligation to uphold section 2 of the Voting Act while also maintaining municipal boundaries as much as possible when creating political districts.
Urban and rural areas must be separated on political maps, because people who live in urban and rural areas have different wants, needs, and desires and their unique interests should be represented in the legislatures. Due to the concentration of people living in urban areas, it is easy for politicians to portion relatively small sections of urban areas with large rural areas to overwhelm the rural voice. Conversely, politicians can pare overwhelming large rural areas to eclipse the voice of small portions of urban areas. To maintain the voice of both urban and rural areas, politicians must keep them separate when creating political districts.
For far too long, majority political parties have suppressed the voice of the minority party in their State through gerrymandering. Similar to Thornburg, gerrymandering disenfranchises voters, based on their demographics, from electing the candidates of their choice. Just like Thornburg, gerrymandering should be prohibited in an updated Voting Rights Act to stop the disenfranchisement of voters.