By Steven Hill and Rob Richie
May 4, 2004
Led by U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and George
Bush's political mastermind Karl Rove, Republicans last year
brought the blood sport of legislative redistricting to new
lows by spurring Texas and Colorado to gerrymander—redraw
to favor a particular party—congressional districts
mid-decade. While Colorado's Supreme Court tossed out the
state's plan, the Texas plan—and with it potentially a
Republican pickup of seven seats—was waved forward by John
Ashcroft's Justice Department and the federal courts.
Now the Supreme Court has weighed in on the issue by
lamenting the state of affairs, but a plurality declared
there's nothing it can do about partisan redistricting. In Vieth
v. Jubelirer, a challenge was made to a Republican
partisan gerrymander in Pennsylvania that marked the first
gerrymandering case taken by the court since 1986. In a 5-4
ruling that echoed Bush v. Gore (the breakdown of
votes on the Court was the same, and the political
implications for control of the U.S. House somewhat
comparable), the Court rejected a Democratic challenge,
making it possible that Pennsylvania Republicans will take
13 of 19 seats even as John Kerry wins the statewide vote.
Rather than the hoped-for surprise knockout, Democrats and
their allies must prepare themselves for a long reform
brawl.
As a quick tutorial, every 10 years the U.S. Census
releases new population data, and elected officials in
nearly every political jurisdiction in the nation carve up
the political landscape into new legislative districts to
ensure representatives have an equal number of constituents.
Some cities and states have procedures to promote public
interest in this redistricting process, but most do little
to prevent the creation of a hodgepodge of districts
gerrymandered to protect incumbents and build partisan
advantage. With increasingly sophisticated computer
software, polling results and demographic data, incumbent
legislators quite literally choose the voters before the
voters have a chance to choose them. As a result of the
redistricting process, most voters are locked into one-party
districts where their only real choice at election time is
to ratify the incumbent or heir apparent of the party
controlling that district.
Calling For Change
After years of simmering as a backburner concern for
wonks and insiders, redistricting has burst onto the
national scene in the wake of a sharp rise in
non-competitive elections and hardened partisan lines in
Congress and many states. Nearly all major newspapers,
including the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times,
New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington
Post have called for reforms to provide greater fairness
and voter choice, usually based on the criteria-driven
process instituted in Iowa in the '80s. Unlike many reforms,
fair redistricting has drawn fervent support from across the
spectrum, ranging from conservatives at The Wall Street
Journal and the Cato Institute to moderate Republicans
like Iowa Congressman Jim Leach and Arizona Sen. John McCain
and Democrats like former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean and
Oregon Congressman Earl Blumenauer.
It was bad enough that in 2001 both Republicans and
Democrats elevated incumbent protection in redistricting to
new levels. In California, for example, incumbent U.S. House
Democrats paid $20,000 apiece to a redistricting
consultant—the brother of an incumbent—to have
"designer districts" drawn for them. Republicans
went along with this cozy arrangement in exchange for their
own safe seats. The result was an unbroken parade of
landslide wins, with no challenger to an incumbent winning
even 40 percent of the vote. Nationally, only four
challengers defeated House incumbents—the fewest in
history—while fewer than one in 10 races were won by
competitive margins inside 55 percent to 45 percent.
The lockdown of the U.S. House has major repercussions
for our political process and representative government.
Elected every two years, with representatives closer to the
people than senators or the president, the House was
designed to reflect the will and different interests of the
nation. The reality is far different. Hardly any members can
be held electorally accountable, given the paucity of
primary challenges (indeed, more members have died in office
than lost in primaries in the last decade), lopsided general
elections grounded in their incumbency advantages, and
districts drawn to have a majority of voters backing their
party. The growth in seats held by women and people of color
has come to a standstill after a sharp rise in 1992, after
the last redistricting.
Control of the House is nearly as fixed in stone as the
routine 98 percent re-election rates. Since 1954, control of
the U.S. House has changed just once, when Newt Gingrich and
Republicans took over in 1994. Democrats gained a few seats
in each election between 1996 and 2000, but Republicans
cemented their grip in 2002 after dominating redistricting
in several large states. Despite Democrats theoretically
needing to only pick up 12 seats to regain the House, few
observers believe that possible this decade without a
dramatic voter surge toward Democrats. A win for George W.
Bush in 2004 would make it even harder for Democrats, as it
likely would lead to a wave of retirements of Democratic
members whose only chance at influence is a sympathetic
president.
Echos Of Election 2000
Redistricting was a key reason for Republican success in
2002. Although Al Gore won a half million more votes than
George Bush in 2000, Bush carried 241 of current House
districts, compared to only 194 for Gore—a bias toward
Republicans that at this point is tied to where the parties
gain their support, with the Democratic vote more
cosmopolitan and more concentrated in cities. Gore won more
votes than Bush in the combined votes cast in Florida,
Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, but after having unfettered
control of redistricting in those states, Republicans now
hold a whopping 51 out of 77 seats elected from those
areas—including 18 of 25 seats in Florida. Given that
Democrats hold a majority of House seats in the remaining 46
states, it's fair to say that the key elections for House
control were not in 2002, but in those states' 1998
gubernatorial elections swept by Republicans who then helped
dominate congressional redistricting.
Some thought Republicans just may have overplayed their
hand in their relentless drive for a secure majority. Last
spring, Colorado Republicans adopted a new plan to protect a
vulnerable congressional incumbent merely two days after its
introduction. In Texas, things reached truly wacky
dimensions, involving the potentially illegal use of federal
agents to apprehend 51 Democratic state legislators who had
gone AWOL to prevent having a quorum that could enact the
redistricting. Republican Gov. Rick Perry convened special
session after special session until finally winning a plan
designed to switch seven seats to his party. Those
high-profile shenanigans may have been what spurred the
Supreme Court to rule on the challenge to the Pennsylvania
gerrymander. Gerrymandering is bad enough without the
prospect of each new legislative majority adjusting lines to
protects its friends and hurt their enemies after every
election. But four justices (Scalia, Rehnquist, O'Connor and
Thomas) made it clear they would reject any political
gerrymandering claim, and the decisive fifth
vote—Kennedy—dangled out the slimmest of hopes when he
essentially said "keep fishing and maybe you'll get a
bite."
Illinios' Example
So what now? Congress has every right—and indeed
responsibility—to regulate congressional redistricting.
Not doing so is analogous to allowing elected officials to
count votes in their own elections behind closed doors.
States also can take action on their own, and groups like
Common Cause are contemplating state ballot measures.
But even with nonpartisan redistricting, the number of
competitive districts around the nation would likely rise
from today's dismal one in 10 seats to perhaps one in
six—and still do little to boost women and racial
minorities. What we ultimately must do is take on
winner-take-all elections, which are at the root of much of
what ails the body politics. One example of how this could
fit in with in American traditions comes from Illinois,
which for more than a century elected its state legislature
with a semi-proportional representation method. Lowering the
victory threshold for candidates from 50 percent to 25
percent didn't threaten the two-party system, but it did
broaden representation within the parties and promote more
bipartisan policy. It also gave most voters better choices
and fairer representation. Full representation is a win-win
for women, racial minorities and supporters of more partisan
fairness and more competitive elections. With it in place,
voters—rather than district lines—are the key to
defining representation.
The lesson from the Supreme Court is that we must win a
fair democracy in the political process. With voter turnout
plummeting, most of us living in thoroughly noncompetitive
districts, and the "People's House" gerrymandered
so that one party has dominant control, we could cancel most
legislative elections and few would notice. In the '90s, an
angry public lashed out by voting overwhelmingly for term
limits. Now it's time for a drive to give voters real
choices, new voices and fair representation.