I’m of mixed minds regarding yesterday’s SCOTUS decision regarding racial gerrymandering. For a complete rundown of the decision see Amy Howe’s post at SCOTUSBlog.
As I see it there are two distinct but interrelated matter—the policy issue and the legal issue. As Ms. Howe’s post should make clear most of the commentary including the dissents by three Supreme Court justices are on the policy issue. I am more concerned about the legal concerns in the decision. If anyone can point me to a good, dispassionate discussion of those, I would greatly appreciate it.
There’s a clear problem: roughly a third of Louisiana’s voting age population is black. All else equal one might expect roughly a third of Louisianas’s Congressional representatives to be black, too. That would be two representatives. Sometimes one, sometimes three, but generally two.
Now consider the proposed map of districts at the top of this post which the SCOTUS decision declared unconstitutional. The proposed 6th district is rather obviously ferociously gerrymandered. At the current scale, congressional districts are too coarse to reflect underlying demographic realities without distortion; increasing granularity reduces the need for those distortions. My preferred solution to the problem would be for Congress to double the number of Congressional representatives. Since the size of Congress was fixed in 1929 by the Permanent Apportionment Act, an act of Congress would be sufficient to change that. Let’s engage in a thought experiment and imagine doubling the size of the House. Louisiana’s Congressional districts would increase from six to twelve. That would allow one majority black district around New Orleans, one majority black district around Baton Rouge, one majority black district around Shreveport, and, possibly one additional majority black district, much less gerrymandered than the proposed Sixth District.
In other words, the problem that’s being addressed isn’t simply racism or partisanship. It’s racism and partisanship and the lack of granularity in Congressional districts. The point isn’t that increasing the number of districts would eliminate gerrymandering or resolve the legal tensions in voting-rights law. It’s that it would change the incentives. With smaller, more numerous districts, the payoff from any single act of line-drawing is reduced, and the need for extreme, long-distance stitching of populations, whether for partisan or racial purposes, is correspondingly diminished.
Another alternative is switching to a proportional representation system that is statewide (i.e. award each party list the number of seats that is closest to the lists vote percentage statewide).
Like increasing the size of the House, it requires an act of Congress.
Compared to increasing the size of the house —
It wouldn’t dilute the small state bonus in the Electoral college, so it wouldn’t touch Presidential politics and arouse the weariness of the smaller states. There is no line drawing at all vs the line drawing required even with smaller districts. In the larger states, third party representation would be realistic (a third party would need less then 3% in California or Texas). — empowering citizens who feel the 2 parties don’t represent their views.
The downside is representation would move from individuals towards parties or groups; and getting rid of incumbents at the head of each of party list would be close to impossible.
I used to have some vague hopes that the courts would outlaw naked political gerrymandering but that hope is long gone. It’s now a science and they gerrymander to keep the current party in power with no thought given to the votes actually being representative. We need a change which would minimize the ability of the party in power to remain in power via manipulating the mechanics of voting and not actually winning more votes. I think your plan is a reasonable one. There might be others but increasing the number of representatives seems less likely to be manipulated.
I think it is (and will be) underdiscussed that packing minorities into majority districts helps Republicans create majority Republican districts by allowing Republican voters to be spread efficiently across the remainder. That’s why Republicans in Democratic states sometimes bring voting rights cases complaining that insufficient minority districts are being created. In Illinois, the most recent lawsuit was an unsuccessful effort by Republicans to require two Latino majority districts around Chicago.
In the South, where most African-Americans live, the majority minority mandate recognized by SCOTUS in Thornburg (1986), transformed politics. Blacks were removed from white districts, making those white districts more competitive for Republicans, transforming the Solid South and the national Republican party.
I can remember back in the early 90s when I would meet a friend for coffee before class, she would tell people asking what she was doing that summer: “I’ve got an internship with Professor _______ to go to Florida and help create Republican districts.” That got a lot of quizzical looks since she was a no-doubt Democrat.
The main issue is the difference between descriptive and substantive representation. Getting more black politicians elected through minority majority districts is good for those politicians, particularly as they may never have to face a competitive election, but black constituents obtain better substantive outcomes if they are key constituents in multiple districts.