[EL] More on How Gerrymandering Did Not Cause the Shutdown

[Michael P McDonald]

Well, don't count me among "all academics" who don't think gerrymandering is contributing to the current political climate. I'm reposting my lengthy response to the claim that gerrymandering has no effect below, which I previously posted to the list. I find it interesting how there are some political scientists who have never drawn a district in their life, and in some cases never written on the subject of redistricting, now hold themselves out as experts on the subject. I've spoken with other academics who do redistricting work and publish in the area who agree with my position, and I can point to a large number of academic publications that are overlooked by these self-appointed experts (if you desire the literature, see my redistricting encyclopedia entries where I try to present a balanced approach on the subject).

One thing that I don't address below is ideological polarization. There is a relationship between district partisanship and ideology, but the partisan divide between the parties is larger using ideological scores based on roll call votes such as Poole and Rosenthal's NOMINATE scores. However, it is well-known that NOMINATE scores are endogenous to the institution, meaning that they are not the true preferences of members of Congress, they are the preferences revealed at the end of the sausage-making legislative process. We've had a revealing look under the hood of that process when Republican members have publicly stated that they are for a clean CR, but then have later renounced that position. NOMINATE scores cannot measure members' ideology vis-a-vis roll call votes that never take place. How might moderates gain an upper hand? The textbook Conditional Party Government (CPG) model argues that the current strength of party leaders arose as the party caucuses became more ideologically cohesive. As I like to point out, in footnote 14 of McCarthy, Poole, and Rosenthal's article, they admit that they only look at correlations in a static model, they cannot predict what happens if the composition of Congress changes. If the CPG model is correct, injecting more moderates into the Republican (and Democratic) caucuses would not only have a direct effect on reducing party polarization through the election of more moderates, it would have an indirect effect since party leaders would have to recognize the increased influence of these moderate members within their caucuses. These Republican moderates would not have to renounce their positions, and perhaps Boehner would even allow a vote on a clean CR if moderates had more power relative to the Tea Party members.

And btw, there is a way to directly tie the shutdown to redistricting. The member who circulated the letter among his colleagues laying out the strategy of tying the CR and debt ceiling to Obamacare is Rep. Meadows, a freshman Republican from the 11th district in North Carolina, composed primarily of the western portion of the state. He essentially replaced Democratic Rep. Schuler, who decided to retire when his district was redrawn out from under him.

My previous post follows:
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Micah Altman and I have now worked through three states - Florida, Ohio, and Virginia - comparing plans drawn by the public with those drawn by redistricting authorities, and it is clear that it is possible to chew gum and walk at the same time. That is, that it is possible to draw congressional districts that are more compact, respect more political boundaries, are more politically fair, and respect the Voting Rights Act than the plans that were adopted. Why? Well, congressional districts are very large, with over 700K people in the typical state. It is not difficult at all to unpack Democrats from urban areas with such large districts. What about New York City or San Francisco? Yes, it is true that it is difficult to unpack Democrats from these large urban centers, but this is not where the Republicans gained advantage in the last round of redistricting. There is also the well-known phenomenon of a seat bonus accruing to the majority party in a jurisdiction using single-member districts, thus counteracting the inefficient distribution of partisans in heavily Democratic California and New York.

So, what is wrong with the analysis by Hopkins, Hayes, and Sides cited by Jonathan Bernstein? It asks the question what would have happened if the 2008 elections were run in the 2012 districts. As Hirsch published in the Election Law Journal (the unofficial journal for the list-serve), and have others such as Jacobson and myself separately in other peer-reviewed journals, the 2000's redistricting was heavily pro-Republican, as much as the post-2010 redistricting it turns out. It took an extraordinary pro-Democratic election in 2006 to overcome the Republican structural gerrymandering advantage. Others argue the same is true for the 1990s, especially with regards to minority seat maximization in Southern states that robbed Democrats of seats and led to the Shaw line of litigation; indeed, in 1996 House Democratic candidates also won more votes than Republicans, but failed to win a majority. The Hopkins et al analysis thus poses the wrong counterfactual question: what would have happened if the 2012 elections had been held in similarly pro-Republican districts drawn in the previous decade. Not surprisingly, they find little evidence that Republicans used the recent redistricting to increase their majority (they find a 7 seat gain); indeed, an alternative conclusion is that the Hopkins et al analysis supports Hirsch, Jacobson, and myself who argue the 2000's redistricting was heavily pro-Republican. The correct question to ask is it possible to draw fair districts given the 2010 census data. This is why analyzing alternative legal plans, such as those drawn by the public who tend to approach redistricting in a much different manner than redistricting authorities, is a better way to assess counterfactuals, like it is possible to draw fair and compact legal plans (plans exist that show it demonstrably is). Nowhere in their analysis do Hopkins et al do a geographic analysis, they just assume their conclusion that it is impossible to draw fair and compact districts is true because it is a theory that conforms with their analysis, even though there are alternative theories that also conform with their analysis that they cannot rule out and do not consider.

Some might argue (as has been done at the Monkey Cage blog and elsewhere) that a simulation analysis by Wei and Rodden published in QJPS corroborate the Hopkins et al argument; however, new analysis presented by these same authors in an expert report in support of plaintiffs in the current Florida redistricting litigation now finds it is possible to draw a fair plan in Florida; i.e., their simulations now cover a fair division of the state, whereas their QJPS article analysis did not. Peer-reviewed work by Micah and I show that redistricting is an NP-hard partitioning problem: automated algorithms designed to generate simulations are thus likely biased in unknown ways and cannot be trusted, except where these simulations can show the existence of a counterfactual scenario, not the absence of one, such as Wei and Rodden argue in QJPS. The presence of compact and fair legal plans drawn by humans similarly provide the counterfactual evidence that Wei and Rodden's simulation approach is indeed biased. Furthermore, Mexico's experience with automated redistricting algorithms demonstrates that humans do better than the computer when optimizing multiple criteria; redistricting is such a complex optimization problem that computer algorithms tend to get stuck in local optima that humans can imagine their way out of. Mexico's redistricting is also much less data-intensive than the U.S. and thus more amenable to automated solutions, so it is noteworthy that humans can beat the computer there.

As a further aside, prior to conducting our Public Mapping Project where we empowered the public to draw plans through our web-based DistrictBuilder software, I heard voting rights advocates say that the lay persons could not draw districts with a sensitivity to voting rights. Students proved them wrong by drawing districts that demonstrated how to expand minority representation, say in Virginia, where University of Virginia undergraduates first showed how to create an additional minority influence district in southeast Virginia that later became the flashpoint in negotiations between the Democratic-controlled Virginia Senate and the Republican-controlled House. Citizens also proved them wrong in Minneapolis, where community groups used our software to draw city council districts to empower Hispanic and Somali communities.

The subtext is that it is possible for a redistricting authority to state their criteria and let the public, parties, computers - whatever - have at it and draw districts that optimize on the criteria. This is essentially the approach advocated by Ohio reformers, and to a lesser degree (minus the public participation) the approach employed by New Jersey's congressional and state legislative commissions. Given the right mix of criteria, it is possible to produce districts that are the same or better on virtually everything that we might value in redistricting, except if you are the party controlling redistricting.

If you've read this far and want to know more, our Virginia analysis is published here:

Micah Altman and Michael P. McDonald. 2013. "A Half-Century of Virginia Redistricting Battles: Shifting from Rural Malapportionment to Voting Rights and Participation." University of Richmond Law Review 47: 771-831.

An overview of the use of computers in redistricting and the limitations of automated algorithms is here:

Micah Altman and Michael P. McDonald. 2010. "The Promise and Perils of Computers in Redistricting." Duke J. Constitutional Law and Public Policy 5: 69-112.

The Florida analysis is a forthcoming edited volume book chapter and can be shared upon request. The Ohio analysis is nearing completion as a journal manuscript submission. Eventually, we plan to wrap all of these analyses and more into a book. 
   

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Dr. Michael P. McDonald
Associate Professor
George Mason University
4400 University Drive - 3F4
Fairfax, VA 22030-4444

phone:   703-993-4191 (office)
e-mail:  mmcdon at gmu.edu               
web:     http://elections.gmu.edu
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From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu [mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Rob Richie
Sent: Friday, October 11, 2013 10:48 AM
To: Election Law
Subject: Re: [EL] More on How Gerrymandering Did Not Cause the Shutdown

I find it remarkable that the debate over this issue (such as the items linked by Rick below) narrow our choices seemingly to three:

* Many non-academic editorial writer sorts will suggest gerrymandering is the key reason for safe congressional seats and partisan bias.The 2011 redistricting was an appalling example. So let's push for commissions - -we'll worry about how those commissions can juggle competing criteria  later.

* A lot of academics (if not all) answer that gerrymandering isn't the real reason for safe seats nor partisan bias. Safe seats and partisan bias indeed are a core problem in our current politics, but they are more related to growing polarization and the "big sort." There's no real reform solution, so just wait it out over the next couple decades.

* Gerrymandering and open primaries aren't the problem, so blame goes to James Madison and the Constitution. It's time to leapfrog the structure of government we have in every state and a majority of our big cities, accept the reality of our parliamentary-type parties, and enact a parliamentary system (ideally with a list system of proportional representation).

But.... there's another possibility that FairVote believes will get more and more attention. Our argument basically is this.

* Electoral rules ARE the core reason for the shutdown politics and the clashing mandate of an electorate that in 2012 elected Barack Obama by nearly five million votes and also elected a House  majority from congressional districts that mostly went to anti-Obamacare Mitt Romney. See my prophetic "clashing mandate" analysis from Nov. 20, 2012:
http://www.fairvote.org/clashing-mandates-and-the-role-of-voting-structures

* But the electoral rule to blame is the statute mandating use of single-member districts for the House. We had multi-seat House districts as recently as the 1960s, and in the early decades of the nation, more than a quarter of House  Members were elected in multi-member districts. Many states still use multi-member districts, and a few decades ago, more than half of state legislators represented multi-member districts. There's nothing magic about single-member districts. See a U-Richmond law review article my colleague and I wrote this year addressing this history:
http://www.fairvote.org/fairvote-s-2014-congressional-analysis

* We have some 100 localities already using non-winner-take-all system systems based on voting for candidates (not parties) in multi-seat districts We have an important model of a non-winner-take-all system in state legislative elections in Illinois' experience with cumulative voting that most wise-heads in the state strongly wish was back in place for sensible reasons. See this summary of the case that was the product of a 2001 commission co-chaired by former Republican governor Jim Edgar and former Democratic House Member and federal judge Abner Mikva:
http://www.fairvote.org/assets/2012-Redistricting/IllinoisCumulativeVoting.pdf

* With such a system done nationally in larger districts of no more than five seats (with our choice being ranked choice voting, or the "single transferable vote"), we would have shared representation by both major parties in every single district in every state with at least three seats. With the system used in the primary as well, nominees would be more broadly represented, helping to ensure regularly representation of the left, center and right of the spectrum. See hard numbers and maps here (http://www.fairvote.org/fair-voting-solution),

* We have a confluence of interests who would directly  benefit from such a change in congressional elections, which could be done by law. That list includes those who want more racial minorities to have a secure way to elect preferred candidates, want more women to run and win, and want all voters to have more choice and better representation. Democrats have an obvious self-interest, but so do Republicans who think their party would be stronger in statewide races if able to compete in all districts. 

This last will be the test of whether are nation can debate meaningful change and actually act on it We expect to see a bill in Congress soon, and stay tuned for our update of the fair representation flashmap and associated analyses this month and check out our new video at http://www.Reform2020.com. 

But whenever someone says redistricting isn't the reason for  problem, keep in mind that we can make a rather airtight case that the problem is districting - -and that tested reforms of such districts are a heckuva lot easier and more consistent with our nation's history than a parliamentary system and a whole lot more satisfying than doing nothing.

Rob.


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More on How Gerrymandering Did Not Cause the Shutdown
Posted on October 10, 2013 9:05 pm by Rick Hasen
Seth Masket
McCarthy, Poole, and Rosenthal
 
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Rob Richie
Executive Director, FairVote   
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rr at fairvote.org  (301) 270-4616

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