[EL] Evenwell, Voting Power and Redistricting

[Douglas Johnson]

I fear that theory and mathematical exercises in this new paper have distracted this theoretical math exercise from reality (as so often also happened in the past). 

 

Here’s the reality: there are concentrations of people and concentrations of voters. In many states, especially the bigger states, these concentrations are related but different.

 

The study is correct that, if compactness, community of interest, local jurisdiction boundaries, the ability to move from one part of a district to another without leaving a district, shared legislative interests/concerns/issues and other traditional redistricting principles are ignored, then of course districts can be drawn that more or less have equal numbers of people and have equal numbers of eligible voters (or of actual voters, if that is the goal). The way that is done is by linking high-turnout areas with low-turnout areas in every district. And, “voila!,” the plan has equal numbers of voters and equal numbers of population in every district. From a technical standpoint, that can be done in most, and possibly in all, jurisdictions.

 

But here’s what gets lost when one wanders into theoretical ether and loses one’s linkage to the real policy impact of a theory: what it means that a plan now has equal numbers of high-turnout and low-turnout areas in every district. It means the high-turnout voters will control the election result in every district, and low-turnout areas that vary in political and policy views from the high-turnout areas will elect no one. 

 

This is, in reality, a much worse scenario for low-turnout areas than a straight switch to “equal numbers of eligible voters,” because the latter would at least allow the drawing of enough low-turnout voters into a district to create district(s) where the low-turnout population still elects its preferred candidate – though significantly fewer such districts would exist than under the current “equal number of people” approach. [I am not advocating either way for Evenwell, just commenting on the impact of the potential rulings.]

 

Given the tendency (though it’s far from universal) for high-turnout areas to be more Republican and low-turnout areas to be more Democratic, such a ruling would have massive partisan implications. And such a ruling would render Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act nearly irrelevant.

 

Math can be fun (and can get the author published), but it’s important to not lose sight of the real-world policy question and the impact of one’s theory.

 

-          Doug

 

Douglas Johnson, Fellow

Rose Institute of State and Local Government

at Claremont McKenna College 

douglas.johnson at cmc.edu

310-200-2058 

 

 

 

From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu [mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Rick Hasen
Sent: Friday, August 28, 2015 10:46 AM
To: law-election at UCI.edu
Subject: [EL] ELB News and Commentary 8/28/15

 


 <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=75659> “Evenwel, Voting Power and Dual Districting”


Posted on  <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=75659> August 28, 2015 10:18 am by  <http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3> Rick Hasen

Paul Edelman has posted <http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2631666>  this draft on SSRN.  Here is the abstract:

With the noting of probable jurisdiction in Evenwel v Abbott it appears that the Supreme Court will finally make clear what “one person, one vote” is meant to accomplish. Is it supposed to equate representation between districts, or is it supposed to equate voting power between districts? Having side-stepped this issue for 50 years it is time for the Court to make clear what its doctrine is about. 

One possibility raised by the plaintiffs in Evenwel is that, at least in the context of the Texas state senate districts, one achieve both ends simultaneously. That is, the plaintiffs claim that it is possible to draw the districts so as to have both equality of total population as well as equality of citizen voting age population in every district. To support this claim they provide an affidavit claiming it can be done in this case as well as an appeal to the increasing power of the districting software.

If the Court wishes to go down the road of accommodating both interests it may need to be reassured that the option is available not only in Texas but in any districting situation. And even if the Court does not require that districting plans consider the power of the vote, individual states themselves may wish to if they can do that as well as achieve equality of representation. That is what I provide in this paper. I will show that there are very good theoretical reasons to believe that it will always be possible to draw districts that will be simultaneously close in both total population and citizen voting age population (or, indeed, any other additional population that the Court desires.)

Some of this analysis, however, depends on how the Court chooses to assess the deviation in voting power. I argue that the choice of a threshold for total deviation in the voting age population is intimately related to one’s model of voting power. I show that the relationship between the deviation of voting power and the deviation of voting populations is linear in the variable that characterizes the voting model. Thus, the Court must choose, either explicitly or implicitly, a model of voting power should it decide to take the power of the vote into consideration. Even so, I show that the standard of 10% deviation in the voting population leads to a deviation of less than 10% in voting power over a broad range of models.

 

 
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