[EL] Evenwell, Voting Power and Redistricting

Fri Aug 28 12:00:08 PDT 2015

   Just to add to Doug's very good comment:  We know what such districts 
would look like, because in 2011, the Texas legislature drew them for 
Congress in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex.  In a metropolitan area 
just over 50% white, they packed one district with African-Americans (an 
area where the population and VAP would be approximately the same 
percentage), and then got 5 safe Republican districts by extending 
fingers from high voter registration, high Republican, high white 
suburban and exurban counties into the heart of the DFW largely minority 
(low voter registration, high Democratic) central cities.  The federal 
judges in San Antonio didn't let this stand, and Marc Veasey now 
occupies a redrawn central city district there.
   As an exercise three years ago, I had a Caltech undergrad try to 
maximize the number of majority-white CVAP congressional districts in 
Texas, subject only to population equality and contiguity, but 
disregarding compactness, city and county boundaries, etc.   She managed 
to produce 36 of 36, though I'm not sure of all the details of how she 
did it.  I'm sure Ed Blum would be willing to settle for 34.
Morgan

On 8/28/2015 11:29 AM, Douglas Johnson wrote:
>
> 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 <mailto: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
>
>
>     “Evenwel, Voting Power and Dual Districting”
>     <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=75659>
>
> Posted onAugust 28, 2015 10:18 am 
> <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=75659>by*Rick Hasen* 
> <http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
>
> Paul Edelman has postedthis 
> draft<http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2631666>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./
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Law-election mailing list
> Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
> http://department-lists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/law-election

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://webshare.law.ucla.edu/Listservs/law-election/attachments/20150828/3cd7a34e/attachment.html>