[EL] Flaws in Politico and NY Times articles about gerrymandering

[Douglas Johnson]

Unfortunately there are some basic flaws in the NY Times and Politico articles about gerrymandering linked below. While I agree with the NY Times headline that “Independently Drawn Districts Have Proven to Be More Competitive,” part of the article uses the “average margin of victory” measure when analyzing Arizona elections. While the AZ map is so competitive (or, more accurately, the average House seat is so gerrymandered) that the AZ Commission’s results even look good by an “average margin” measure, that measure misses the point of what the Commission in Arizona does, and thus understates its success: both the 2001 and 2011 Commissions in Arizona have taken their constitutional instruction to “favor” competitive seats to mean aiming to draw as many closely competitive seats as possible. The result of this is that in the Republican- and Latino-heavy state, the majority-Latino and the safely-Republican seats are heavily packed with Democratic and Republican voters, respectively. So a competitive “average margin” is not Arizona’s goal, rather a high number of tossups is, with the conscious choice by the commissions to pack each party’s voters into the remaining seats (more so in 2001 than in 2011, but that’s a different story). The NY Times’s 2nd chart – showing the number of tossup seats in CA – is a better measure of whether commissions are successful in meeting this goal. (Though one could argue whether this is the correct construction of the goal of making competitive seats).

 

The Politico article notes the existence of “bipartisan” or “sweetheart” gerrymanders, where incumbents of both parties work together to draw safe seats. But for some reason, in its analysis of “wasted” seats, it completely ignores the impact of such gerrymanders. “Wasted votes” is one useful – but incomplete – measure of partisan gerrymandering, but it is not a useful tool for the analysis of the bipartisan gerrymander – and bipartisan gerrymanders are an even larger problem for representative government that partisan gerrymanders (though not to say that partisan gerrymanders are not a problem). The Politico article goes so far as to categorize bipartisan gerrymanders as “Fair” – “Fair plans have been the rule, not the exception.” Apparently their flawed measure of “Fair” plans includes bipartisan gerrymanders like the 2001 California gerrymander, in which the state’s 53 Congressional districts held 265 elections between 2002 and 2010, and in only one of those 265 elections did a seat change party control, despite the ‘wave’ elections that swept the country in 2006/2008 and 2010. That plan is a “Fair” plan under the Politico ‘wasted votes’ measure, apparently because both parties equally benefit from near-perfect protection from any change in voter preferences.

 

And the Politico article overly simplifies the issue of shape. It dismisses concerns about shape indicating gerrymandering, instead of using shape for what it is: a flag for potential gerrymandering, with more sophisticated review needed to identify whether a bizarre shape is because of unusual community of interest concerns or actually because of gerrymandering.

 

-          Doug

 

Douglas Johnson, Fellow

Rose Institute of State and Local Government

at Claremont McKenna College 

 <mailto:douglas.johnson at cmc.edu> douglas.johnson at cmc.edu

310-200-2058 

 

 

 

 


 <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=73968> “Independently Drawn Districts Have Proved to Be More Competitive”


Posted on  <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=73968> July 1, 2015 9:16 am by  <http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3> Rick Hasen

 <http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/02/upshot/independently-drawn-districts-have-proved-to-be-more-competitive.html?ref=politics&abt=0002&abg=1> NYT’s The UpShot.

 <https://www.addtoany.com/share_save#url=http%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D73968&title=%E2%80%9CIndependently%20Drawn%20Districts%20Have%20Proved%20to%20Be%20More%20Competitive%E2%80%9D&description=> Share

Posted in  <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=7> citizen commissions,  <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=6> redistricting


 


 


 <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=73964> “Gerrymandering Isn’t Evil; Why independent redistricting won’t save us from political gridlock’


Posted on  <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=73964> July 1, 2015 8:44 am by  <http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3> Rick Hasen

 <http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/06/could-gerrymandering-be-good-for-democracy-119581.html#.VZQKYxNVhHx> John Sides and Eric McGhee for Politico:

But the notion that so many of our political ills stem from gerrymandering is, in fact, a bad idea that simply will not die—what we call a  <http://themonkeycage.org/2012/10/21/zombie-politics-redistricting-and-party-polarization/> Zombie Myth. And when it comes to Zombie Myths in American politics, gerrymandering remains one of the most persistent. Actual evidence from political science research shows only weak correlations between gerrymandering and both  <http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/hate-our-polarized-politics-why-you-cant-blame-gerrymandering/2012/10/26/c2794552-1d80-11e2-9cd5-b55c38388962_story.html> polarization and  <http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.177.798&rep=rep1&type=pdf> electoral competitiveness. So why does the Zombie Myth persist? We think three major misconceptions are to blame.

 
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