[EL] Master class in gerrymandering - comparing California and New York State / Jamie Raskin and interstate compacts

[Rob Richie]

Hi, Folks,
The thoughtful posts on the election law blog come quickly these days -
thank you to the team of professors making that possible.

I wanted to pick up on two recent posts on gerrymandering: Rick Pildes' post
<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=127360> on the likely New York State
redistricting map and Ned Foley's post
<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=127338> calling out law professor
Congressman Jamie Raskin for rationalizing such partisan gerrymanders.

First, I'm regularly impressed by the Brennan Center's analytical and
advocacy prowess in general and Michael Li's work on redistricting in
particular. That said, I wanted to flag Michael's quote in the New York
Times today cited by Rick Pildes today on New York's gerrymandering: "“It’s
a master class in how to draw an effective gerrymander. Sometimes you do
need fancy metrics to tell, but a map that gives Democrats 85 percent of
the seats in a state that is not 85 percent Democratic — this is not a
particularly hard case."

It is indeed true that Democrats would be favored in 85% of New York
congressional races in a state where Biden won 61% of the vote, a  partisan
distortion toward Democrats of 24%. At the same time, we can also look over
to California's now finished congressional map
<https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/redistricting-2022-maps/california/>
drawn
by its citizen commission. There, according to FiveThirtyEight.com,
Democrats are favored in 43 of 52 seats in a state where Biden won 63% of
the vote. That's 83% of seats. If Democrats picked up the 2 swing seats,
that would mean they would carry 87% of seats - meaning a partisan
distortion of between 20% and 24% for the Democrats.  And, relating to the
understandable critique of Texas' congressional map that it creates so many
safer seats, it's notable to me that not a single California seat is inside
a partisanship range of 54% to 46%, with only 6 districts inside 58% to 42%

This is not a critique of the California commission per se, as it was
juggling a lot of factors, including being attentive to communities of
interest and opportunities for racial minorities to win seats. But it is a
critique of the underlying winner-take-all electoral rules that so often
govern what's possible to achieve within a single member district regime.
It makes me all the more committed to finding a way forward to winning the
final version of Congressman Don Beyer's Fair Representation Act
<http://www.fairrepresentation.com>where all voters in every election would
have the power to define their own representation with a meaningful vote.

Second, as to Ned's chiding of Jamie Raskin, I'll note that the Congressman
has consistently urged solutions that are fair to everyone. He is an
original and ongoing cosponsor of the Fair Representation Act, for example.
When in the Maryland state senate, he proposed a creative bill to allow
Maryland to enter into interstate compacts
<https://www.fairvote.org/interstate_compacts_for_fair_representation>with
other states to come up with a negotiated fair representation plan. Jamie
for years has extended a hand for a deal to establish a system that is fair
to everyone. Let's hope more show readiness to take him up on it!

Rob



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