The 2022 midterms are officially less than a year away and Democrats’ prospects are already looking pretty bleak. A November 5 Emerson College poll found registered voters want Republicans rather than Democrats in charge of Congress by a 49-42 margin. The good news is Democrats have a year to turn those numbers around. The bad news is that even if Democrats were able to claw themselves back into this race and find a way to defend the seats they currently hold, it’s likely they’d still lose control of the House on account of the new round of gerrymandering currently underway in the states.
Every ten years, state legislatures use census data to redraw their states’ congressional and state legislative districts. This is necessary to account for shifts in population. Some state legislatures outsource this task to independent organizations or follow methods designed to take partisanship out of the process. Other state legislatures keep it inhouse, though, meaning some state legislators get to draw their own districts to their own liking. It should come as no surprise that a party that controls the redistricting process through control of its state government will use it to their own party’s advantage. Their favorite tool is the gerrymander.
The word “gerrymander” is a portmanteau of “Gerry” and “salamander.” The Gerry refers to Elbridge Gerry, a signer of the Declaration of Independence who, as Governor of Massachusetts in 1812, signed the law that redrew his state’s legislative districts following the 1810 census. The Democratic-Republicans who ran the state legislature at the time drew some rather oddly shaped districts in order to bolster their party’s political power. A Federalist newspaper compared the shape of one state senate district to that of a salamander (although the creature in the accompanying cartoon [see below] looked more like a dragon than a small, lizard-like amphibian) and called it a “Gerry-mander.” More than two hundred years later, we still use the same term when referring to such political contrivances.
The art of gerrymandering mainly revolves around two techniques: “Packing” and “cracking.” Packing involves grouping many of a party’s voters into a single district. (Remember, the people who draw these maps have access to voter registration data and past district-level election results, meaning mapmakers have a pretty good idea how certain neighborhoods will vote.) Packing can be used to either a.) shore up a party’s hold on a district that has either become a toss-up or slipped into the opposing party’s column, or b.) cram as many of the opposing party’s supporters as possible into one district to create one highly-partisan district rather than numerous districts that are either competitive or favor the opposition. You can see this latter strategy at work in Louisiana (see below), a state controlled by Republicans, who have grouped many of the state’s Democratic voters in and around New Orleans and Baton Rouge into the heavily-Democratic 2nd district. This also makes the neighboring 1st and 6th districts more heavily Republican.
On the other hand, cracking involves breaking up an area that heavily favors one party. Legislators may do this to chop up an electoral stronghold that favors the opposition. You can see this in play in Travis County, Texas, the home of Austin and the most liberal county in the state (it delivered Biden over 70% of its vote.) As the map below shows, Republican mapmakers in Texas were able to slice Travis County (outlined in black) apart: The 10th, 17th, 21st, and 25th districts all lean Republican, while only the 35th district (running between Austin and San Antonio and packed with Democratic voters) is reliably blue. This strategy can be risky, however, since it requires the party doing the cracking to place many of their opposition’s voters inside their own districts; in fact, two of those districts only have a Republican lean of +5.
Conversely, legislators may also employ cracking to divvy up their own strongholds in order to use them as electoral bases of support for districts that stretch into opposition territory. This can effectively deprive the opposition of seats. Maryland Democrats did this when they designed the state’s 6th and 8th districts (see below). Notice how both districts reach into densely populated and heavily Democratic Montgomery County (which borders Washington DC) and run all the way north to the Pennsylvania border. The 6th district stretches across the western panhandle to the state’s western border with West Virginia. Much of the territory outside the DC metro area leans Republican, and prior to 2012 there was a district held by a Republican based around these current districts’ rural expanses. With both districts anchored in Montgomery County, however, the 6th (+8) and the 8th (+17) are fairly safe Democratic seats.
Beyond packing and cracking, legislatures sometimes use gerrymandering to protect incumbents. This is especially true if an incumbent is in a leadership post or chairs a powerful committee that can steer government funding to the state. In some cases, mapmakers may even protect incumbents from the opposition party; this does not happen as often in today’s highly polarized political environment, but there was a time when the parties worked fairly well with one another and weren’t necessarily opposed to looking out for a member of the opposition who got along with the majority.
More basically, though, career politicians often use whatever political leverage they possess to make sure legislatures place them in safe seats even if in some circumstances that costs their party an opportunity to gain a seat somewhere else in state. Legislators also tend to be very concerned about what kind of voters are drawn into their districts given their voting records and political brand. For example, a Democrat who has cultivated a strong base of support in a district dominated by a college town may struggle to connect with voters if they are suddenly switched into a working-class district. Incumbents also prefer not to be drawn into districts where they may need to introduce themselves to a lot of new voters.
Finally, states may gerrymander districts to try to ensure various constituencies or groups of people gain representation in Congress. In the recent past, mapmakers have paid special attention to drawing majority-minority districts where the majority of voters in that district are from a certain minority race. This approach almost guarantees an electoral victory for someone from that particular racial background. The alternative would be to ignore these demographic divides and simply draw more compact districts, but while that may not change the partisan outcome of elections, it may dilute minority votes in such a way that minority voices end up underrepresented in Congress. A good example of a gerrymandered majority-minority district is Illinois’s majority Latino 4th district (see below). Based in Chicago, this tiny district is composed of a predominantly Puerto Rican northern section and a predominantly Mexican-American southern section that are only connected at the district’s western end by a thin stretch of interstate.
Following the ins and outs of gerrymandering is a bunch of inside baseball, but the process establishes the backdrop for our national politics so it is worth keeping an eye on. I’ll be focusing in this piece on the House redistricting process, but don’t overlook the redistricting of state legislative seats. Wisconsin is an instructive example. Republicans in the Badger State controlled the entire redistricting process in 2011 and proceeded to draw state legislative maps that were highly favorable to the GOP. Consequently, in 2012, Republicans won 60 seats in the 99-seat Wisconsin Assembly despite winning only 48.6% of the statewide legislative two-party vote. Two years later, Republicans won 52% of the statewide legislative vote but came out of the election with 63 seats. It is estimated Republicans could hold on to their majorities merely by winning around 45% of the statewide vote. Not only does that matter when it comes to the sort of laws that get passed in Wisconsin, but it also affects national politics, since the state legislature draws House congressional maps. (The state legislature has generated maps that largely confine Democrats to two of the state’s eight districts; Wisconsin’s Democratic governor is pushing back against these maps.) There are other complicating factors besides gerrymandering at work here related to partisan settlement patterns that I’ll get into in a bit, but there’s no doubt Republicans used gerrymandering in Wisconsin to solidify their hold on power in what is politically the nation’s most evenly-divided state.
Most states by now have either finalized their maps or have proposals on the table. So far, the results have been OK for congressional Democrats. The main reason for that is Republicans in Texas chose to shore up their incumbents rather than go after Democratic seats. Due to urban population growth, Democrats have been gaining ground on Republicans in Texas over the past decade. A number of suburban seats held by Republicans have become increasingly competitive, but Republicans have redrawn those districts to protect their incumbents there, resulting in about twenty-four seats (up from about sixteen) that are now solidly Republican. That in turn led Republicans to pack more Democratic voters into districts that had only leaned Democratic, meaning Democrats now have around a dozen seats in Texas that are solidly Democratic. As a result, in a state with thirty-eight House seats, only three lean in favor of one party or the other by less than 15 points, and of those, only one (a long district running from the Rio Grande to the area between San Antonio and Austin) is a genuine toss-up.
Democrats did not fare as well in North Carolina, a state that had to redraw its maps last decade after a state court found its congressional and state legislative districts had been unfairly gerrymandered along partisan and racial lines. Like Texas, North Carolina has been trending blue, but every time Democrats seem to make inroads into the state, Republicans have pushed back. North Carolina gained a seat in the House this year but Democrats are projected to lose one in the Greensboro area and see a seat northeast of Raleigh become a toss-up. That would leave Democrats with only three solidly Democratic districts in the Tar Heel State. The most competitive Republican seat would be a +10. If Democrats had control of the redistricting process in North Carolina (the Democratic governor there does not get to weigh in) they would almost certainly be able to draw themselves seven solidly blue seats.
The other notable developments for Democrats so far are in Oregon and Colorado. In Oregon, Democrats were able to crack the area around Portland to reinforce some teetering Democratic districts. In Colorado, however, a new independent commission drew districts that split the state’s eight districts evenly between Democrats and Republicans, with the most competitive Republican leaning seat a +3 and the most competitive Democratic leaning seat a +6. Had Democrats in the state legislature been able to design the map, they probably could have used Denver’s overwhelming Democratic lean to produce a solid 5-3 Democratic advantage.
Democrats are facing a similar problem in heavily Democratic California, where an independent redistricting commission is tasked with redrawing the state’s congressional districts. California has more congressional seats (fifty-two) than any other state and there aren’t many Republicans there for Democrats to pick off (eleven) but there are opportunities around Orange County. Additionally, some Democratic-leaning districts, like the +3 district Katie Porter represents, could use some padding, but the independent commission won’t take such concerns into consideration.
California enacted redistricting reform back when Arnold Schwarzenegger was governor, and while many Democrats concerned with good governance have praised the move to an independent commission, other Democrats are realizing their high-mindedness is costing them seats, especially since Republican-led states like North Carolina and Ohio are pressing their own partisan advantage. (A map proposed by state Senate Republicans in Ohio, which will send fifteen representatives to the House next year, would cut the number of safe seats for Democrats down from three to two and leave the most vulnerable Republican with a +6 advantage. Democrat Marcy Kaptur would be drawn into a +14 Republican district, while a seat centered in Cleveland and packed with Democrats would have a +52 Democratic lean. Both Cincinnati and Columbus would be divided into three separate seats each, with all but one leaning Republican.) Fortunately for Democrats, Democratic-led legislatures in New York (where Democrats hope to pinch Republicans on Long Island and build districts centered around upstate cities) and Illinois (where Democrats are playing an aggressive game of connect-the-dots with the state’s major Democratic-leaning urban areas outside Chicago while packing downstate Republicans into as few seats as possible) could gain them a few extra seats.
A nightmare is looming for Democrats in Florida, however, where the Republican-led legislature has yet to release any maps. Of the state’s twenty-seven districts, Democrats currently hold ten of them (eleven if you count a vacant D+28 seat) and have a slight advantage in two others currently held by Republicans. There’s a lot of opportunity for Republicans to gerrymander the state, however, and wipeout whatever gains Democrats make in other states.
Gerrymandering is a distasteful political practice. If one of the purposes of representation is the “re-presentation” of the people in Congress, gerrymandering is designed to deliberately misrepresent the true political preferences of the people. It is also anti-democratic in the way a party in the majority that has manipulated maps stands a better chance of retaining power in government even after that party no longer enjoys majority support in the public.
Yet there is no easy way to address the problem of gerrymandering. Independent commissions can do a pretty good job taming the most extreme examples of gerrymandering, but even neutral attempts at redistricting can generate less than ideal outcomes. For example, some insist the most straightforward way to redraw district lines is for mapmakers to create compact districts that follow neutral preestablished boundaries such as geographic features, county or municipal lines, or roads. The problem with that, though, is that partisan voters are often unevenly distributed throughout a state. Democrats in particular understand this problem since the Democratic vote in many states is highly concentrated in urban areas.
This is the issue Democrats in Wisconsin are dealing with. Even though the difference between the Republican and Democratic vote in the 2020 presidential election was less than one percent, six of the state’s eight House seats lean Republican. Democrats have managed to hang on to a R+5 seat in southwestern Wisconsin to create a not-necessarily egregious 5-3 split in the state’s House delegation, but the state’s other two Democrats hail from heavily-Democratic districts centered on Milwaukee (D+25) and Madison (D+18). Democratic votes there are essentially “wasted” in non-competitive general elections while the Democratic votes sprinkled throughout the rural portions of the state are overwhelmed by solid Republican majorities. Not only would it be more useful for Democrats to draw some of the votes in the Madison and Milwaukee areas out into the state’s five Republican districts (which lean from an R+7 to an R+12) but it would also likely result in a congressional delegation that more accurately represented the state’s political divisions.
That result couldn’t be achieved simply by following pre-existing borders, though; it would need to be gerrymandered into existence, probably by cracking Milwaukee and Madison and then attaching tentacles to the resulting districts that stretched out to pockets of Democratic support in the rest of the state. This is becoming a major dilemma for Democrats. Even if Republicans quit gerrymandering states like Wisconsin and simply drew reasonably compact districts, they’re still likely to come out ahead because Democratic voters increasingly live in cities that are relatively-small in terms of area but dense when it comes to population. Only when those cities get big enough to dwarf the state’s rural population and command multiple districts can Democrats leverage cities to their advantage in redistricting without resorting to blatant gerrymandering.
Others have suggested mapmakers should simply try to craft competitive districts, but if the goal is to accurately represent the make-up of the electorate, this approach can undermine that objective. The issue is some areas are not very competitive at the partisan level (the only competition may come between members of the same party) so carving those areas up to make them more competitive would increase the likelihood voters in those areas would be represented by someone who does not share their views. This approach could also significantly harm voters from the minority party by potentially depriving them of representation. Imagine a state split 60%-40% between two parties. The way to make each district in that state as competitive as possible would be to make sure every district was also divided 60%-40%. That, however, would probably mean 100% of seats in that state would be represented by the 60% party, while the 40% of voters compromising the minority party would have no representation.
I live in Maryland, one of the most heavily gerrymandered states in the nation. Democrats have an ironclad lock on legislative power in the state because they’ve been able to draw Maryland’s congressional and legislative districts in such a way that Republicans are practically shut out of governance. Despite its moderate Republican governor, there is no doubt Maryland is a blue state, yet even though 32.2% of its residents voted for Donald Trump in the 2020 election, Republicans only occupy 12.5% of the state’s congressional seats (1 of 8). As for that lone Republican seat, Maryland Democrats are currently pondering whether they should pack more Republican voters into it or, if possible and without endangering their own incumbents, siphon Democratic votes off from neighboring districts to either turn it into a toss-up district or even give it a Democratic tilt.
While I’m glad Democrats are politically strong in Maryland, Republicans should in all fairness be able to claim at least three of those eight seats as their own. That to me embodies the principle the redistricting process should adhere to: The number of seats claimed by a party in the legislature should be proportional to the percentage of the vote that party won in some sort of statewide election.
Adopting that principle would likely require a major overhaul of the way we conduct legislative elections in this country. Most notably, it would probably mean the end of single-member winner-take-all district elections. Instead, districts would become multi-member districts and voters would be asked to vote for which party rather than which candidate they would like to see empowered in their district. Seats in that multi-member district would be allocated based on the proportion of the vote each party won.
If such a plan were adopted, we might need to look at expanding the size of the House or explore the possibility of extending district boundaries across state lines. Congressional races would hinge less on the personalities of those running for office than on party ID, which could loosen the bond voters feel with their member of Congress, negatively impact the quality of constituent service and entrepreneurial political leadership, and lead to less accountability when it comes to the misdeeds of individual members. But it would probably more accurately represent the political leanings of the electorate as a whole and allow many more people to feel they are represented in government (something Republican voters in Connecticut, for example, may not feel at the moment, since Connecticut’s governor, each member of Congress, their two senators, and the president are all Democrats.) It might also weaken the two-party system, since third parties may suddenly find themselves with a viable path to political power.
There would still be the question of how those multi-member districts would be drawn: Would we simply follow current state lines? Would we add members to each congressional district? Would we combine districts to create larger districts? Gerrymandering could still occur under the latter two scenarios. It’s worth exploring the idea of multi-member districts, though, because it begins to shift the political discussion away from how party leaders can draw maps to maximize their political advantage to how the views of all voters can be more accurately and effectively represented in Congress.
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Garbage Time: Aaron Rodgers, Brain Genius
(Garbage Time theme song here)
Let me put it this way: Imagine there are, I don’t know, a bunch of bears or lions or vikings trying to tackle you. Yikes! You know what might help keep you safe? A bunch of people preventing those bears or lions or vikings from tackling you. Let’s call them “blockers.” And you know what might help even more? If those blockers had some form of protection—say, helmets and pads—that could keep the bears and lions and vikings from hurting them as they’re keeping the bears and lions and vikings from hurting you. That’s nice of them. See how that works? And maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea for you to wear a helmet and pads too since if a bear or lion or viking came out of nowhere and hit you, you wouldn’t get hurt and have to miss a game your team lost 13-6 and could have easily won if you were on the field but instead might cost you a first-round bye and home field advantage throughout the playoffs which is a big deal if those home games are going to be played in Wisconsin in the dead of winter.
OK, maybe that’s unfair. Rodgers said he had an allergy to the mRNA vaccines which prevented him from getting one. And maybe there’s not some sort of allergy medicine he could have taken to prevent a severe reaction. I don’t know. But you would think someone that concerned about the detrimental effects of an allergic reaction would also be pretty dang worried about the potentially detrimental effects of catching a virus that’s killed over 750,000 Americans and sickened tens of millions more too! Someone that conscientious about his health and who did so much “research” on the subject also seems like someone who would be very aware of the risks he posed to others as an unvaccinated individual, but that doesn’t explain why he’s doing press conferences sans facemasks. I gotta ask: Is that a habit when he’s around large groups of people? Doesn’t seem very safe for either him or others.
Just another question along these same lines: If Rodgers is so concerned about his health, WHY IS HE PLAYING PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL!!! Has he seen what the game does to peoples’ brains? Some players end up paralyzed. Professional bowling, dude: That’s a nice, safe sport.
But Rodgers could have taken the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, right? But he was worried about blood clots that were reported from people who had taken the J&J shot. But I just did some quick research of my own at a place called (check spelling) Yale (sounds reputable, probably some woke center for mind control though, I don’t know.) Anyway, you know what else causes blood clots? COVID! It’s a symptom! One of many! And do you know out of the 9 million people who got the J&J shot how many of them got blood clots? Twenty-eight; unfortunately, three of those people died. Still, someone’s odds of getting a blood clot from a J&J shot is roughly 0.0000031% (give or take a few millionths of a percent). Someone hospitalized in the ICU with COVID has a 20% chance of developing a blood clot.
Given Rodgers’ concern with those odds, let me give him some advice: Never ever throw a pass in a football game again. His career interception rate is 1.5%! That’s about 483,871 times higher than his odds of getting a blood clot from the J&J jab! Way too high! From now on, just hand the ball off on every play.
Rodgers’ offensive coordinator probably wouldn’t approve of that. It’s important to have a good offensive coordinator. There are probably people out there who think Rodgers should hand the ball off or throw deep bombs or run the Statue of Liberty play on every down, but they would be bad offensive coordinators. You know who else would be a bad offensive coordinator? Joe Rogan. You know who else would be a bad person to take medical advice from? Joe Rogan. You realize Joe Rogan talked Jeopardy champeen Aaron Rodgers into taking a parasite drug to treat a virus, right? You know how Rodgers probably hates armchair quarterbacks? Joe Rogan’s an armchair doctor, and he ain’t even spending Sunday afternoons reading the New England Journal of Medicine tipsy from a few too many Old Milwaukees. Everybody says Joe Rogan’s virtue is that he’s open-minded. He’s also rather empty-headed, right? Not a good combination, bro!
And don’t come at me like I’m some member of a “woke mob” trying to put the final nail in Rodgers’ “cancel-culture casket.” Those are just buzz words now, the mindless utterances of someone who’s said something demonstrably dumb and can’t defend himself on the merits of his argument anymore. He just didn’t want to get the shot (don’t ask me why) and went looking for whatever reasons he could find to back himself up. But you’re not right just because you’re answering in the form of a question! Aaron Rodgers is an anti-capitalist in the marketplace of ideas. He’s selling a sham product and insisting we buy it, but we don’t have to. In fact, the only way the marketplace works is if people call out bad ideas like his. That’s not cancel culture or woke culture. It’s just First Amendment culture working the way it’s supposed to.
Thanks for reading.
Exit music: “Interstate Love Song” by Stone Temple Pilots (1994, Purple)