Why Gerrymandering May Impact US Elections

Photo: Kelly Wilkinson Archives The Indianapolis Star via Associated Press The consequences of “gerrymandering” are to favor the retention of elected officials and to harm political alternation between parties and the representativeness of the vote.

Benoit Valois-Nadeau

Published at 0:00

• United States

This text is the response to reader questions sent to the American Election Mail team. To subscribe, click here.

Questions

What is gerrymandering and what are its effects ? – Michèle Primeau

To what extent can gerrymandering practiced by Republicans influence the outcome in a state ? – Steve Ménard

How come it happens in every election ? Is it only a fact in Republican states, and who decides on this gerrymandering ? – France Seguin

The Gerrymandering, or partisan electoral division, is deeply rooted in American political mores. This portmanteau refers to Elbridge Gerry, the Massachusetts governor who, in 1812, approved the creation of a voting district in the strange shape of a salamander (salamander, in English) to reach out to voters of his party.

In its classic definition, “gerrymandering is the process of redrawing the boundaries of a voting district to the advantage or disadvantage of a particular person, party, or group,” Shawn J. Donahue, a professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, told Devoir University at Buffalo.

It occurs at the local level, in state legislatures, in elections for the House of Representatives, and, to a much lesser extent, in the presidential race.

Unlike in Canada, redistricting in the United States (which takes place every 10 years to reflect the results of the national census) is not the work of independent commissions. In most cases, this privilege is left to the legislature of each state, with, sometimes, a veto power granted to the governor and a right of review by the state supreme court. This means that elected officials decide, directly or indirectly, the boundaries of their constituencies.

As an American adage goes, in the event of gerrymandering, it is not the voters who choose their politician, it is the politicians who choose their voters.

Concretely, there are two main techniques for influencing the outcome of elections through partisan redistricting: packing and cracking.

In the case of packing, we play with electoral boundaries to gather the supporters of our opponent in a few districts where they will be very concentrated. This is a way of limiting the damage, since their weight in the rest of the constituencies is thus reduced.

cracking consists of distributing the supporters of a party across several constituencies in order to “fragment” their influence. Consider Salt Lake County, Utah, a largely Democratic county in a Republican state, which was recently divided into four congressional districts in order to dilute the Democratic firepower.

With what impact on the elections?

The gerrymandering has the effect of encouraging elected officials to stay in office and harming political alternation between parties and the representativeness of the vote.

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Let's take the example of Wisconsin, which has the sad reputation of being a state where partisan electoral division is most present.

In this purple Midwestern state, the last two presidential elections have ended with Democrats and Republicans split by just 30,000 votes. The two sides also traded the governorship, which is determined by popular vote. But the state assembly has been heavily Republican for more than a decade despite strong Democratic results. The 2018 election was particularly notable: Despite winning 53 percent of the popular vote, Democrats won just 36 of the 99 seats in the assembly. A distortion of voting that many observers have attributed to gerrymandering.

“You end up creating real strongholds that have no chance of tipping over to the other side,” says Shawn J. Donahue. “[gerrymandering] therefore has an effect on the laws that can be passed in the House and on the allocation of government resources. The majority party is likely to redistribute state and federal money to its districts, and less to the counties of the minority party.” »

This is also indicated by a study carried out by researchers at Harvard University, who argue that gerrymanderingdecreases the accountability of decision-makers. “If several legislators are seated in safe seats and are assured of winning by a comfortable margin, they have less incentive to respond to voters’ needs,” Professor Kosuke Imai notes in the Harvard Gazette.

Redistricting can also hurt the representation of some minorities, particularly African Americans. “Yes, by concentrating black voters in a single district, you can send black delegates to Congress. But because they are the most reliable Democratic voters and are concentrated in just a few districts, their influence is diminished,” a phenomenon known as bleaching, explains Shawn J. Donahue.

Is it the work of a particular party? ?

Although it’s often associated with the Republican Party and the South, gerrymandering isn’t a single-party or regional issue, says Shawn J. Donahue. “You see redistricting in favor of one party all over the United States, including Democrats. The reason you see more gerrymandering Republicans is that they control more states where they can redraw the maps without consultation.”

Still, redistricting often favors Republicans, who tend to do best in rural areas, which are less populated than cities, which are overwhelmingly Democratic.

According to a 2017 study by the Brennan Center for Justice, affiliated with New York University School of Law, partisan gerrymandering could give Republicans up to 17 more seats in the House of Representatives.

Read also

• What is a key state in American elections? What influences them?
• How have electors been chosen for nearly 250 years?
• Why is it so hard to change the Constitution or the Supreme Court rules?

Does gerrymandering affect presidential elections?

While redistricting can affect the composition of the House of Representatives, with whom the president must deal to implement his or her electoral agenda, the gerrymandering has very little influence in the race for the White House.

Since 48 of the 50 states have adopted the winner-take-all formula for allocating their electoral votes, the electoral boundary has little importance. However, it could play a crucial role this year, because of Nebraska's 2nd Congressional District. This Great Plains state, like Maine, distributes its electoral votes between the winner of the state and those of their electoral districts.

This famous 2nd district is the only place in this ultra-Republican state where Democrats can hope to make gains. Barack Obama and Joe Biden won it by narrow margins, respectively, in 2008 and 2020. According to some scenarios, it could even be used to decide between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump in the electoral college.

However, the boundaries of the 2nd district, which mainly includes Omaha, the state's largest city, were revised in 2021 to include a rural county with Republican leanings… Answer on November 5.