The Pros And Cons Of Gerrymandering

Gerrymandering, the deliberate manipulation of a Congressional district for political purposes, has exploded in the two decades. Its use allows for a suffocation of political voices, and reduces elections to games and arbitrary district lines. Those that decide district patterns can decide the fate of elections, slicing and dicing communities to establish favorable election math. Ordinarily, districts get gerrymandered to lump together the most dangerous voting population into a handful of districts (forfeiting those votes), and then winning solid majorities in most other districts. These methods establish safe seats for the party who controls redistricting. State legislatures lie at the heart of the issue: they wield primary control of the

Moreover, by establishing “safe seats,” imbalanced redistricting sharply reduces competition for Congressional seats. Ideally, competition would lead to healthy discourse—occasionally flushing out calcified bureaucracies. With less incentive to cater to the “average” or centrist voter (now that districts have become so partisan in demographics), more polarized candidates enter the fore. Political homogeneity in districts has fostered candidates who no longer have to cater to a broad array of political identities. Safe districts also suppress voter turnout, since voters feel that their ballot has less and less importance. Pew Research Center ranked U.S. 31st out of 35 mostly OECD countries for voter turnout based on the voting age populace. Only 55% of voting age citizens cast ballots in the 2016 election, the lowest rate in two decades. Former-Senator Sam Nunn has mentioned, “Both political parties have engaged in basically rigging congressional districts to the point where they are absolutely safe districts for one party or the other and I think that's detrimental to the kind of dialogue that we need for bipartisanship.” Political analyst Norman Ornstein has written, “Congressional redistricting … has eliminated most competitive seats and thus removed most centrists and moderates from both parties.” Only 4 states use independent commissions to redraw

Several factors drag down reform against gerrymandering. First, Democratic voters, are "inefficiently clustered in big cities and college towns." Consequently, "it’s easier for Republicans to pack Democratic voters into a few lopsided districts than vice versa—a natural geographic advantage for the GOP." Secondly, research suggests a pattern of “political self-segregation,” where citizens have sorted themselves into like-minded communities. As wealth, education, and mobility have increased, people have sought out those places where people of shared values live and work. It may just point to a broader trend of Americans removing "any trace of the "constant clashing of opinions" from daily life.” Furthermore, as Senior Brookings Fellows Thomas Mann and William Galston wrote, “Because people increasingly prefer to live near others who share their cultural and political preferences, they are voting with their feet and sorting themselves geographically. … Many more states and counties are dominated by one-party supermajorities than in the past. Contrary to widespread belief, reducing the gerrymandering of congressional districts would make only a small dent in the problem.” All things considered, this may indicate misdirected causality: perhaps increased partisanship is an instigator, not side effect, of