Gerrymandering
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Gerrymandering is a form of redistricting in which electoral district or constituency boundaries are manipulated for an electoral advantage. The word "gerrymander" is named for the Governor of Massachusetts Elbridge Gerry (July 17, 1744 – November 23, 1814),[1] and is a blend (or portmanteau) of his name with the word "salamander," which was used to describe the appearance of a tortuous electoral district pressed through the Massachusetts legislature in 1812--and reluctantly signed into law by Gerry--by Jeffersonian democrats, in order to disadvantage their electoral opponents in the upcoming senatorial election.[2] "Gerrymander" is used both as a verb meaning "to divide into political units to give special advantages to one group" as well as a noun describing the resulting electoral geography. Elbridge Gerry's actual name is pronounced with an initial /g/ (a hard G), but the "jerry" pronunciation is now the normal pronunciation.[3]
Gerrymandering may be used to advantage or disadvantage particular constituents, such as members of a racial, linguistic, religious or class group, often in the favor of ruling incumbents or a specific political party. Although all electoral systems that use multiple districts as a basis for determining representation are susceptible to gerrymandering to various degrees, governments using single winner voting systems are the most vulnerable. Most notably, gerrymandering is particularly effective in nonproportional systems that tend towards fewer parties, such as first past the post.
In a few circumstances, the use of goal-driven district boundaries may be used for positive social goals (at least from less partisan viewpoints). In the case of Arizona's Native American reservations, it was thought inappropriate that the Hopi and Navajo nations should both be represented by the same House member because of historic conflicts between these tribes. Since the Hopi reservation is completely surrounded by the Navajo reservation, this required an unusual district configuration which features a fine filament along a river course several hundred miles in length attaching two regions. In another case (frequently cited as an outrageous example of gerrymandering), a California congressional district extends over a narrow coastal strip for several hundred miles, ensuring that a common community of interest will be represented rather than the areas' being dominated by inland, rather than coastal, concerns. These are illustrative of factoring in communities of common interest in drawing district boundaries.
Most democracies in the world have partly proportional electoral systems, where several political parties are proportionally represented in the national parliaments, in proportion to the total numbers of votes of the parties in the regional or national elections. In these, more or less, proportional representation systems gerrymandering will have little or less significance.
Among Western democracies, states like Israel and the Netherlands are not susceptible to gerrymandering in the national government, as they employ electoral systems with only one (nationwide) voting district. Other countries, such as the UK and Canada, attempt to prevent gerrymandering by having the constituency boundaries set by non-partisan organisations such as the UK's Boundary Commission. Gerrymandering is most common in countries such as the United States of America where elected state politicians are responsible for drawing districts, with few exceptions.
Gerrymandering should not be confused with malapportionment whereby the number of eligible voters per elected representative can vary widely, and which can also be used to predetermine the overall outcome of an election. Nevertheless the ~mander suffix has been applied to particular malapportionments such as the "Playmander" in South Australia and the "Bjelkemander" in Queensland. Sometimes both gerrymandering and malapportionment are used in combination.
Methods
"Packing and cracking"
There are two principal strategies behind gerrymandering: maximizing the effective votes of supporters, and minimizing the effective votes of opponents. One form of gerrymandering, packing, is to place as many voters of one type into a single district to reduce their influence in other districts. A second form, cracking, involves spreading out voters of a particular type among many districts in order to reduce their representation by denying them a sufficiently large voting block in any particular district. The methods are typically combined, creating a few "forfeit" seats for packed voters of one type in order to secure even greater representation for voters of another type.
Gerrymandering is effective because of the wasted vote effect — by packing opposition voters into districts they will already win (increasing excess votes for winners) and by cracking the remainder among districts where they are moved into the minority (increasing votes for eventual losers), the number of wasted votes among the opposition can be maximized. Similarly, with supporters now holding narrow margins in the unpacked districts, the number of wasted votes among supporters is minimized.
The Dame Shirley Porter case
An interesting, albeit unusual method of achieving the effects of gerrymandering is to attempt to move the population within the existing boundaries. This occurred in Westminster, in the United Kingdom, where the local government was controlled by the Conservative party, and the leader of the council, Dame Shirley Porter, conspired with others to implement the policy of council house sales in such a way as to shore up the Conservative vote in marginal wards by selling the houses there to people thought likely to vote Conservative. An inquiry by the district auditor found that these actions had resulted in financial loss to taxpayers, and Porter and three others were surcharged to cover the loss. Porter was accused of "disgraceful and improper gerrymandering" by district auditor John Magill. Those surcharged resisted this ruling with a legal challenge, but, in December 2001, the appeal court upheld the district auditor's ruling. Despite further lengthy legal argument Porter eventually accepted a deal to end the long-running saga, and paid £12 million (out of an original claimed £27 million plus costs and interest) to Westminster Council in July, 2004.
Effects of gerrymandering
Reduction in electoral competition and voter turnout
The most immediate and obvious effect of gerrymandering is for elections to become less competitive in all districts, particularly packed ones. As electoral margins of victory become significantly greater and politicians have safe seats, the incentive for meaningful campaigning is reduced. In 2000, for example, only 57 of the 435 seats (13 percent) of the United States House of Representatives were decided by margins of 10 percent or less.[4]
Similarly, voter turnout is likely to be adversely affected as the chance of influencing electoral results by voting becomes greatly reduced and, correspondingly, political campaigns are less likely to expend resources encouraging turnout.
An additional effect of this reduction in competition is the increased importance of securing nomination rather than ultimate approval of the general electorate for a given district, as a general win once nominated becomes more or less guaranteed in a gerrymandered district. In 2004, for example, when California's 3rd Congressional District became an open seat after Republican Congressman Doug Ose ran for higher office, the state's three strongest Republican congressional candidates campaigned vigorously against one another for nomination in the district's primary election, even though several other districts remained uncontested with no Republican nominee making even a token campaign effort.
Increased incumbent advantage and campaign costs
The effect of gerrymandering on incumbents is particularly focused, as incumbents are far more likely to be reelected under conditions of gerrymandering. For example, in 2002, only four challengers were able to defeat incumbent members of Congress, the lowest number in modern American history, according to political scientists Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann.[5] This is due in part both to the high likelihood of incumbents to be the ones orchestrating a gerrymander as well as the relative ease of renomination for incumbents in subsequent elections, including incumbents among the minority. This shows another commonly cited effect of gerrymandering: a deleterious effect on the principle of democratic accountability. No longer fearing removal from office with their renomination and electoral success secured due to uncompetitive elections, incumbent politicians have a greatly reduced incentive to govern based on the interests of their constituents, even when these interests reflect an issue that enjoys majority support across the electorate as a whole.
Gerrymandering can also have a more practical effect on the campaign costs for district elections. As districts become increasingly concave and oddly elongated, the difficulty of finding transportation and focusing campaign advertising across a district increases significantly, resulting in higher costs to run for office. When incumbents have an advantage at securing campaign funds (as is commonly the case), this further amplifies the advantage to incumbents that gerrymandering provides.
Less descriptive representation
Gerrymandering also has significant effects on the representation received by voters in gerrymandered districts. Because gerrymandering is designed to increase the number of wasted votes among the electorate, the relative representation of particular groups can be drastically altered from their actual share of the voting population. This effect can significantly prevent a gerrymandered system from achieving proportional and descriptive representation, as the winners of elections are increasingly determined by who is drawing the districts rather than the preferences of the voters.
Sometimes, however, gerrymandering is advocated as a solution for improving representation amongst otherwise underrepresented groups by packing them into a single district. This can be controversial, and may lead to those groups remaining marginalized in the government as they become confined to a single district and representatives outside that district no longer need to represent them to win election. As an example, much of the redistricting conducted in the United States in the early 1990s involved the intentional creation of additional "majority-minority" districts where racial minorities such as African Americans were packed into the majority. Curiously, this "maximization policy" was supported by elements of both the Republican Party (who had limited support among African Americans) and minority representatives elected as Democrats from these constituencies, who then had "safe seats".
Incumbent gerrymandering
Gerrymandering can also be done to help incumbents as a whole, effectively turning every district into a packed one and greatly reducing the potential for competitive elections. This is particularly likely to occur when the minority party has significant obstruction power — unable to enact a partisan gerrymander, the legislature instead agrees on ensuring their own mutual reelection.
In an unusual occurrence in 2000, for example, the two dominant parties in the state of California cooperatively redrew both state and federal legislative districts to preserve the status quo, ensuring the electoral safety of the politicians from possible unpredictable voting by the electorate. This move proved completely effective, as no State or Federal legislative office changed party in the 2004 election, with 53 congressional, 20 state senate, and 80 state assembly seats potentially at risk.
In 2006, the term "70/30 District" came to signify the equitable split of two evenly split (i.e. 50/50) districts. The resulting districts gave each party a guaranteed seat and retained their respective power base.
Reforms targeted against gerrymandering
Due to myriad issues associated with gerrymandering and the subsequent impact it has on competitive elections and democratic accountability, numerous countries have enacted reforms making the practice either more difficult or less effective. Countries such as the UK, Australia, Canada and most of Europe have moved the responsibility of drawing constituency boundaries to neutral or cross-party bodies.
In the United States, however, these reforms remain controversial and frequently meet particularly strong opposition from groups that are benefitting from gerrymandering who stand to lose considerable influence in such a system.
Redistricting by neutral or cross-party agency
The most commonly advocated electoral reform proposal targeted at gerrymandering is to change the redistricting process. Under these proposals, an independent, and presumably objective, commission is created and charged with redistricting rather than the legislature. To help ensure neutrality, members of the board can come from relatively apolitical sources such as retired state judges or longstanding members of the bureaucracy, possibly requiring adequate representation from competing political parties. Additionally, members of the board can be denied access to information that might aid in gerrymandering, such as the demographic makeup or voting patterns of the population. As a further constraint, consensus requirements can be imposed to ensure that the resulting district map reflects a wider perception of fairness, such as a requirement for a supermajority approval of the commission for any district proposal. However, in some states (such as Missouri following 2000 census) this has led to deadlock where the equally numbered partisan appointees were unable to reach consensus in a reasonable timeframe resulting in the courts having to draw the lines.
In Iowa, the nonpartisan Legislative Services Bureau (akin to the federal Congressional Research Service) draws the districts. Aside from the federally mandated contiguity and population equality criteria, the LSB mandates unity of counties and cities. Political factors such as location of incumbents, previous boundary locations, and party makeup are specifically forbidden. Since Iowa's counties are mostly regularly-shaped polygons, the process has led to districts that follow county lines.[5]
In the state of Ohio, Issue 4, a ballot proposition, was placed for the voters that created an independent commission whose first priority was competitive districts, a sort of "reverse gerrymander". A complex mathematical formula was used to determine the competitiveness of a district. The measure failed largely due to concerns that it would break up communities of interest.[6]
Shortest splitline algorithm
The Center for Range Voting has proposed a way to draw districts by a simple algorithm.[7] Because the algorithm uses only the shape of the state, the number N of districts wanted, and the population distribution as inputs — and does not know the party loyalties of those people — the result cannot be biased. The algorithm (slightly simplified) is:
- Start with the boundary outline of the state.
- Let N=A+B where A and B are as nearly equal whole numbers as possible. (For example, 7=4+3.)
- Among all possible dividing lines that split the state into two parts with population ratio A:B, choose the shortest.
- We now have two hemi-states, each to contain a specified number (namely A and B) of districts. Handle them recursively via the same splitting procedure.
This district-drawing algorithm has the advantage of simplicity, ultra-low cost, clear unbiasedness, and it produces simpler boundaries that do not meander needlessly. But it has the disadvantage that it ignores geographic features such as rivers, cliffs, and highways- which in practice are less relevant to voter distribution than population density. This landscape oversight causes it to produce districts differently than those an enlightened and unbiased human would produce. However, in the USA, biased individuals are generally the only ones seeking the responsibility of redrawing congressional districts. People often intentionally abuse these features (such as Arizona's 2nd congressional district, which contains a fine filament winding for 200 miles along the river inside the Grand Canyon).
As of July 2007, shortest-splitline redistricting pictures are now available for all 50 states.
Changing the voting system
Because gerrymandering relies on the wasted vote effect to be effective, the use of a different voting system with fewer wasted votes can help reduce gerrymandering. In particular, the use of multimember districts alongside voting systems establishing proportional representation can greatly reduce the proportion of wasted votes, and therefore the potential for gerrymandering. Similarly, the use of semi-proportional voting systems such as cumulative voting or the single non-transferable vote can also help achieve a large reduction in the number of wasted votes, and due to their relative simplicity and similarity to first past the post they are often advocated as a replacement system by advocates of electoral reform.
Electoral systems with different forms of proportional representation are now found in nearly all European countries, who in this way have multi party systems (with many parties represented in the parliaments) with higher voter attendance in the elections, fewer wasted votes, and more variety of political opinions represented.
Electoral systems with just election of one candidate in each district, and no proportional distribution of extra mandates to smaller parties tend to create two-party-systems. In these just two parties compete in the national elections and thus the national political discussions are forced into a narrow two party frame, where loyalty and forced statements inside the two parties trouble the political debate.
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Changing the size of districts and the elected body
If a proportional or semi-proportional voting system alongside multimember districts is used, then increasing the number of winners in any given district will reduce the number of wasted votes. This can be accomplished both by merging separate districts together and by increasing the total size of the body to be elected. Since gerrymandering relies on exploiting the wasted vote effect to secure electoral advantage, reducing the number of wasted votes by increasing the number of winners in a district can greatly reduce the potential for gerrymandering. Unless all districts are merged, however, this method cannot eliminate gerrymandering entirely.
In contrast to proportional methods, if a nonproportional voting system with multiple winners (such as a form of bloc voting) is used, then increasing the size of the elected body while keeping the number of districts constant will not reduce the amount of wasted votes, leaving the potential for gerrymandering the same. Merging districts together under such a system, however, can reduce the potential for gerrymandering, but doing so also amplifies the effect of bloc voting's tendency to produce landslide victories, which has a similar effect in concentrating wasted votes among the opposition and denying them representation.
If a system of single-winner elections is used, then increasing the size of the elected body will implicitly increase the number of districts to be created. This change can actually make gerrymandering easier when raising the number of single-winner elections, as opposition groups can be more efficiently packed into smaller districts without accidentally including supporters, further increasing the number of wasted votes amongst the opposition.
Using fixed districts
Another possible method of avoiding further gerrymandering is to simply avoid redistricting all together and continue to use existing political boundaries such as state, county, or provincial lines. Doing this makes further increasing electoral advantage by changing boundaries impossible; however, any existing advantage may become deeply ingrained. The United States Senate, for instance, has more competitive elections than the House of Representatives due to the use of existing state borders rather than gerrymandered districts—Senators are elected by their entire state, while Representatives are elected by only a single district.
The use of fixed districts creates an additional problem, however, in that fixed districts do not take into account changes in population and individual voters can therefore grow to have vastly different degrees of influence on the legislative process. This malapportionment, in turn, can have a particularly focused effect on representation after long periods of time or large population movements. The United States Senate, for instance, provides nearly 66 times the representation to voters in the state of Wyoming (the smallest) than voters in the state of California (the largest). In the United Kingdom during the Industrial revolution, several districts which had been fixed since the formation of the British Parliament became so small that they could be won with only a handful of voters (rotten boroughs). By contrast, Switzerland and Spain have bicameral national legislatures like the United States, but both of its houses use fixed constituencies.
Establishing objective rules for the creation of districts
Another avenue of tying the hands of potential gerrymanderers is to create objective, precise criteria to which any district map must comply. Courts in the United States, for instance, have ruled that congressional districts must be contiguous in order to be constitutional. This, however, is not a particularly binding constraint, as very narrow strips of land with few or no voters in them may be used to connect separate regions into the same district. Another objective criterion is maximized compactness, subject to other constraints such as geographic features and the boundaries of local governments.
One idea is to constitutionally define a specific minimum Isoperimetric quotient [8]), or minimum ratio, between the area and perimeter of any given congressional voting district. Computer algorithms could ensure that population districts were drawn in such a way so as to minimize Isoperimetric inequality[9] and effectively eliminate Gerrymandering. Although technologies presently exist to define districts in this manner, there are no rules in place mandating their use, and no national movement to implement such a policy.
Gerrymandering computer technology
The introduction of modern computers and the development of elaborate voter databases alongside special districting software has made gerrymandering a far more precise science. Using these databases, politicians can obtain detailed information about every household including political party registration, previous campaign donations, and the number of times residents voted in previous elections. Using this information alongside other predictors of voting behavior such as age, income, race, or education level, drawers of a new electoral map can predict the voting behavior of each potential district with an astonishing degree of precision, greatly increasing the efficiency of gerrymandering and reducing the chance of accidentally making a district competitive.
- See also: Geographic information system
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National historical examples
Gerrymandering in the United States
The United States has been subject to gerrymandering since the initial carving of territories into states. Combined with malapportionment rules for representation in the Senate and Electoral College, gerrymandering allowed the United States Congress significant amounts of control over its own political makeup. Prior to the American Civil War, with the contentious issue of slavery dividing the Congress, states were admitted on a formula of "one free state for each slave state" in order to prevent one side from gaining the upper hand. This nearly prevented the state of Maine from seceding from Massachusetts until the Missouri Compromise was agreed upon. Later, it was decided that Texas and California would both enter as single, but large, states.
The practice of gerrymandering the borders of new states continued past the Civil War and into the late 19th century, where the territories of the Rocky Mountains were split up into relatively low-population states to help the Republican Party maintain control of the Presidency [citation needed] — each new state brought in three electoral votes regardless of its population size.[10]
Throughout the history of the United States the possibility of gerrymandering has made the process of redistricting an extremely politically contentious one. Under its constitution, districts for members of the House of Representatives are redrawn every ten years following each census; it is common practice for state legislative boundaries to be redrawn at the same time. Intense political battles over contentious redistricting typically take place within state legislatures responsible for creating the electoral maps, however federal courts are often also involved. Sometimes this process creates strange bedfellows interested in securing reelection; in some states, Republicans have cut deals with opposing black Democratic state legislators to create majority black districts. By packing black Democratic voters into a single district, these districts essentially ensure the election of a black Congressman or reelection of a black state legislator; however, due to the packed concentration of Democratic voters the surrounding districts are more safely Republican.
In Pennsylvania, gerrymandering was used to eliminate Democrat candidate Frank Mascara. Mascara was elected to Congress in 1994 when in 2002 the Republican Party altered the district he was in so much so that he was pitted against fellow Democrat candidate John Murtha. The shape of Mascara’s newly drawn district formed a finger that stopped at his street, encompassing his house though not the spot where he parks his car. Murtha went on to win the election in the newly formed district.[11]
Gerrymandering along racial lines has been used to both decrease and increase minority representation in state governments and congressional delegations, depending on the manner in which districts are drawn. In the state of Ohio, a conversation between Republican officials was recorded and showed definite signs that redistricting was being done to aid political candidates. Furthermore, it was made clear in these conversations that race would play a role in the redistricting. Approximately 13,000 African American votes were removed from Republican house candidate Jim Raussen’s district in an attempt to tip the scales in what was once a close race.[12]
International election observers from the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, who were invited to observe and report on the 2004 national elections, expressed criticism of the U.S. congressional redistricting process and made a recommendation that the procedures be reviewed to ensure genuine competitiveness of Congressional election contests.[13]
Voting Rights Act of 1965
After the Civil War, with the rewarding of voting rights to freed slaves, state legislatures turned to racial gerrymandering and poll taxes to disenfranchise minorities, most of whom were in geographically distinct areas. Eventually, these practices led to a major civil rights conflict; gerrymandering for the purpose of reducing the political influence of a racial or ethnic minority group became illegal in the United States under the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (along with poll taxes by the Twenty-fourth Amendment in 1964), however gerrymandering for political gain remained legal.
After the Voting Rights Act, racial gerrymandering was ironically "flipped around" to create "majority-minority" districts. Using this practice, also called "affirmative gerrymandering", these districts were created with the stated purpose of redressing previous discrimination to ensure higher ethnic minority representation in government. Since the 1990s, however, gerrymandering based solely on race has been ruled unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court under the Fourteenth Amendment first by Shaw v. Reno (1993) and subsequently by Miller v. Johnson (1995). The constitutionality of racial considerations in creating districts remains ambiguous, however; in Hunt v. Cromartie (1999), the Supreme Court approved a racially focused congressional gerrymandering on the grounds that the drawing was not pure racial gerrymandering but instead partisan gerrymandering, which is constitutionally permissible.
Recent steps
On June 28, 2006, the United States Supreme Court upheld most of a Texas congressional map engineered in 2003 by former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.[14] The seven-to-two decision now allows politicians in all of the USA to redraw and gerrymander districts as often as they like (not just after census-mandated reapportionment and redistricting) to protect their political parties and seats, so long as they do not harm racial and ethnic minority groups. A 5-4 majority threw out one Congressional district in the case for this reason.
Some states have taken or at least considered steps to revoke and separate redistricting authority from politicians and give it to other more neutral commissions, in order to prevent the repeated abuse of process. Two major examples are the standing Washington State Redistricting Commission [15] and Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission.[16] The Rhode Island Reapportionment Commission[17] and New Jersey Redistricting Commission are ad hoc, but were used in both of the past two reapportionments. The city of San Diego also uses such a system according to its municipal charter.
Gerrymandering in Northern Ireland
A particularly famous case of gerrymandering occurred in Northern Ireland in the 1920s and 1930s, where the electoral boundaries for the Londonderry County Borough Council were created by the Ulster Unionist Party to ensure the election of a Unionist council in a city where Nationalists had a marginal majority. The initial boundaries were drawn up locally but in the 1930s the province wide government redrew them to reinforce the gerrymander. The perceived and alleged discrimination of housing combined with the electoral voting system carried over from the old Westminster system when the Northern Ireland government was set up of giving business owners more than one vote and not giving all non-ratepayers in a household a vote led to the creation of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association, although this "business franchise" accounted for only 2% of the vote. In Derry in 1967, 35% of the vote returned 60% Unionist seats and 27.4% of the vote returned 40% Nationalist seats. However, in the election of 1973 after the voting system had been thoroughly reformed and the council area enlarged, there was a slight majority of first preference votes for non-nationalist parties (including both Unionists and the Alliance Party), but using the single transferable vote system nationalist and republican parties gained a majority of one seat in the new council.
In 1929 the Parliament of Northern Ireland passed a bill returning the Parliament's electoral system from the relatively proportional single transferable vote (where seat numbers approximately equate to vote percentage) first introduced in Sligo in 1918 and throughout Ireland in 1919 to the less proportional first past the post or block voting systems (where the seat percentage does not always equate even closely to the percentages.) The only exception was for the election of four Stormont MPs to represent the Queen's University of Belfast (this constituency was abolished at the 1969 general election). The British Government was so opposed to the change, which it viewed as the abolition of the electoral safeguards provided in the Government of Ireland Act 1920, that it advised the King's representative in Northern Ireland, the Governor of Northern Ireland to withhold the Royal Assent from the legislation. After a major row the British government backed down and advised the Governor to sign the Bill into law.
Allegations have been made that the boundaries were gerrymandered to under represent Nationalists, though some geographers and historians (for instance Professor John H. Whyte[18][19]) have strongly challenged allegations of gerrymandering in Northern Ireland-wide parliamentary elections, arguing that the electoral boundaries for the Parliament of Northern Ireland were not gerrymandered to a greater level than that produced by any single-winner election system and that the number of Nationalist MPs barely changed with the system. The change to single-member seats is generally acknowledged however as being a key factor in stifling the growth of smaller groups such as the Northern Ireland Labour Party and independent Unionists.
The Parliament of Northern Ireland and its government were suspended in 1972, and STV was restored for elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly in the following year, using the same constituencies as for the Westminster Parliament. Currently in Northern Ireland, only elections to the Westminster parliament do not use STV, following the pattern in the rest of the United Kingdom by using First Past the Post.
Ireland, "Tullymandering"
In the Ireland, in the mid-1970s, the Minister for Local Government, James Tully, attempted to arrange constituencies to ensure that the governing Fine Gael/Labour National Coalition would win a parliamentary majority. The Electoral (Amendment) Act 1974 was planned as a major reversal of previous gerrymandering by the Fianna Fáil party (then in opposition). Tully ensured that there were as many as possible three-seat constituencies where the governing parties were strong, in the expectation that the governing parties would each win a seat in many constituencies, relegating the Fianna Fáil party to one out of three. In areas where the governing parties were weak four-seat constituencies were used so that the governing parties had a strong chance of winning two still. In fact the process backfired spectacularly due to a larger than expected collapse in the vote, with Fianna Fáil winning a landslide victory, two out of three seats in many cases, relegating the National Coalition parties to fight for the last seat. Consequently, the term Tullymandering was used to describe the phenomenon of a failed attempt at gerrymandering.
Gerrymandering in Germany
When the electoral districts in Germany were redrawn in 2000, together with the administrative districts, the ruling Social Democratic Party (SPD) was accused of gerrymandering to marginalize the socialist PDS party in its strongholds in eastern Berlin by combining them into new districts with more populous areas of western Berlin, where the PDS had very limited following. After winning four seats in Berlin in the 1998 national election, the PDS kept only two of them after the following 2002 elections. This caused the PDS to drop out of the Bundestag, the German federal parliament (as a faction with its associated rights in parliament; the individually elected representatives held their seats). Under German electoral law a political party has to win either more than five percent of the votes or at least three seats to move in. In the election of 2005 the PDS (renamed "Left Party") managed to get 8.7% of the votes and thus moved back in.
However, the number of Bundestag seats of parties which traditionally get over 5% of the votes can't be affected very much by gerrymandering, because seats are awarded to these parties on a proportional basis. Only when a party wins so many districts in any one of the 16 federal states that those seats alone count for more than its proportional share of the vote in that same state does the districting have some influence on larger parties — those extra seats, called "Überhangmandate", remain.
Gerrymandering in Canada
Early in Canadian history gerrymandering at both the federal and provincial levels was common. Over time this has been largely eliminated as responsibility for drawing electoral boundaries was handed over to independent agencies. The first to do this was Manitoba in the 1950s with the federal government delegating the drawing of boundaries to the "arm's length" Elections Canada in 1964. Today gerrymandering is not a major issue in Canada.
In 2006, a controversy arose on Prince Edward Island over the provincial government's decision to throw out an electoral map drawn by an independent commission, and instead design two new maps; the third, which was adopted, was designed by the caucus of the governing party. Opposition parties and the media attacked then-Premier Binns for what they saw as gerrymandering. Among other things, the third map ensured that every current Member of the Legislative Assembly from the premier's party had a district to run for re-election, whereas in the original map several had been redistricted.
Gerrymandering in Singapore
The ruling People's Action Party in Singapore has been accused of using gerrymandering, among other unfair electoral practices, to maintain significant majorities in Parliament of Singapore in recent decades.[20]
As the Elections Department is not an independent body but a government body under the Prime Minister of Singapore, it allegedly gives the ruling party a free rein to decide polling districts and polling sites through electoral engineering, based on poll results in previous election. Opposition parties have alleged that this gave an unfair advantage to the ruling party and had affected the outcome in some electoral battles.[citation needed] The most notable examples of such alleged gerrymandering are the dissolution of Cheng San GRC and Eunos GRC; both were controversially dissolved by the Elections Department and redistributed to other constituencies after the opposition parties gained ground there in previous elections.
Gerrymandering in Latvia
In 1989 and 1990 elections, there were accusations of gerrymandering in favour of Popular Front of Latvia, consisting mostly of ethnic Latvians. For example, in 1990 the nearly-pure ethnic Latvian Ventspils district (about 0.6% of population) got 3 constituencies out of 201 (1.5%), with 2 of PFL candidates running unopposed[21]. In 1991, most Russians were denied citizenship and therefore voting rights (their naturalization started in 1995), and in 1993 the country returned to proportional representation.
Justification
Majority representation
Many politicians argue that because constituencies were to be made by politicians (such as the case in the United States and elsewhere), they have the right to manipulate it (so that it gives them an advantage). The voters will still be represented, and an unpopular incumbent may still be unseated.
Minority representation
Gerrymandering can be used to create districts that better represent certain minorities. Such districts exist commonly in the United States, particularly in California, Texas, and in the South.
See also
- History of 19th Century Congressional Apportionment In Ohio
- Representation
- Will Rogers phenomenon
- Election fraud
References
- ^ Gerry pronounced his name Template:IPAEng (with a hard G)
- ^ The Gerrymander.
- ^ http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=19990202
- ^ http://www.fairvote.org/redistricting/reports/remanual/ianews.htm#safe
- ^ a b http://www.centrists.org/pages/2004/07/7_buck_trust.html
- ^ http://www.smartvoter.org/2005/11/08/oh/state/issue/4/
- ^ http://www.RangeVoting.org
- ^ http://mathworld.wolfram.com/IsoperimetricQuotient.html
- ^ http://mathworld.wolfram.com/IsoperimetricInequality.html
- ^ Compare a map of the United States in 1860 [1] with a map from 1870 [2].
- ^ Rachel Morris (November 2006). "The Race to Gerrymander". The Washington Monthly.
- ^ AP (29 April 2002). "Republican Party Politics (Part II)". WCPO.
- ^ http://osce.org/documents/odihr/2005/03/13658_en.pdf
- ^ AP (28 June 2006). "High court upholds most of Texas redistricting map". CNN.
- ^ http://www.redistricting.wa.gov
- ^ http://www.azredistricting.org
- ^ http://www.riredistricting.org
- ^ http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/issues/discrimination/whyte.htm
- ^ http://www.ark.ac.uk/elections/hnihoc.htm
- ^ Yawning Bread, "Electoral boundary changes: as opaque as ever", March 2006. http://www.yawningbread.org/arch_2006/yax-553.htm
- ^ Constituencies in 1990 elections — see Ugāles, Tārgales, Ziru constituencies, # 199—201
![[1]](http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/united_states/us_terr_1860.jpg){kind=link}
![[2]](http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/united_states/us_terr_1870.jpg){kind=link}
External links
- Ending the Gerrymander in Chile: the constitutional reforms of 1988 — a case study from the ACE Project
- Alleged Gerrymandering in Malaysia: Over-representation of rural districts — an article from the ACE Project
- Alleged Gerrymandering in Singapore — an article from the ACE Project
- A handbook of electoral system Design from International IDEA
- Gerrymandering in the US
- Reapportionment and Redistricting in the US an article from the ACE Project
- Anti-Gerrymandering policy in Australia
- A collection of bizarre and unconstitutional districts from recent history, dedicated to Governor Eldridge Gerry.
- Beyond gerrymandering and Texas posses: US electoral reform
- Gerrymandering pages at the Center for Range Voting
- The CommonCensus Map Project — Draws internal US boundaries based on cultural affinities, not politics
- Egregious Cases an article from Mother Jones Magazine
- Crossed Lines a new film about gerrymandering.
- Gerryminder — An online redistricting simulation.
- A New Nation Votes: American Election Returns 1787-1825
- The Redistricting Game - An online game designed to teach about Gerrymandering