Supreme Court decision doesn't mean the gerrymandering issue goes away. What you need to know.
Editor's note: This article, originally published in 2018, has been updated
Wisconsin’s gerrymandering case appears to be dead in the water after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Thursday "that partisan gerrymandering claims present political questions beyond the reach of the federal courts."
But concerns over gerrymandering are likely to persist in Wisconsin and elsewhere, given the strong public sentiment in favor of reforming the process of drawing legislative and congressional boundaries.
The court punted the Wisconsin case back to a lower court last year. Democrats had argued that the state's legislative district lines were so pro-Republican that they violated their constitutional rights, and a panel of federal judges agreed. But the U.S. Supreme Court found Democrats hadn't proved they had legal standing to bring the case. That case now appears to be dead.
But discussion of gerrymandering is very much alive. Here’s what you need to know about redistricting, gerrymandering and what citizens are doing outside of the courts to address the issue.
What is gerrymandering?
Every 10 years, legislative and congressional district boundaries must be redrawn to account for changes in population to ensure the constitutional mandate of one person, one vote.
Gerrymandering is when politicians deliberately draw legislative boundaries to give their party an advantage at the polls — packing the opposing party into a handful of districts or cracking districts and distributing opposing voters across a large number of districts to dilute their votes. It’s a very old political trick, dating to the earliest days of the republic. Both sides do it.
But in some states, politicians have done something astonishing: They have given up that power. More on that in a moment.
Why should we care?
In a concurring opinion in the Wisconsin case last year, Justice Elena Kagan put it this way: Gerrymandering produces “indifference to swing voters and their views; extreme political positioning designed to placate the party’s base and fend off primary challenges; the devaluing of negotiation and compromise; and the impossibility of reaching pragmatic, bipartisan solutions to the nation’s problems.”
Dale Schultz, a retired Republican state senator who favors reform, has expressed similar worries about the impact on democracy.
"When you lose a state by as much as we did, and the Legislature doesn’t reflect the overall top-of-the-ticket numbers, there’s something going on there," he said. "What that does is deprive the voters of the value of their votes. And that discourages people from voting."
There are many reasons we are so politically divided. Gerrymandering is only one of those reasons. But it’s also something voters can fix. And one of the best ways to do that was devised in Iowa nearly 40 years ago.
How does the Iowa model work?
In Iowa, the moment of truth came in 1980 when a Republican-controlled state government pushed through redistricting reform. Since then, the work has been done by an arm of the state legislature. The process is fast, cheap and results in more competitive elections — and sometimes the defeat of incumbents.
Iowa’s Legislative Services Agency draws the maps, which have to be as equal in population as possible, respect political boundaries by trying not to divide cities and counties, be contiguous and be reasonably compact. It is a blind process that cannot favor political parties or incumbents or be used to enhance or dilute the voting strength of minority groups.
The legislature must consider the plan promptly and can only vote up or down. If lawmakers reject the initial plan, they have to explain why based on the criteria for drawing districts. The agency then submits a second plan, which the legislature also considers on an up-or-down vote. If the second plan is rejected, the agency draws up a third plan based on legislative feedback and submits it to the General Assembly. If lawmakers reject the agency's maps for a third time, only then can they devise their own set of maps. But that's never happened.
“There generally tend to be more new legislators the election following redistricting,” said Ed Cook, a lawyer for the agency.
Why did Iowa Republicans agree to give up such a handy political tool?
The state was led at the time by Gov. Robert Ray, a moderate Republican governor with a reputation for bipartisanship. There also was resentment that the courts had stepped in to require a new set of maps a few years earlier, which resulted in a mess in the opinion of many in the majority, according to a 2013 white paper co-authored by longtime Iowa political observer Don Racheter.
And there were backbenchers in the GOP who were as concerned as some Democrats about losing their seats to gerrymandering, Racheter wrote. Finally, there was a general feeling that it was simply the "right thing to do."
In an era of extreme political polarization, it’s unlikely the Republican majority in Wisconsin will take up redistricting reform unless compelled to do so by either the courts or intense public pressure.
Does that mean this issue is decided?
In the courts, the answer appears to be yes, at least for now, after the Supreme Court's decision on Thursday.
But in the court of public opinion, gerrymandering remains an open issue, especially headed into the 2020 elections and another round of redistricting that will begin in 2021.
The Brennan Center for Justice, which tracks reform efforts, reports that voters in five states passed laws in 2018 to make map drawing "fairer and more transparent." Legislatures in New Hampshire and Virginia did so this year.
In Wisconsin, a bill has been introduced to create a redistricting process similar to the one used in Iowa. There also is a strong grass-roots effort, led by the Wisconsin Fair Maps Coalition, to raise awareness about redistricting and ask candidates about the issue when they run for office.
Polling shows that the public strongly favors a less partisan brand of redistricting.
In January, the Marquette University Law School Poll found that 72 percent of voters preferred redistricting be done by a nonpartisan commission. The poll found that majorities in each partisan group favored that approach, including 63 percent of Republicans.
David D. Haynes is editor of the Ideas Lab. He reports on innovation in business and government and on government transparency. Email: firstname.lastname@example.org. Follow him on Twitter at @DavidDHaynes or Facebook.