Redistricting 101

November 6, 2017
Michael Li
The Gerrymander
Patrick Henry
Some Basics of
Redistricting
It Starts with the Census

Next Census on April 1, 2020

Counts EVERYONE and everyone needs to be counted

Census determines how many congressional seats each

state gets

Also used to help determine allocation of federal block

grant funding for education, healthcare, social services
Early Seat Gain and Loss Projections for 2020
Big Changes to Census Coming in 2020

Congress: Census Bureau can only spend for 2020 Census

what it spent for the 2010 Census

Bureau looking for cost-saving measures

Option for the first time to complete Census online

Also could be new demographic questions

New Census Questions

Combined Race & Ethnicity

Question

New MENA Category

Who Draws the Maps?
State Legislature is the Most Common Entity to Draw District Lines

Congressional State Legislative

States that Use Some Form of a Commission for Congressional and/or
Legislative Districts
States that Use an Advisory Commission for Congressional and/or
Legislative Districts
The Legal Rules
Basic Redistricting Requirements
Equal population
o Exact for congressional (plus or minus 1 or 2 people)
o 10% top-to-bottom deviation in legislative

Comply with the Voting Rights Act

Contiguous
Compact
Rules on city and county boundaries, etc.
Communities of interest
 Special Note:
Majority-Minority Districts
Under the Voting Rights Act
Test for Section 2 Claims
Three-part test (Gingles v. Thornburg)

Minority group votes as a block (prefers the same

candidate)

White voters also vote sufficiently as a block to defeat

the ability to minority voters to elect their candidate of
choice

Minority group is sufficiently large and geographically

compact to be able to draw district
But race cannot be sole basis for the
configuration of a district

If a district is drawn predominately on the basis of race,

then it is subject to strict scrutiny.
Shaw v. Reno (1993).

Questions:
o How do you tell if a district is predominately drawn on
the basis of race?
o How do you distinguish between race and politics,
especially in the South?
TX-30 in 1991 Congressional Plan

Source: Michael Li, Drawing minority districts then and now: Lessons from Texas, TEXAS
REDISTRICTING AND ELECTION LAW (July 15, 2017),
http://txredistricting.org/post/163030965146/drawing-minority-districts-then-and-now-lessons.
TX-35

Source: TEXAS LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL, REDISTRICTING, PLAN C235, (2011),

http://gis1.tlc.state.tx.us/?PlanHeader=PLANc235.
Gill v. Whitford: A New Opening on
Partisan Gerrymandering
But What Exactly is Gerrymandering?

Things people say:

Unfair allocation of seats between parties

Lack of competition/entrenchment of incumbents

Drawing a district to favor a candidate

Splitting apart of towns, neighborhoods & communities

Important to Distinguish between
Symptoms and Harms
IL-4
 The Whitford Panels Standard
The panel ruled that the First Amendment and the Equal
Protection Clause prohibit a redistricting scheme where:
1. an intent to entrench a political party in power is a
motivating factor for that scheme;
2. the scheme has the effect of entrenching that party;
and,
3. the scheme cannot be justified on other, legitimate
legislative grounds.
The Efficiency Gap: wasted votes and partisan asymmetry

For winning party: Counts votes in excess of 50% +1 as

wasted

For losing party: Counts all votes as wasted

Net wasted votes =

Winning party wasted votes losing party wasted votes

 Example 1 An Uncompetitive District

100 voters

Party A gets 75 votes

Party B gets 25 votes

Net wasted votes: 1

- Party A wastes 24 votes (75-51)
- Party B wastes 25 votes
 Example 2 A Competitive District
100 voters

Party A gets 52 votes

Party B gets 48 votes

Net wasted votes: 47

- Party A wastes 1 vote (52-51)
- Party B wastes 48 votes

The efficiency gap is one of many measures of partisan bias

 Brennan Center for Justice
www.brennancenter.org

For more information, contact

michael.li@nyu.edu