What's the Difference Between Redistricting and Gerrymandering?

and be roughly equal in population. Over the centuries. Since the constitution's writing, American politicians have seized on the once a decade redistricting process to redraw voting maps to their advantage. While partisan redistricting is an accepted, if bemoaned practice, the courts have found it unacceptable to redraw voting districts for the express purpose of suppressing the voting power of black

voters and other minority groups. Gerrymandering is defined as the manipulation of voting districts for hyperpartist in or racist reasons, but the line between legit redistricting and unethical jerrymandering is blurry at best. It's ultimately up to judges to decide whether a redistricting plan is kosher or not. Every ten years,

the United States conducts a census. The constitutional purpose of the census is apportionment, that is, the process of determining how many seats each state should have in the House

of Representatives. While the Constitution automatically a lots to senators for every state, the apportionment of representatives in the four hundred and thirty five seat House is based on population, with populous states like California getting fifty two representatives as of the census and sparsely populated states like Wyoming and

South Dakota only getting one seat. Each. Members of the House are voted into office by the voters in their congressional district back home, and according to the Constitution, those districts should be approximately the same size, meaning that each of the four thirty five House members represent roughly the same number of people. The average congressional district now holds a little over seven d s people. But who draws

the district maps. A handful of states appoint independent commissions who draw their district lines, but those are the outliers right now. State legislatures in thirty nine states draw their own congressional districts, though that includes the six states that only have one congressional district. If the state legislature is firmly in the hands of one political party or the other, as it is in more than half of all states, then that party exercises a lot of control over the

redistricting process. By tweaking the size and shape of voting districts, they can boost the voting power of their party and increase the odds of winning congressional seats. The district drawings and power struggles in each individual states legislature works similarly, but we're concentrating on the national government today. Okay, So when does partisan redistricting cross the line and become illegal gerrymandering.

When state legislators sit down to redraw their voting district maps, even in solidly Republican or democratic states, they're expected to play by some basic rules. Districts have to be of roughly equal population, though a deviation of a few percentage points is okay. Districts have to be contiguous, meaning they have to be contained by one boundary. And districts should

be compact, not long and snakelike. Of those three characteristics, the compactness or non compactness of a district is usually the one that triggers accusations of gerrymandering. For the article this episode is based on, Has to Work, spoke with Doug Spencer, a law professor and election law scholar at

the University of Colorado, Boulder. He explained, if you see a bizarrely shaped district that raises your intent a that it may not have been drawn neutral ly, but in a way that favors some group, political group, a racial group, or something else. After all, it was the freakest shape of a Massachusetts congressional district that helped coin the term Jerrymander in eighteen twelve. The long and snaking district was approved by Governor Elbridge Jerry and delivered a powerful electoral

advantage to his party, the Democratic Republicans. A newspaper cartoonist noted the alamander like shape of the district and labeled it the Jerrymander after its partisan creator. According to Spencer, the courts have recognized that partisanship and the redistricting process is an accepted outcome of state elections. If voters put control of the state legislature in the hands of one party, then there's an expectation that party officials will make redistricting

decisions that benefit their party. Spencer said, the question becomes how much partisanship is too much. That's the line that's hard to distinguish. Some state legislatures are blatantly honest, but

what they're trying to accomplish. In North Carolina, for example, the Republican chair of the state's redistricting committee said in sixteen, I propose we draw the maps to give an advantage to ten Republicans and three Democrats, because I do not believe it's possible to draw a map with eleven Republicans and two Democrats. And in Maryland, the Democratic governor testified that a new district was drawn to quote create a district where the people would be more likely to elect

a Democrat than Republican. Yes, this was clearly my intent. But do such statements go too far? For its part, the Supreme Court is keeping out of the controversy. In twenty nineteen, the justices ruled five to four that the nation's highest court would not get involved in challenges to state plans on strictly political grounds. They left those challenges

to state lawmakers and state courts. Racially motivated jerrymandering is unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee of equal protection under the law. But before the nineteen sixty four Voting Rights Act was passed, state legislatures a special in the Jim Crow era South used a pair of gerrymandering tactics to strip black voters of equal electoral power. They're called packing

and cracking. If black voters were concentrated in a certain geographic area of a state, then the legislators would pack them into one or two districts. Even if that created strong black voting blocks in those districts, their vote would

be outweighed by all of the majority white districts. If black voters were more geographically dispersed, then the districts were drawn in order to crack or dilute the black vote by assigning small numbers of black voters to several different districts, and that way their voices were still guaranteed to be drowned out by the white majority. This was supposed to change with the Voting Rights Act, which included a provision that six Southern states had to receive federal approval for

their districting plans. Those six states, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Virginia were flagged for this extra scrutiny

because of a story of race based jerrymandering. In the nineteen sixties, three more states were added, Alaska, Arizona, and Texas, but in a landmark case, the Supreme Court bailed out those nine states from having to seek congressional pre approval for their plans, and stoking fears of a new wave of racially motivated jerrymandering, mainly in Republican controlled Southern legislatures. The reality is that racial jerrymandering is still unlawful and

can be challenged in both state and federal courts. A lawsuit intended to block a state's redistricting plan on racial grounds must be filed by a voter living in the district, says Spencer, not an outside political organization. It's then up to a judge or judges to determine if there's enough evidence, like testimony or emails or texts between lawmakers to conclude that the district lines were in fact drawn to disenfranchise

minority voters. And these challenges do happen. Two high profile Supreme Court cases within the past gade effectively blocked districting plans in North Carolina and Virginia on grounds of racial jerrymandering. A part of what makes the line between redistricting and jerrymandering so blurry is that the electorate has become increasingly polarized along racial lines. In presidential election, for example, of

black voters shows the Democratic candidate Joe Biden. Meanwhile, white voters continued to skew Republican particularly non college educated white voters of whom voted for Donald Trump. What that means for Republican held legislatures, especially in the South, is that any attempt to crack or pack districts to prevent the election of Democrats risks targeting black voters and running a foul of the law. Today's episode is based on the

article what's the difference between redistricting and jerrymandering? On House to works dot com, written by Dave Rouse. Brain Stuff is production of iHeart Radio and partner ship with how stuff works dot Com, and it's produced by Tyler Clang. Four more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.