Hi, I'm Craig and this is Crash Course Government
and Politics and today I'm gonna talk about
a topic in American politics that tends to
drive people crazy! Ahhh! No it's not partisanship,
or horse race journalism, or the state of
political punditry, although we could easily
do episodes on all three of those, and we
might. Nope, today we're gonna look at the
election districts and how they shape electoral
outcomes, and that means - you guessed it
- we're gonna talk about Gerrymandering.
Clone: Thank goodness, Gerrymandering is a
blight on our American election system. It
completely thwarts the will of the majority, and it's
responsible for our lopsided house of representatives.
Second Clone: Not so fast my left-wing sore
loser friend! Gerrymandering is not nearly
as responsible for the 2014 republican congress
as the fact that people like you self-segregated
the urban enclaves of socialism.
Craig: All right calm down, clones. Gerrymandering
is a little more nuanced than that. Let's talk it out.
[Theme Music]
Congressional Apportionment - how many representatives each state gets - is super exciting!
Even though it only changes every 10 years. Since
the number of representatives each state gets
is based on population, it's important to
know how many people are in each state. That's
one reason, at least in the constitution,
that we have a census every 10 years. The
most populous state, California, has the largest
number of representatives - 53 - and the least
populous states have only one. Sorry Alaska,
Delaware, the Dakotas, Vermont, and Wyoming,
and Montana, and the state of loneliness.
One is the loneliest number.
In those sparsely populated states, figuring
out the election district, which geographic
area is represented by a congressman, is easy
because there's only one district. This makes
elections in these states effectively at large
elections, like a state's choice for senator.
Even though there are two senators from each
state, they represent the entire state at
large rather than only a part of it like representatives
are supposed to do. The electoral college,
the system through which Americans choose
their president, are also a type of at large election.
The rest of the states are divided into what
are called single member districts. This means
that each election district chooses one representative.
Now you might think it would be simple to
divide a state into as many pieces as it has
representatives, but why would you think that?
Nothing is simple!
Districts are required to be equal - or almost
equal - in population and in most states populations
are not evenly distributed across the entire
region. The notion that election districts
must encompass equal population is the essence
of the idea of one person, one vote - a principle
that was cast into law by the 1962 supreme
court decision in Baker vs Carr. It means
that a person's vote counts equally no matter
where they live, at least as far as the house
of representatives goes. In the senate it
doesn't actually work out because the resident
of a small state like Delaware has the same
number of senators - 2 - as a resident of
California. To put it another way, in 2014
two senators represented 897,934 Delawareans
and the same number of senators represented
the approximately 38 million Californians.
In the house, each representative is responsible
for about seven to eight hundred thousand people,
which is still a lot but much better than one senator for nineteen million Californians or thirteen million Texans.
The idea that people should be equally represented
in congress shouldn't be controversial, and
for the most part it's not. What is controversial
is the way that minority groups are represented.
One of the problems with single member districts
is that they can make it easier to cut minority
groups out of the political landscape. After
all, if in a given state only 15% of the residents
are minorities, it'll be more difficult for
them to elect a member of their own group.
Even under a plurality rule, unless that person
can appeal to a large number of non-minority
people. Congress and the supreme court have
tried to remedy this problem by mandating
that there be majority-minority districts,
which is a confusing way of saying districts
where the majority of voters are members of
a minority group. This is a little like affirmative
action in the realm of voting, and as you
might have guessed, there is a fair amount
of disagreement among people who think a lot about it.
Although, I'd bet that number itself is a pretty small...minority.
This idea of majority-minority districts leads
us into a really fun aspect of congressional
districting - the way that the districts themselves
are drawn, a process known as Gerrymandering
after the 19th century political cartoon that
depicted one particular Massachusetts district
that looked like a reptile. Oh! There it is.
Looks like a dragon or something. And we all
know dragons are reptiles. The man responsible
for this twisted district - the name of my
band in high school - was Elbridge Gerry,
hence the name Gerrymander. So districts have
to be drawn in a way that they contain roughly
equal populations, so why does it matter if
they look convoluted or even somewhat ridiculous
like this? Well, states don't just draw districts
to make them look equal in population, they
draw them to capture certain population characteristics
so that one party has a greater chance of
electing a member from a particular district.
In the district pictured here, the Illinois
4th, Chicago has been carved up to capture
a certain population - me. That's the district
I live in. Usually district are drawn so that
they can capture my vote, or a significant
majority of one party or the other, virtually
ensuring that a particular district will elect
only a democrat or republican as the case may be.
You might have noticed that thin strip in
the Illinois 4th's western edge connecting
the upper half and the lower half. Look carefully
and you'll see that it runs along the interstate,
which I'm sure means that it has a
huge population. Why do we do this? Because
one of the requirements according to federal
election law is that districts not only be
roughly the same size in terms of population,
but also they be contiguous, meaning that
they can't be divided completely by other districts. This
requirement results in some pretty weird configurations.
So who draws these cockamamie districts anyway?
Well, they're done by state legislatures.
Well, not legislatures themselves, but by
people working at the behest of legislatures.
If one party has a majority of the state legislature,
say the democrats, they usually want to draw
the districts so that Democrats have a better
chance of winning, republicans do the same
thing. This is why state legislature elections
matter so much in census years. Whoever wins
that year gets to re-draw the districts.
A couple of things to note here. First, there's
no rule saying that states can't re-draw their
districts whenever they want. Texas tried
to do this in 2003 - not a census year - prompting
its democrats to run away to Oklahoma for
a spell. Second, it's possible for a state
to hand the task over to a less biased expert
district drawing person, or group, that might
make districts more fair. Hand it over to
me! I'll make 'em all look like little bunnies.
But wait, you might ask yourself, what's wrong
with this system and why do people think it's
unfair? Let's go to the Thought Bubble.
So imagine a state that's 60% republican and
40% democrat, and has 5 electoral districts
like this one. Let's call it Clonesylvania.
You could draw districts so that there were
3 republican districts and 2 democratic ones,
accurately reflecting the state's population,
like this. Or you could re-draw it so there
were 3 democratic districts and 2 republican
districts, which would be an inaccurate reflection
of the party composition of the state's population.
Or you could simply draw the districts so
you had 5 republican districts and zero democratic
ones, like this. So you can see, especially
in the second and third examples how Gerrymandering
can result in districts that don't actually
reflect the political makeup of a state at all.
By now you might be fuming at the injustice
of state legislature's re-drawing districts
to make sure that the opposing party has no
chance of winning national congressional elections,
and you may have read a number of articles
blaming Gerrymandering for the composition
of the current congress and for making congressional
elections generally less competitive. There
are a lot of people who feel the same way.
But there's a counter argument that it's not
the state legislatures that result in solidly
republican or solidly democratic districts,
but the fact that democratic voters tend to
cluster in cities where they often outnumber
republicans by a lot. So that states like
Ohio, even though the number of democrats
and republicans are pretty even with a slight
edge going to democrats perhaps, they all
tend to concentrate in urban areas around
Cleveland and Columbus so that the overwhelming
majority of the state's districts are won
by republicans. Thanks Thought Bubble.
Congressional districting is fascinating and
really really important for determining the
composition of congress, but is also quite
complicated, which as with most things, makes
it difficult to understand. But unlike some
other complicated issues concerning policy,
Gerrymandering is one that's easy to criticize
because the visual results are so striking
and because it can result in numbers that
just look unfair. This is probably why, come
election time, you'll hear a lot about it.
Now at least you'll have a better idea what
those pundits are talking about and you'll
be better equipped to making your own decision
about the issue. Luckily for you, there's
more and more data about this stuff every
election and always more to learn. Thanks
for watching, I'll see you next time.
Crash Course Government and Politics is produced
in association with PBS Digital Studios. Support
for Crash Course U.S. Government comes from
Voqal. Voqal supports non-profits that use
technology and media to advance social equity.
Learn more about their mission and initiatives
at voqal.org. Crash Course was made with the
help of these less biased expert drawing district
drawing people. Thanks for watching.
