Research Paper on Gerrymandering

Introduction

However, the reality is that the winning candidate, Republican or Democrat won by nearly 70% of the vote while their challenger only garnered only 30%. In total, only 33 seats were decided by a 10% or less margin meaning that almost 9 out of 10 House races were landslides (Klaas, 2017). In other words, due to gerrymandering, the campaign is usually a foregone conclusion before a single ballot is even cast.

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Hence, due to gerrymandering, there were no truly competitive Congressional races in 42 out of the 52 states in America. Obviously, for a system of governance that is defined by political competition at its core, that is not a healthy democracy. To bring back democracy to America, gerrymandering should be reformed in a way that seeks to achieve fair representation among all U.S political parties in order to maintain the democratic processes in America.

After examining the problems and threats posed to democracy by gerrymandering, it is crucial to ask the question of how gerrymandering can be fixed. The US need not look far than its neighbor to the north, Canada, for inspiration. Just like Canada, the US can fix the problem posed by gerrymandering by handing over the task redistricting to an independent commission. The commission can be made up of retired civil servants, scholars and other professionals who can be regarded as non-partisan to the two leading political parties in America.

From the beginning until the 1960s, Canada struggled with reapportionment until 1955 when Manitoba handed over the process of redistricting to an independent commission in an experiment. The new policy was so popular that within ten years, the two major political parties were able to back it and sign it to law.

The independent commissions would make districts that are uncontroversial, simple, and geometric. Moreover, the commissions would likely form districts that vaguely conform to borders of some existing civil or geographic boundaries that are knowable to the average citizen from the district (Margolin, 2017). Because a federal law requiring the redistricting process to be left to independent commissions may not be constitutional and may go against the tradition of state independence, the reforms would have to be initiated and implemented at state level.

While 6 of the 52 states use commissions to do the work of redistricting, none has all its members as nonpartisan as those of Canada. To achieve the nonpartisan nature, the states should not let politicians name the appointees. Just like Canada, the states should appoint retired civil servants, judges and political scientists without reserving seats for members of political parties as is the case in New Jersey and California.

Another solution to fix gerrymandering is to have larger districts send more than one representative to Congress. In fact, most democracies outside England and the US have more than one representative per each district. When the total number of seats in a district can be adjusted, the concept of "one person, one vote" is achievable without the need to redraw boundary lines at all. Rather than change boundaries, a seat could be subtracted from a district that has shrunk and then the seat is added to the district that has expanded (Grofman & Feierherd, 2017). This strategy eliminates the need for reshaping outcomes through the manipulation of district boundaries.

To prevent gerrymandering, the country can adopt semi-permanent district boundaries that are harder to manipulate as the case is in Mexico. In the US, district boundaries are easy to manipulate simply because boundary lines are not required to respect any preexisting civic or geographical boundaries. It is due to this reason that districts are permitted to resemble starfish and amoeba as the case is in Northern Michigan.

The single-member districts in Mexico are drawn up in accordance with an algorithm developed by a technical team committee whose objective is to implement criteria of districting referred to as "good government." The map is submitted for review by the political parties and modifications can only be done if they improve pre-established scoring function value.

Lastly, the problem can be fixed by making redistricting be subject to mandatory and extensive judicial review. In the US, state and federal courts have intervened in numerous cases regarding redistricting. However, most of the court cases are based on constitutional language such as the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

Conclusion

However, the courts do not handle cases beyond this scope meaning that cases that revolve around proportionality principle such as "one person, one vote" are lot litigated. In established democracies such as Switzerland, Japan, and Germany, judicial review is exercised on the meaning of the principle of proportionality. For a country facing the kind of political manipulation and gross distorted district lines, the US should perhaps expand its judicial review to include the meaning of the proportionality principle like in Switzerland, Germany, and Japan.

References

Grofman, B., & Feierherd, G. (2017, Aug 7). The U.S. could be free of gerrymandering. Here's how other countries do redistricting.

The Washington Post.Klaas, B. (2017, Feb 10). Gerrymandering is the biggest obstacle to genuine democracy in the United States. So why is no one protesting?

The Washington Post.Margolin, J. (2017, May 26). It's Time To Ban Congressional Gerrymandering. Huffington Post.