Americans want reforms to curb gerrymandering

 From The Economist

America’s states are required to redraw their electoral districts every ten years, to take account of changes in the population or new rules on how to delineate districts. After 2010 many Republican state governments passed notoriously biased maps—called “gerrymanders”—which discriminated against voters by their race and partisan affiliation. According to an analysis of election results by The Economist, Democrats in 2010 would have won roughly 213 seats in America’s House of Representatives in a perfectly tied election. After maps were redrawn, they were favoured in just 197.

This time it is Democrats who have gained. Our analysis of new congressional plans shows the party would this year be favoured to win about 211 seats in a perfectly tied election. That is close to the number they would have won in 2010 before the Republican-led gerrymandering, and up from a hypothetical 202 in a tied election in 2020. Their gains are a result of both new rigging, in states such as New York and Illinois, and court cases which have forced Republicans to rethink their own gerrymanders. The new maps also show a decline in competition. In 2020, 44 of the 435 districts in the House were considered competitive (ie, the Democratic candidates’ share of the vote was within five percentage points of the national average in the past two election cycles). After all states submit their new maps, we estimate that just 40 will be.

What can states do to prevent rigging? One idea is to hand over the redistricting process to a nonpartisan commission of citizens who have full power to draft, review and finalise new maps. Four states—Arizona, California, Colorado and Michigan—already do this. In the latest round of redistricting, those states submitted maps that were more balanced than they had been in 2020. In a poll conducted by YouGov for The Economist, 63% of American adults said they wanted the maps for their electoral districts to be drawn by independent commissions. More than 60% of Democrats and Republicans supported this. And voters broadly favour other reforms, such as removing lobbyists from the map-making process and requiring input from the public on new boundaries. A majority of Democrats (67%) and Republicans (50%) also want the Supreme Court to smack down partisan gerrymanders. But states have to enact these reforms on their own, and it is in legislators’ interests to keep rigging. What voters want is not so easy to get.