The New York Court of Appeals has struck down the state’s recently drawn congressional map, pushing the mapping issue back to the state’s Independent Redistricting Commission (IRC). The map that they produce will need to be approved by the state legislature, which is controlled by Democrats. This whole process exposes a weakness in our Constitution, and it’s why an entirely new process for electing representatives is needed.
New York is one of a handful of states that use an independent commission, as opposed to state legislatures that invariably produce highly partisan gerrymandered maps. Examples of such gerrymandered maps abound, including Illinois and Texas, both of which received grades of F by the Princeton Gerrymandering Project. Neither party is innocent; Republicans have historically been more aggressive and proficient in gerrymandering, with Democrats became more adept during the 2021-2022 remapping cycle.
In contrast, Michigan, which uses an independent commission, had an overall grade of A assigned by the Princeton Gerrymandering Project. This demonstrates that independent commissions can do their job and draw maps that serve the best interests of the people, rather than the parties.
The number of court cases and rulings that require some type of remapping are growing. Alabama has a new congressional map, with the previous map rejected based on racial gerrymandering that violated the Voting Rights Act. States like North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin have had their own court-challenged maps scrutinized, thrown out, and/or redrawn.
As long as members of the House of Representatives are elected in the current manner, gerrymandering will continue to be a problem. The solution is a constitutional change that eliminates, or at the very least, reduces the impact of gerrymandering.
So what are possible solutions?
Proportional representation focuses on using the popular vote to determine congressional representation. To illustrate this method, the popular vote in each state can be used to determine the number of representatives from each party. The parties can then determine the representatives once these numbers are obtained.
Alternatively, registered voters with each party can then vote to determine who will represent them, also based on these numbers. This means that a single ballot would give voters a choice between Republicans and Democrats, and then once they opt for a particular party, they would rank order the representatives on the ballot within that party.
Such a change effectively eliminates mapping in each state, with popular vote determining the number of representatives.
To illustrate this point, in the 2022 midterm election, 14 of the 17 representatives elected in Illinois were Democrats, or 82 percent. However, just 56 percent of the votes were cast for Democrat candidates. With proportional representation, Democrats would have 10 representatives, four fewer than what they won. A well gerrymandered map ensured such skewed representation.
For Missouri, in the 2022 midterms, 59 percent of the votes were for Republican Representatives. Given the state’s eight House of Representative seats, Republicans should have five, rather than the six that they won. Numerous other smaller states with large rural areas incrementally give Republicans one or two extra representatives beyond what proportional representation would provide.
An alternative approach would be multi-member districts. Each state would have fewer districts, but multiple members representing each. Ranked Choice voting would then be used to determine representation in each district. By using larger districts, partisan gerrymandering would be more difficult to achieve, given the population size of districts covering a larger proportion of a state.
The current structure to elect representation in the House is broken. Time and money are being wasted to execute challenges and court battles that foment chaos in our political system. The people who are paying for such activities are taxpayers and, of course, voters.
The New York situation is particularly concerning because the state uses an IRC, which should eliminate or dampen partisan gerrymandering. Since the IRC could not come to a consensus, the courts designated an alternative map drawer, which produced the current map. This implies that the IRC was divided and the mapping process was broken. Perhaps even their “independence” served as a smokescreen to perpetuate gerrymandering.
As the number of court challenges continue to grow with House maps across the nation, and the courts continue to rule to have such maps redrawn, this creates additional chaos in our legislative process. Representatives in one election cycle may find themselves faced with a new group of voters to represent in a subsequent election.
Pervasive gerrymandering is symptomatic of a bigger problem: the polarization of America. It is the “canary in the mine shaft” that indicates the problem. Gerrymandering will never be fixed in the courts. It will only be healed with a constitutional change that makes it ineffective to gain political power and influence.
Sheldon H. Jacobson, Ph.D., is a professor of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He applies his expertise in data-driven risk-based decision-making to evaluate and inform public policy. He serves as the director of the Institute for Computational Redistricting.