Along partisan lines: Our two-party split is tearing the nation apart

The North Carolina Supreme Court has overruled its previous decision concerning the gerrymandering of the state’s voting map. The 5-2 decision was described as “along partisan lines.”

Anytime a decision is made by a court that is described as “along partisan lines,” politics has gone into the decision. Given that the courts and their justices are responsible for upholding the law as written, the question is, how much interpretation is there in the law that permits partisan understanding? How can a decision by the same court with different personnel be diametrically the opposite?

The practice of gerrymandering has become a lightning rod of controversy, with renewed attention surging after every decennial census when the nation’s voting maps get redrawn. The ensuing legal challenges keep it in the public eye for years, until the next census is held, and the cycle rebegins.

The process by which voting maps are drawn to give one party a political advantage in elections, gerrymandering maps has become a sport in some states, with both Republican and Democratic lawmakers guilty of such egregious hijinks.

North Carolina’s Republican-drawn maps may be in the news now after their Supreme Court ruling, but Democrats in Illinois acted just as egregiously when drawing their new voting maps in 2020-2021. They were rewarded with 14 of the 17 seats in Congress in the 2022 midterms, despite winning just 56 percent of the popular votes cast for candidates in both parties.

If lawmakers have the power to bias the very maps that benefit their own party in elections, it represents a conflict of interest. That is like the wolf keeping watch on the hen house. 

So what can be done to avoid such conflicts of interest?

In our digital age, with computational algorithms available to draw voting maps, the battle to end gerrymandering can be won for good. Such algorithms can draw maps with any desired properties — this includes keeping the districts contiguous (connected), equi-populous (equal population), compact (tightly configured) or any other geographic property. They can also preserve legal and social factors like minority representation (as per the Voting Rights Act) and preserve communities of interest. These same algorithms can be used to intentionally draw highly gerrymandered maps, of course, demonstrating their potential for both good and evil. 

All such maps can be evaluated based on how their constituents have recently voted. There are no mapping or district properties that can be hidden under the bright lights of computational algorithms. This capability should terrify every legislator in every party who relies on gerrymandering to hold onto power.

To reduce conflicts of interest, map drawing rules and criteria must be defined at the federal level, with state mapping commissions used to create the maps. Attempts to enact such laws have been made and failed. These include the Democrat-sponsored Redistricting Reform Act of 2021 and Freedom to Vote Act. That does not mean, however, that such efforts should be abandoned.

Whether it is drawing voting maps, passing spending bills or making court rulings, anything done “along partisan lines” is rarely productive. It is symptomatic of people placing party interests over the best interests of the voters and, ultimately, the nation. 

The recent House vote on the debt ceiling bill passed 217-215, with four Republican representatives voting against the bill — the maximum number that could dissent without jeopardizing its passage. It is difficult to believe that every other Republican supported the bill, and that every Democrat could not in good conscience vote for its passage. The Democrat-controlled Senate will ensure that the bill will never reach the White House.

Any time a legislative vote or court decision is made “along partisan lines,” it puts on full display how divided our nation has become. Many people now vote in elections not based on the candidate they prefer but against the candidate they disdain.

There must be a better way. Yet to find it, our elected officials must represent the people who put them in office, not the interests of their parties. This would transform many issues from an “I win, you lose” negotiation into a “win-win” compromise.

Such a change will not happen overnight. Yet the process toward such a change in mindset must begin somewhere. Otherwise, “along partisan lines” will continue to foster the disfunction in government that serves no one’s best interests, including the parties who act in this manner.

Sheldon H. Jacobson, Ph.D., is a professor of computer science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He uses his expertise in data-driven risk analysis to inform issues in public policy. He is the founding director of the Institute for Computational Redistricting at the University of Illinois, committed to bringing transparency to the redistricting process using optimization algorithms and artificial intelligence.