Friday News Roundup - May 3, 2024
This week the Biden administration intensified efforts to cope with a world on fire, both abroad and at home.
In the Middle East, Secretary of State Antony Blinken engaged in shuttle diplomacy, forcefully urging the Hamas terrorist group to accept a ceasefire deal and return Israeli hostages, even as he asked the Israeli government to forgo a planned military offensive in Rafah and increase the delivery of aid to desperate Palestinian civilians in Gaza. Looming over his discussions with Israeli and Arab interlocutors was a fundamental disagreement between the U.S. and Israeli governments about the need to embrace a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a path out of the current morass.
In the clearest sign to date that the Israeli-Hamas war in Gaza has roiled U.S. politics in a critical presidential election year, President Joe Biden this week gave his most comprehensive remarks to date on the pro-Palestinian demonstrations that have rocked college campuses across the country over the past two weeks. After police have combated protesters on numerous campuses and made more than 2,000 arrests, Biden called on protesters to remain peaceful and reject tactics of violence and destruction.
“In moments like this, there are always those who rush in to score political points. But this isn’t a moment for politics. It’s a moment for clarity. So, let me be clear,” Biden said, arguing that peaceful protest is a fundamental American right, but not when it crosses a line. “Destroying property is not a peaceful protest. It’s against the law. Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduations — none of this is a peaceful protest. Threatening people, intimidating people, instilling fear in people is not peaceful protest. It’s against the law.”
Biden’s unscheduled remarks came as former president Donald Trump and Republicans allies seized on the clashes to characterize the United States as out of control. “These are radical left lunatics,” Trump told reporters earlier this week. “They got to be stopped now because it’s going to go on and on and it’s going to get worse and worse.”
This week on the Weekly Roundup, Greyson Hunziker writes the final installment in his series examining Gerrymandering in the United States.
American Gerrymandering Part II: Complex Reforms and Unanswered Questions
By Greyson Hunziker
Reforms
In Part I of the series, I provided a brief history of gerrymandering in the United States, including efforts to reform the process that continue to this day. Reforms typically consist of independent redistricting commissions and checks on state legislatures that unfairly attempt to draw election districts that favor one political party over the other. Even a cursory examination of the practice reveals great variation in redistricting processes among the many states.
According to the Washington Post, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Michigan, Montana, and Washington all now have independent commissions, meaning they are “designed to be nonpartisan and are empowered to submit final redistricting proposals.” Virginia has a hybrid commission of eight politicians and eight non-politicians, with four Democrats and four Republicans in each group. According to the same Washington Post article, New Jersey and Hawaii also have politician commissions, meaning politicians or those close to them, like staffers, can sit on the commission.
In all other states, the legislature is the dominant authority drawing electoral districts. Many of these states have “advisory commissions” whose decisions can be overruled by partisan legislatures. In New York, for instance, the commission submits maps to the legislature, which can take over the process after rejecting two submissions. The legislature has the final say in Connecticut and Maine, but the maps must pass by a two-thirds supermajority vote. Neither party enjoys a two-thirds majority in these states, which requires lawmakers to work together and find consensus on drawing the districts.
Some of the redistricting systems are quite complex, and they defy easy classification. If commission members are the staffers or family members of elected politicians, for instance, are they truly “independent”? What about a commissioner who just recently left elected office? Broadly stated, the more politicians and legislatures are removed from the process, the more independent the commission. Commissions are likewise most independent when they have final say over determining electoral maps; when their members are appointed by an independent organization, rather than party leaders; and when commissioners are not recently retired politicians, political staffers, lobbyists, or family members of current politicians.
Effectiveness
Based on interviews with over 100 stakeholders involved with redistricting nationwide, the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law recommended very independent commissions. For effective, impartial redistricting, they advised independent selection of non-politician commissioners, clear and prioritized drawing criteria, a commission size large enough to be representative of the state, rules that incentivize negotiations and compromise, transparency requirements, and adequate funding.
Genuinely independent commissions tend to function better, as shown by the struggles of Virginia and New York. With the Virginia commission split evenly along party lines, for instance, it failed to produce maps. That kicked the process to the Virginia Supreme Court. In New York, Republican-appointed commissioners-- knowing that the Democratic legislature controls maps from the commission, but courts take over if the commission fails—purposely deadlocked the process. Despite these failures of reform in this past cycle, both states still ended up with arguably fair maps, and there is a clear path forward for more effective commissions in the future.
On the bright side, several analyses suggest that reforms have proven effective in mitigating unfair gerrymandering. A January 2022 FiveThirtyEight analysis based on “efficiency gaps” (indicating how efficiently a political party can turn votes into legislative seats) showed that independent commissions in Arizona, California, Colorado, and Michigan created fairer districts. By contrast, New Jersey’s political commission, which leans seven to six towards Democrats, gave Democrats a decided advantage. The Brennan Center also found that of the 30 competitive districts in the 2022 midterm elections, independent commissions and courts drew 11 districts each, Democrats drew 6, and Republicans drew 2. Additionally, states with independent commissions received higher grades from the Gerrymandering Project at Princeton University.
Complexity of Districting
Despite indications that gerrymandering reforms are having a positive impact, empirical data about districts’ “competitiveness,” “representativeness,” or “compactness” are admittedly imperfect measures. That points to the sheer complexity of the districting process. It’s hard to precisely measure whether a district was unfairly gerrymandered based on compactness, for instance, because some vast, sparsely-populated rural areas have to be connected to cities to keep district populations equal. The natural geographical distribution of voters and the tendency towards partisan self-selection of like-minded voters clustered in cities, suburbs and rural areas also make finding ideal levels of representativeness and competitiveness all but impossible to achieve.
Notwithstanding these imperfections, if redistricting reforms made a district measurably more representative, more competitive, and more compact, it clearly indicates progress over partisan gerrymandering that has made Congressional districts steadily less competitive over time. Moreover, common sense suggests that independent commissions are preferable to highly partisan gerrymanders that wildly distort proportionate representation and purposefully create safe seats for selected candidates before voters ever have a say.
Gerrymandering reforms also leave open the question of what goals electoral commissions should pursue going forward. Ultimately, that can only be answered by American voters. Do they actually want competitive districts? Competitive districts may increase political engagement, for instance, but they may be less appealing to highly partisan voters who have geographically self-selected and want a representative who, like their neighbors, agree with them on almost everything. Is it more acceptable to fashion districts to be competitive or to draw maps to be representative of like-minded voters where they live? Are the majority-minority districts required in some instances by the 1965 Voting Rights Act, designed to ensure that racial and ethnic minorities are appropriately represented, consistent with the goal of current reforms to create more competitive districts?
The way American voters answer these questions will shape the future of gerrymandering, and more broadly, the vitality and sustainability of our democracy.
Greyson is a student intern at CSPC.