By Mark Bauer
Gerrymandering is in the news again, with President Trump encouraging Texas to redraw its congressional district lines to pick up a few seats in the U.S. House. If Texas were to go down that path, California governor Newsom suggested that California could retaliate by redrawing its own Congressional District lines to benefit Democrats.
Neither Texas nor California would be able to engage in such hijinks, however, if a bill being reintroduced into Congress has anything to do about it. The Fair Representation Act takes a swing at the very roots of gerrymandering by calling for independent commissions to draw congressional districts.
To be honest, my eyes tend to glaze over whenever I hear the word “gerrymander.” It’s a word that’s been used to describe the partisan manipulation of voting lines for 200 years. So, what exactly is it and why do so many consider it a bad thing?
What Is Gerrymandering
Every 10 years, the U.S. counts its population through the Census. After that, the country updates how many seats each state gets in the U.S. House of Representatives based on how many people live there. This is called apportionment.
Then, each state redraws its Congressional districts to reflect those population changes. This process is called redistricting.
Gerrymandering happens when those new district lines are drawn in a way that gives an unfair advantage to the political party in power. Instead of making fair maps based on where people live, the party in charge can distort the lines, carving it up in a way that generates more wins for themselves.
Why It Matters
But why should we care? Gerrymandering tends to reduce you to a mere pawn in a larger political war, rather than count you as an autonomous voice with influence over your representatives in Congress. It’s cynical because it says you only really matter as long as your numbers benefit those in power. That turns representative government on its head, doesn’t it? Aren’t you here for me, and not vice versa?
It wasn’t until I’d moved back to my hometown of Arlington, TX a few years ago that I was really confronted with the effects of gerrymandering. When searching for my Representative, I was shocked to find the city had four different congressional reps.
Arlington isn’t a shrinking violet. Situated between Fort Worth and Dallas, it boasts nearly 400,000 residents and is home to the Texas Rangers, the Dallas Cowboys, a Tier-One university, and the very first Six Flags Over Texas. It’s also one of the most diverse cities in the country. And, it’s incredibly gerrymandered.
The Texas congressional district lines include large swaths of rural areas that spider leg into suburban cities like Arlington, diluting the voting power of those areas. Take Texas’ 25th Congressional District, for example. It would take you nearly 3 hours to drive the expanse of it from Arlington to the edge of Abilene. If you’ve never made that drive, you can get a good sense of the landscape if you’ve ever seen Landman, a popular drama that portrays Billy Bob Thornton as a West Texas oilman.
And therein lies the problem. There are fine folks in Abilene, but we don’t exactly have overlapping interests or priorities. Arlington is strip malls and theme parks, whereas West Texas is wide-open plains and oil rigs. When it comes time to speak up for yourself and your interests, whose priorities matter most?
What to Do About It
When your district is gerrymandered, your community loses its ability to advocate effectively for itself. And that right to self-determination is the whole point of this wildly ambitious democratic experiment in the first place.
Putting an end to gerrymandering is just one way electoral reforms can help return power back to the people. Ranked choice voting and multimember districts are other ways, and both are also included in the Fair Representation Act.
To learn more about the bill and how you can encourage your Representative to support it, visit Rank the Vote’s action page.
Help get ranked choice voting on ballots across the country by joining us or by donating.
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Mark Bauer is a producer, entrepreneur, day trader and former Independent candidate for Congress in Texas. Previously he spent 10 years as a legal journalist covering the legal market in Texas and regulatory issues in Washington DC.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Rank the Vote, its members, supporters, funders, or affiliates.
