WEBVTT - What's the Difference Between Redistricting and Gerrymandering? 0:00:01.800 --> 0:00:06.920 Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeart Radio, Hey 0:00:07.000 --> 0:00:11.720 brain Stuff, Lauren Boba bam here. A representative democracy can 0:00:11.760 --> 0:00:15.000 be a beautiful thing, but the process of drawing the 0:00:15.080 --> 0:00:19.120 lines for congressional and state legislative districts can get ugly. 0:00:20.400 --> 0:00:24.080 The Constitution is vague on how voting districts should be drawn, 0:00:24.400 --> 0:00:27.000 saying only that they should be updated every ten years 0:00:27.040 --> 0:00:31.000 and be roughly equal in population. Over the centuries. Since 0:00:31.040 --> 0:00:34.760 the constitution's writing, American politicians have seized on the once 0:00:34.760 --> 0:00:39.120 a decade redistricting process to redraw voting maps to their advantage. 0:00:39.800 --> 0:00:44.280 While partisan redistricting is an accepted, if bemoaned practice, the 0:00:44.360 --> 0:00:47.800 courts have found it unacceptable to redraw voting districts for 0:00:47.920 --> 0:00:51.520 the express purpose of suppressing the voting power of black 0:00:51.600 --> 0:00:57.320 voters and other minority groups. Gerrymandering is defined as the 0:00:57.360 --> 0:01:01.680 manipulation of voting districts for hyperpartist in or racist reasons, 0:01:02.440 --> 0:01:06.880 but the line between legit redistricting and unethical jerrymandering is 0:01:07.040 --> 0:01:10.520 blurry at best. It's ultimately up to judges to decide 0:01:10.520 --> 0:01:15.840 whether a redistricting plan is kosher or not. Every ten years, 0:01:15.920 --> 0:01:19.399 the United States conducts a census. The constitutional purpose of 0:01:19.400 --> 0:01:23.399 the census is apportionment, that is, the process of determining 0:01:23.440 --> 0:01:25.720 how many seats each state should have in the House 0:01:25.720 --> 0:01:30.240 of Representatives. While the Constitution automatically a lots to senators 0:01:30.280 --> 0:01:33.720 for every state, the apportionment of representatives in the four 0:01:33.800 --> 0:01:37.000 hundred and thirty five seat House is based on population, 0:01:37.400 --> 0:01:41.200 with populous states like California getting fifty two representatives as 0:01:41.240 --> 0:01:45.039 of the census and sparsely populated states like Wyoming and 0:01:45.080 --> 0:01:50.080 South Dakota only getting one seat. Each. Members of the 0:01:50.120 --> 0:01:52.480 House are voted into office by the voters in their 0:01:52.520 --> 0:01:56.400 congressional district back home, and according to the Constitution, those 0:01:56.440 --> 0:01:59.840 districts should be approximately the same size, meaning that each 0:01:59.880 --> 0:02:03.040 of the four thirty five House members represent roughly the 0:02:03.080 --> 0:02:07.000 same number of people. The average congressional district now holds 0:02:07.040 --> 0:02:12.520 a little over seven d s people. But who draws 0:02:12.560 --> 0:02:16.480 the district maps. A handful of states appoint independent commissions 0:02:16.520 --> 0:02:19.400 who draw their district lines, but those are the outliers 0:02:20.040 --> 0:02:23.360 right now. State legislatures in thirty nine states draw their 0:02:23.360 --> 0:02:26.560 own congressional districts, though that includes the six states that 0:02:26.600 --> 0:02:31.320 only have one congressional district. If the state legislature is 0:02:31.440 --> 0:02:34.239 firmly in the hands of one political party or the other, 0:02:34.639 --> 0:02:36.600 as it is in more than half of all states, 0:02:37.000 --> 0:02:39.840 then that party exercises a lot of control over the 0:02:39.840 --> 0:02:44.440 redistricting process. By tweaking the size and shape of voting districts, 0:02:44.480 --> 0:02:46.840 they can boost the voting power of their party and 0:02:46.960 --> 0:02:51.400 increase the odds of winning congressional seats. The district drawings 0:02:51.480 --> 0:02:55.360 and power struggles in each individual states legislature works similarly, 0:02:55.680 --> 0:03:00.880 but we're concentrating on the national government today. Okay, So 0:03:01.080 --> 0:03:06.200 when does partisan redistricting cross the line and become illegal gerrymandering. 0:03:07.680 --> 0:03:11.400 When state legislators sit down to redraw their voting district maps, 0:03:11.880 --> 0:03:15.920 even in solidly Republican or democratic states, they're expected to 0:03:15.919 --> 0:03:19.240 play by some basic rules. Districts have to be of 0:03:19.320 --> 0:03:22.440 roughly equal population, though a deviation of a few percentage 0:03:22.440 --> 0:03:26.359 points is okay. Districts have to be contiguous, meaning they 0:03:26.400 --> 0:03:30.160 have to be contained by one boundary. And districts should 0:03:30.160 --> 0:03:35.520 be compact, not long and snakelike. Of those three characteristics, 0:03:35.560 --> 0:03:39.240 the compactness or non compactness of a district is usually 0:03:39.280 --> 0:03:43.880 the one that triggers accusations of gerrymandering. For the article 0:03:43.920 --> 0:03:46.080 this episode is based on, Has to Work, spoke with 0:03:46.160 --> 0:03:49.160 Doug Spencer, a law professor and election law scholar at 0:03:49.160 --> 0:03:52.920 the University of Colorado, Boulder. He explained, if you see 0:03:52.920 --> 0:03:55.640 a bizarrely shaped district that raises your intent a that 0:03:55.720 --> 0:03:58.240 it may not have been drawn neutral ly, but in 0:03:58.280 --> 0:04:01.600 a way that favors some group, political group, a racial group, 0:04:01.720 --> 0:04:05.440 or something else. After all, it was the freakest shape 0:04:05.440 --> 0:04:08.320 of a Massachusetts congressional district that helped coin the term 0:04:08.400 --> 0:04:12.520 Jerrymander in eighteen twelve. The long and snaking district was 0:04:12.560 --> 0:04:16.520 approved by Governor Elbridge Jerry and delivered a powerful electoral 0:04:16.520 --> 0:04:20.880 advantage to his party, the Democratic Republicans. A newspaper cartoonist 0:04:20.960 --> 0:04:23.840 noted the alamander like shape of the district and labeled 0:04:23.839 --> 0:04:29.679 it the Jerrymander after its partisan creator. According to Spencer, 0:04:29.800 --> 0:04:33.200 the courts have recognized that partisanship and the redistricting process 0:04:33.360 --> 0:04:37.000 is an accepted outcome of state elections. If voters put 0:04:37.000 --> 0:04:39.960 control of the state legislature in the hands of one party, 0:04:40.240 --> 0:04:43.680 then there's an expectation that party officials will make redistricting 0:04:43.720 --> 0:04:48.120 decisions that benefit their party. Spencer said, the question becomes 0:04:48.279 --> 0:04:51.600 how much partisanship is too much. That's the line that's 0:04:51.640 --> 0:04:56.440 hard to distinguish. Some state legislatures are blatantly honest, but 0:04:56.560 --> 0:04:59.960 what they're trying to accomplish. In North Carolina, for example, 0:05:00.279 --> 0:05:04.040 the Republican chair of the state's redistricting committee said in sixteen, 0:05:04.560 --> 0:05:07.000 I propose we draw the maps to give an advantage 0:05:07.000 --> 0:05:10.359 to ten Republicans and three Democrats, because I do not 0:05:10.400 --> 0:05:12.880 believe it's possible to draw a map with eleven Republicans 0:05:12.880 --> 0:05:17.880 and two Democrats. And in Maryland, the Democratic governor testified 0:05:17.920 --> 0:05:20.240 that a new district was drawn to quote create a 0:05:20.279 --> 0:05:22.320 district where the people would be more likely to elect 0:05:22.360 --> 0:05:25.800 a Democrat than Republican. Yes, this was clearly my intent. 0:05:27.600 --> 0:05:30.960 But do such statements go too far? For its part, 0:05:31.000 --> 0:05:34.080 the Supreme Court is keeping out of the controversy. In 0:05:34.160 --> 0:05:37.280 twenty nineteen, the justices ruled five to four that the 0:05:37.400 --> 0:05:40.200 nation's highest court would not get involved in challenges to 0:05:40.279 --> 0:05:44.720 state plans on strictly political grounds. They left those challenges 0:05:44.800 --> 0:05:50.680 to state lawmakers and state courts. Racially motivated jerrymandering is 0:05:50.760 --> 0:05:54.279 unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee of equal protection under 0:05:54.279 --> 0:05:57.400 the law. But before the nineteen sixty four Voting Rights 0:05:57.440 --> 0:06:00.640 Act was passed, state legislatures a special in the Jim 0:06:00.680 --> 0:06:03.920 Crow era South used a pair of gerrymandering tactics to 0:06:04.080 --> 0:06:07.880 strip black voters of equal electoral power. They're called packing 0:06:08.200 --> 0:06:12.599 and cracking. If black voters were concentrated in a certain 0:06:12.640 --> 0:06:16.000 geographic area of a state, then the legislators would pack 0:06:16.120 --> 0:06:19.479 them into one or two districts. Even if that created 0:06:19.560 --> 0:06:22.599 strong black voting blocks in those districts, their vote would 0:06:22.600 --> 0:06:27.039 be outweighed by all of the majority white districts. If 0:06:27.080 --> 0:06:30.560 black voters were more geographically dispersed, then the districts were 0:06:30.600 --> 0:06:33.479 drawn in order to crack or dilute the black vote 0:06:33.640 --> 0:06:37.040 by assigning small numbers of black voters to several different districts, 0:06:37.480 --> 0:06:40.160 and that way their voices were still guaranteed to be 0:06:40.240 --> 0:06:44.839 drowned out by the white majority. This was supposed to 0:06:44.920 --> 0:06:47.719 change with the Voting Rights Act, which included a provision 0:06:47.760 --> 0:06:50.440 that six Southern states had to receive federal approval for 0:06:50.480 --> 0:06:55.919 their districting plans. Those six states, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, 0:06:55.960 --> 0:06:59.360 South Carolina, and Virginia were flagged for this extra scrutiny 0:06:59.440 --> 0:07:03.000 because of a story of race based jerrymandering. In the 0:07:03.040 --> 0:07:07.480 nineteen sixties, three more states were added, Alaska, Arizona, and Texas, 0:07:09.120 --> 0:07:12.840 but in a landmark case, the Supreme Court bailed out 0:07:12.920 --> 0:07:15.800 those nine states from having to seek congressional pre approval 0:07:15.880 --> 0:07:18.800 for their plans, and stoking fears of a new wave 0:07:18.880 --> 0:07:23.680 of racially motivated jerrymandering, mainly in Republican controlled Southern legislatures. 0:07:25.000 --> 0:07:28.720 The reality is that racial jerrymandering is still unlawful and 0:07:28.760 --> 0:07:32.280 can be challenged in both state and federal courts. A 0:07:32.360 --> 0:07:35.720 lawsuit intended to block a state's redistricting plan on racial 0:07:35.760 --> 0:07:38.480 grounds must be filed by a voter living in the district, 0:07:38.520 --> 0:07:42.640 says Spencer, not an outside political organization. It's then up 0:07:42.640 --> 0:07:45.480 to a judge or judges to determine if there's enough evidence, 0:07:45.640 --> 0:07:49.240 like testimony or emails or texts between lawmakers to conclude 0:07:49.240 --> 0:07:52.320 that the district lines were in fact drawn to disenfranchise 0:07:52.440 --> 0:07:58.240 minority voters. And these challenges do happen. Two high profile 0:07:58.280 --> 0:08:01.920 Supreme Court cases within the past gade effectively blocked districting 0:08:01.960 --> 0:08:05.720 plans in North Carolina and Virginia on grounds of racial jerrymandering. 0:08:07.040 --> 0:08:09.760 A part of what makes the line between redistricting and 0:08:09.840 --> 0:08:13.520 jerrymandering so blurry is that the electorate has become increasingly 0:08:13.600 --> 0:08:20.160 polarized along racial lines. In presidential election, for example, of 0:08:20.160 --> 0:08:24.440 black voters shows the Democratic candidate Joe Biden. Meanwhile, white 0:08:24.520 --> 0:08:29.280 voters continued to skew Republican particularly non college educated white 0:08:29.360 --> 0:08:34.400 voters of whom voted for Donald Trump. What that means 0:08:34.440 --> 0:08:37.640 for Republican held legislatures, especially in the South, is that 0:08:37.679 --> 0:08:40.679 any attempt to crack or pack districts to prevent the 0:08:40.720 --> 0:08:44.440 election of Democrats risks targeting black voters and running a 0:08:44.440 --> 0:08:51.880 foul of the law. Today's episode is based on the 0:08:52.000 --> 0:08:55.440 article what's the difference between redistricting and jerrymandering? On House 0:08:55.440 --> 0:08:58.360 to works dot com, written by Dave Rouse. Brain Stuff 0:08:58.400 --> 0:09:00.360 is production of iHeart Radio and partner ship with how 0:09:00.360 --> 0:09:02.560 stuff works dot Com, and it's produced by Tyler Clang. 0:09:03.040 --> 0:09:05.439 Four more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the heart 0:09:05.480 --> 0:09:08.120 Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your 0:09:08.120 --> 0:09:08.880 favorite shows.