Redistricting Quotes

“Sandra Day O’Connor, the only recent judge to have served as a legislator, understood the inherently political nature of redistricting and refused to join her colleagues who wanted to undo plans that advantaged one party. Acknowledging that partisanship is endemic in the key partisan decisions surrounding new districts, how can a judge determine when there is too much partisanship? Attempts”
― Charles S. Bullock, Redistricting: The Most Political Activity in America

“The Iowa approach is frequently pointed to as desirable because it limits partisan influence; however, the plan does not come from a commission. Instead, the Legislative Services Agency draws the congressional map. In going about its task, the Agency faces constraints not imposed in most states. It cannot divide counties nor can it consider where the incumbents live, or the voting history of the counties. The Agency simply tries to minimize the population variations among districts and since Iowa has many counties with relatively small populations it has been possible to design congressional districts with relatively little population variation while meeting the other constraints. The legislature cannot change a plan submitted by the Legislative Services”
― Charles S. Bullock, Redistricting: The Most Political Activity in America

“up three congressional seats. Going into the 2020 election, Republicans had only a 14–13 advantage, down from their seventeen seats under the 2012 plan.”
― Charles S. Bullock, Redistricting: The Most Political Activity in America

“The Florida legislature continues to do redistricting but amendments to the state constitution ratified in 2010 reduce the weight that legislators can give to partisanship and incumbency. The courts enforced these requirements when Democrats challenged the plans for the state Senate and Congress. A new congressional plan implemented in 2016 led to Democrats picking”
― Charles S. Bullock, Redistricting: The Most Political Activity in America

“commissioners. Generally, however, Chen and Cottrell found less bias in plans prepared by commissions than when a party with a trifecta had control.131”
― Charles S. Bullock, Redistricting: The Most Political Activity in America

“In Shaw v. Reno, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor emphasized her concern about the shape of North Carolina’s 12th District. This long, skinny I-85 District, as shown in figure 3.2, stretched across 160 miles of the Carolina Piedmont and seemed on its face to violate the notions of compactness. Justice O’Connor observed, “We believe that reapportionment”
― Charles S. Bullock, Redistricting: The Most Political Activity in America

“An extensive analysis of redistricting of state legislatures between 1968 and 1988 shows that in the first elections held under both partisan and bipartisan redistricting plans the swing ratios exceed those for elections not preceded by a new set of districts.15 Disrupting relationships between”
― Charles S. Bullock, Redistricting: The Most Political Activity in America

“The National Journal ranks members of Congress from the most liberal to the most conservative. Recently, it has been rare for any Democrat to be more conservative than the most liberal Republican. It was not always”
― Charles S. Bullock, Redistricting: The Most Political Activity in America

“David Cottrell compared the competitiveness of simulated plans with the actual plans for the 113rd Congress. He found that the plans adopted resulted in districts about 3 percentage points safer than did the simulations that relied on algorithms that consider equalizing populations, contiguity, and compactness but not partisanship or incumbency.”
― Charles S. Bullock, Redistricting: The Most Political Activity in America

“Caught up in the firestorm of partisan politics, parties exploited their positions when they had a trifecta. McGann and his co-authors demonstrate that parties having a trifecta carried out partisan gerrymanders in electorally competitive states but not where they had a commanding position.42 Following”
― Charles S. Bullock, Redistricting: The Most Political Activity in America

“Table 5.2 shows the linkage between the share of the votes won and the share of congressional seats won under differing conditions of partisan influence in 2012. In the states in which one party drew the new districts, it won more than 70 percent of”
― Charles S. Bullock, Redistricting: The Most Political Activity in America

“North Carolina For decades North Carolina’s congressional maps have been ground zero for gerrymandering lawsuits. Challenges to the I-85 District, created by Democrats in 1992, that extended from Charlotte to Durham at some points no wider than two lanes on the Interstate, made it to the Supreme Court four times. In the next decade, Obama carried North Carolina in 2008 when Democrats won the governorship and unseated a GOP senator. Even after the 2010 GOP wave,”
― Charles S. Bullock, Redistricting: The Most Political Activity in America

“The Tar Heel State’s congressional plans designed by Republicans in 2011 became the poster child for a partisan gerrymander as becomes obvious when inspecting table 5.3. The first election in the new districts saw Republicans narrowly lose the congressional vote statewide yet win nine of the thirteen districts.”
― Charles S. Bullock, Redistricting: The Most Political Activity in America

“figure 5.2 shows the North Carolina congressional districts drawn based on the 2010 census and from which three Democrats were elected in 2014. The design supports the conclusion of Azavea, as reported in table 4.3, that the Tar Heel State map was the second least compact. The 1st and 12th Districts that have elected African Americans since 1992 continue to retain shapes much like those of twenty years earlier in order to maximize black percentages with the former at 52.1 percent black and the latter 49 percent black.45 The 4th District,”
― Charles S. Bullock, Redistricting: The Most Political Activity in America

“Pennsylvania, which joined North Carolina as one of the maps most often condemned as a partisan gerrymander during the 2010s, voted for President Obama twice giving him a ten-point edge in 2008 and half that margin four years later, as shown in table 5.4. At the time of the redistricting the state had a Republican and a Democratic senator and a Republican governor. The 2010 GOP wave reversed the congressional delegation from twelve Democrats and seven Republicans to a 12–7 Republican majority. The GOP-controlled legislature that redrew the state had to eliminate a district and in doing so it set out to consolidate the gains made in 2010. The new plan assessed the lost seat against the Democrats but also managed to create a thirteenth GOP district leaving Democrats with only five seats. The Brennan Center for Justice estimated that the plan netted the GOP four more seats”
― Charles S. Bullock, Redistricting: The Most Political Activity in America

“While Illinois regularly made the list of 2011 gerrymanders, those who have studied the impact of the plan conclude that because of the disproportionate share of the Democratic support concentrated in Chicago, Democrats had to pull out all the stops to secure a share of seats in line with their share of the votes.”
― Charles S. Bullock, Redistricting: The Most Political Activity in America

“District competitiveness may influence the distribution of federal funding for projects. With electoral security comes seniority and with seniority comes greater influence often in the guise of committee or subcommittee leadership so that a legislator from an uncompetitive district, all other things being equal, may be especially effective in securing pork barrel projects.60 The politically powerful who often come from secure districts and, in the past when earmarks were allowed, they could insert for projects and contracts. An alternative perspective, however, suggests that it is only the most electorally insecure incumbents who will go to the additional trouble of winning new projects for their districts.61 Many”
― Charles S. Bullock, Redistricting: The Most Political Activity in America

“During the late 1950s and first half of the next decade, approximately 60 percent of the House incumbents won reelection with more than 60 percent of the vote.66 Since”
― Charles S. Bullock, Redistricting: The Most Political Activity in America

“to reduce competitiveness. After analyzing two decades of data, Seabrook concludes that plans drawn by a party with a trifecta actually result in greater competitiveness than those designed by bipartisan agreement.”
― Charles S. Bullock, Redistricting: The Most Political Activity in America

“In contrast with those who urge using redistricting to promote competitiveness, Thomas Brunell disagrees with those concerns and, instead, argues the virtues of uncompetitive districts. As mentioned in chapter 1, Brunell justifies packing on the basis that more people would be satisfied with Congress, its policies, and their legislators if most voters lived in districts in which their party constituted an overwhelming majority.84 High concentrations of supporters of one”
― Charles S. Bullock, Redistricting: The Most Political Activity in America

“Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the plurality, rejected the Fourteenth Amendment as a basis for finding for plaintiffs, noting that the Equal Protection Clause “guarantees equal protection of the law to persons, not equal representation in government to equivalently sized groups.” The plurality opinion cited one of the leading casebooks on voting rights for the proposition that, throughout its subsequent history, “Bandemer has served almost exclusively as an invitation to litigation without much prospect of redress.”88 Justice Scalia pointed out that those who had sought relief under Bandemer had achieved nothing except to rack up substantial legal fees. The”
― Charles S. Bullock, Redistricting: The Most Political Activity in America

“simpler approach is to simply examine the designs of the districts. As Justice O’Connor observed in Shaw v. Reno, when it comes to redistricting, looks matter. This approach is especially appropriate in states in which one party has a substantial advantage, for example, the challenge to Maryland’s decision to eliminate one of its two Republican districts as challenged in Lamone v. Benisek.110 The approach may also be more reliable than some that rely on statistical analyses when there are few districts. Wang and his colleagues suggest this approach for states with two to six districts.111 However, some partisan gerrymanders do not have extraordinary-looking districts and some strange shapes result from concerns about something other than party, such as in Maryland where figure 4.3 shows how lines were drawn to maintain two majority-black districts.”
― Charles S. Bullock, Redistricting: The Most Political Activity in America

“In 2012, the party that won a majority of the vote did not get a majority of the seats in Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, or Wisconsin.109”
― Charles S. Bullock, Redistricting: The Most Political Activity in America

“Undergirding the various approaches outlined here is evidence of an intent to disadvantage of the opposition. North Carolina’s Representative Lewis had no hesitation in”
― Charles S. Bullock, Redistricting: The Most Political Activity in America

“Wang and his colleagues use the analogy of a toolbox to justify a multi-pronged approach since one size may not fit all fact situations. “In jurisprudence, as with home repair, it can be handy to have a kit containing more than one tool.”117 Different tools may be required depending on the number of districts in a jurisdiction, the level of partisan competition, geography, and so forth. Michael D. McDonald and colleagues offer a five-part test for assessing a statewide plan, along with a four-part test for a district-level”
― Charles S. Bullock, Redistricting: The Most Political Activity in America

“1In part this draws on Michael Wines, “Thomas Hofeller, 75, Gerrymander Genius,” New York Times (August 22, 2018). 2Ibid”
― Charles S. Bullock, Redistricting: The Most Political Activity in America

“Democrats gained four seats in 2018 to equal Republicans’ nine seats in the delegation. The new plan also complied with at least two traditional redistricting principles in that it had a higher compactness score and it split fewer than half as many counties as the GOP gerrymander.125”
― Charles S. Bullock, Redistricting: The Most Political Activity in America

“Specifically, the court found that by artificially reducing Democratic presence in the delegation the plan ran afoul of the guarantee for free and equal elections. The advantage conferred on the GOP and the strange shapes of some districts indicated that traditional redistricting principles had been ignored.124 After the state court ordered new districts—a decision that the U.S.”
― Charles S. Bullock, Redistricting: The Most Political Activity in America

“following the 2018 election, more than one in six Americans lived in a state in which the party that controlled the legislature failed to win a majority of the statewide vote. The states involved, Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia, and Wisconsin, have been ranked as having the six most unfair maps. Grofman considers the first four states the worst with the last two plus Florida, Georgia, and Indiana as additional bad examples.91 Given”
― Charles S. Bullock, Redistricting: The Most Political Activity in America

“Figure 5.1 The Original Gerrymander. Source: Library of Congress, Rare Book and Special Collections Division.”
― Charles S. Bullock, Redistricting: The Most Political Activity in America