Advocates Argue for Election Reform

By Juliana Walsh
Stonehill JRN 100 Staff Writer

A bill before the US Senate, the For the People Act, calls for election reforms that include replacing gerrymandering with independent redistricting committees.

“[Gerrymandering] matters because it decides who represents us. When we allow politicians to handpick the voters, it undermines that,’ said Patrick Rodenbush, the communications director at the National Democratic Redistricting Committee (NDRC), which advocates for independent redistricting committees to reform the gerrymandering process.  

“Gerrymandering describes the intentional manipulation of district boundaries to discriminate against a group of voters on the basis of their political views or race,” according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

Rodenbush, who worked in the Obama administration, said he got involved with redistricting after he saw how gerrymandering's structural effects stopped policy initiatives. He said that after the redistricting in 2010, he observed the shift where Republicans got more seats in the legislature despite that Democrats received more votes. 

In 2010, states with Republican-controlled state legislatures, redrew districts splitting African American voters between the fewest districts possible, he said. Republicans pushed for these changes based on polling which showed that African Americans were more likely to vote for Democratic candidates.

This redistricting meant that African American voters lost voting power and influenced fewer local elections in the Republican-controlled states. 

Expert and political scientist Erik Engstrom has looked at the concept of one person, one vote in his research. One person, one vote is the concept that determines the size of each congressional district based on population size. Engstrom noted that the idea of one person, one vote still exists in our election system, but even with this concept, voter suppression can still exist. One person one vote determines the population size of each district but not where that district is.  

So two districts could be the same size, yet one could suppress a population based on its shape. A community could be split into multiple districts and impact many different elections. Still, they could also be placed in one district, limiting their vote's impact and reach.

According to the study How Partisan Gerrymandering Limits Voting Rights, written by Alex Tausanovitch and Danielle Root at the Center for American Progress in 2020, certain states have legislatures controlled by a party that lost the popular vote. 

The study found that in the 2018 midterm elections of four states, the party that received the most seats won a minority of the statewide vote. These states included North Carolina, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.  

“[In North Carolina] eight Democratic candidates won a majority of the statewide vote in 2018; with a fair set of districts, they would have held a majority of seats in the state legislature and been able to implement positive reforms expanding voting access” according to the study. 

Partisan and racial gerrymandering changes the outcome of elections. Even with the one person one vote principle governing the district's size, the way they are drawn can give more weight to one demographic while limiting another's impact.  

The outcome of the 2018 midterms would have very likely been different had the districts been drawn differently or in a non-partisan way.  

While gerrymandering has existed for a long time, the technology used has significantly changed. Politicians can now go neighborhood by neighborhood predicting voting patterns and draw maps that lock in power for a particular party over a decade, said Rodenbush.

He said voters are frustrated and questioning if their vote even matters. These voters feel the effect of gerrymandering in all aspects of politics since they are not adequately represented.  

He said voters often are unaware that gerrymandering can have significant consequences. For instance, a healthcare policy might benefit a particular group. Still, if that group is split up in redistricting, they may not get representatives who will advocate for that program.

Engstrom noted that there is a conflict of interest in the way redistricting is done. Politicians are the ones that have a stake in gerrymandering as they are the ones whose jobs could be at risk. This is why he is a proponent of the independent redistricting committees. Independent redistricting committees are already implemented in some states like California but are not implemented nationally, and this is primarily due to a legal issue.

Many groups, including the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, have supported the push for independent redistricting committees because they would allow redistricting to be neutral, keep elections competitive, and eliminate self-interest from the redistricting process.

The right to manage elections is one that is reserved for individual states, not the federal government. This is why elections look a little bit different from state to state. However, the federal government can create some guidance surrounding elections. 

The House of Representatives has currently passed House Resolution 1, the For the People Act, which would include a provision to create independent redistricting committees.  The NDRC played a significant role in lobbying for this bill as they are proponents of independent redistricting committees.

Rodenbush said there are political hurdles to reform.  He first noted that because politics are so polarized, it would hard to support this bill across party lines. He also pointed out that the filibuster will serve as a roadblock since the parties have been unable to compromise. 

While independent redistricting committees may have benefits, there are some disadvantages to introducing them federally. Engstrom said how introducing redistricting committees federally would cause federalism concerns as managing elections is a state right.

In 2019, Rodenbush’s group launched the campaign “All on the Line” to organize grassroots campaigns to push for reform.  Tens of thousands of volunteers have turned out for trainings and now work on text and phone campaigns to educate citizens and pressure legislators to push for reform. 

The push for reform may be an uphill battle.

“Our political system gets decided based on how the maps are drawn," said Rodenbush.

But it is certainly worth the fight.

This video was created by the National Democratic Redistricting Committee.