(NEW YORK) — The redistricting battle gripping Texas has put a spotlight on the ongoing debate over gerrymandering and its long-term effects on the electorate.
Sam Wang, the founding director of the Electoral Innovation Lab and the creator of the Gerrymandering Project , a research lab focused on creating the most fair district maps, told ABC News that state leaders from both sides of the aisle have changed election boundaries to make it stacked with constituents who vote in their favor.
In the last 20 years, with access to advanced computer algorithms, those gerrymandering attempts have become more egregious as whole counties have been divided up with pinpoint precision, resulting in districts with areas with outlandish shapes, he said.
“Gerrymander is partisanship maximized above all of the other things,” Wang said.
The practice was first identified and coined in 1812 when Massachusetts Gov. Elbridge Gerry signed a bill that redrew the state’s congressional maps to benefit the Democratic-Republican party. Maps are typically redrawn at the beginning of each decade to reflect changes in the population from the latest census.
Kareem Crayton, the vice president of the Washington D.C. office of the Brennan Center for Justice, who has spent years researching redistricting, told ABC News the redistricting campaigns since the 2000s have led to a systemic cycle of gerrymandering, especially in the South.
“States like Florida and Texas have the worst examples of gerrymandering,” he said.
But Crayton also pointed out that states with Democratic majorities, like Illinois, have responded with their own maps that also skew districts in their favor, leading to an endless cycle.
“All of these states are looking around at each other like ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’ thinking who’s going to fire first,” he said, referring to the Western film. “There is no sheriff in town saying this is not helping everyone.”
While Republican and Democratic leaders in those states have contended they are redrawing their maps to adequately reflect their communities, Wang said the math and geography aren’t backing their arguments.
Wang’s lab created a mathematical algorithm that creates district maps using key demographic factors. Racial demographics from the Census, environmental and geographic information from local data and other public sources are used to create district maps that remove political bias. Those maps are then compared to the district maps currently in place.
“That tells us what someone who didn’t care about political parties would do,” he explained. “We have harnessed the power of computer simulation to see what would be neutral.”
Texas is one of the 15 states in the map that earned an F grade based on the Gerrymander Project’s formula.
Although the state legislature and congressional delegation are led by a Republican majority, Texas’s current districting map is divided in a way that gives the GOP an advantage, according to the project. The analysis shows that the redistricting negates a challenging vote.
Travis County, for example, includes the city of Austin, which has leaned Democratic, but the county includes five congressional districts around it. By not including Austin in the suburban areas, the congressional district will lean Republican, according to the analysis.
The Gerrymander Project’s analysis found that the county splits in Texas, which is the number of districts within a single county, are higher than the average split per state, based on its analysis.
For example, more dense Dallas County is home to five congressional districts, and two of the districts’ boundaries extend into the next county.
Such division leads to confusion among voters as to what their district is, according to Crayton.
Crayton said that such county splits have led to more examples of elected officials running unopposed.
“If you’re a candidate from an opposing party, you’re going to have an uphill battle trying to run in a district where the majority of the voters are registered to the majority,” he said.
“We’ve seen it happen all of the time where a Democrat or Republican simply won’t put the time and effort to run because the gerrymandered district puts the odds against them,” Crayton said.
Although the majority of the states that got the project’s F grade are in the South and show more of a Republican advantage, the experts warned that blue states in other parts of the country have used gerrymandering as well.
Illinois, which is one of the Midwest states with an F grade, is the prime example, they said.
Its current map, which was adopted in 2021, contains non-compact districts, which leads to unequal voter density per area, and more county splits than the average, according to the Gerrymander Project.
One egregious example is the state’s 13th congressional district, which covers a nearly 2,300 square mile boundary that extends from its southern point near the border with Missouri to Springfield, right in the center of the state, and then east to the city of Champaign.
The boundaries keep a huge concentration of Democratic leaning voters, according to the Gerrymander Project.
Wang noted that the Supreme Court’s 2019 decision that ruled gerrymandering for party advantage cannot be challenged in federal court has removed key guardrails for preventing states from taking part in severe party redistricting.
The case involved gerrymandering allegations in North Carolina, and while the court’s majority ruled that the practice may be “incompatible with democratic principles,” federal courts had no jurisdiction in reviewing those cases.
Wang said that most states have taken gerrymandering to their limit and made it extremely hard for state legislatures to revert their boundaries to more fair areas.
“The lemon has been squeezed dry,” he said.
However, Wang noted that gerrymandering cases have prompted the public to speak out and take action to turn the tide and rein in gerrymandering in some key states.
Virginia, for example, used a special master in 2022 to draw up its current maps following a court case brought by the state’s constituents and some local elected officials.
The court ordered the special master to create district maps to adhere to federal requirements of population equality, the Voting Rights Act mandates, state constitution and statutes in its districting process.
As a result of its changes, the state, which has a slight Democratic majority in its state legislature, has no partisan competitiveness in its congressional districts, according to the Gerrymander Project, which awarded Virigina an A rating.
The district’s geography is “Fairly compact” and has the national average number of county splits, according to the project’s analysis.
Wang said ballot initiatives that removed the legislature from the districting process have risen in popularity in many states and have made a huge difference.
Arizona, which also has an A rating by the project, has been using an independent redistricting commission after voters passed a ballot initiative in 2000 that changed state regulations.
The state, which has a Republican majority in its state legislature, does not have a partisan advantage in its state districts, according to the Gerrymandering Project. Its districts are seen as “fairly compact” and are the average number of county splits, according to the analysis.
Crayton and Wang said the state-run solutions to redistricting are a good step forward, but ultimately, it is going to take Congressional legislation to end partisan influence in these maps.
Wang said that public opinion has consistently shown that constituents seek fair maps regardless of their political affiliations.
“If Congress were to really pursue it, it could be bipartisan and get a lot of support,” he said of legislation that prohibited gerrymandering tactics. “And we’ve seen it work.”
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