Executive Summary

In the concluding chapter of Red and Blue Nation? Consequences and Correction of America’s Polarized Politics (Brookings Press, 2007), Pietro S. Nivola and William A. Galston lay out a series of changes aimed at “depolarizing” the politics of the United States. One of their recommendations calls on the states to introduce fundamental changes to the process of redistricting congressional electoral districts. A handful of states have already established redistricting commissions, so the first steps have been taken in reforming one of the most important pillars of the electoral process.

This paper explores the possibility that the United States could build on those initial moves. Additionally, would it be possible to “import” the Canadian model of independent electoral boundary redistricting commissions? For the first 100 years of Canadian history redistricting seats in the federal House of Commons followed a pattern familiar to Americans. It was a process firmly under the control of the politicians, and the results reflected that. Wide disparities in population size were a tell-tale sign of the extent to which Canada’s parliamentary districts were gerrymandered.

Starting at the provincial level in the 1950s, partisan redistricting eventually gave way in all jurisdictions to nonpartisan commissions. How that change came about and why the Canadian commission-directed redistricting commends itself to Americans concerned about the highly politicized state of redistricting in the United States are the subjects of this study.

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Scholars from the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute are collaborating to promote transparency in redistricting. In January 2010, an advisory board of experts and representatives of good government groups was convened in order to articulate principles for transparent redistricting and to identify barriers to the public and communities who wish to create redistricting plans. This document summarizes the principles for transparency in redistricting that were identified during that meeting.

Benefits of a Transparent, Participative Redistricting Process

The drawing of electoral districts is among the most easily manipulated and least transparent systems in democratic governance. All too often, redistricting authorities maintain their monopoly by imposing high barriers to transparency and public participation. Increasing transparency and public participation can be a powerful counterbalance by providing the public with information similar to that which is typically only available to official decision makers, which can lead to different outcomes and better representation.

Increasing transparency can empower the public to shape the representation for their communities, promote public commentary and discussion about redistricting, inform legislators and redistricting authorities which district configurations their constituents and the public support, and educate the public about the electoral process.  

Fostering public participation can enable the public to identify their neighborhoods and communities, promote the creation of alternative maps, and facilitate an exploration of a wide range of representational possibilities. The existence of publicly-drawn maps can provide a measuring stick against which an official plan can be compared, and promote the creation of a “market” for plans that support political fairness and community representational goals.

Transparency Principles

All redistricting plans should include sufficient information so the public can verify, reproduce, and evaluate a plan. Transparency thus requires that:

• Redistricting plans must be available in non-proprietary formats.
• Redistricting plans must be available in a format allowing them to be easily read and analyzed with commonly-used geographic information software.
• The criteria used as a basis for creating plans and individual districts must be clearly documented.

Creating and evaluating redistricting plans and community boundaries requires access to demographic, geographic, community, and electoral data. Transparency thus requires that:

• All data necessary to create legal redistricting plans and define community boundaries must be publicly available, under a license allowing reuse of these data for non-commercial purposes.
• All data must be accompanied by clear documentation stating the original source, the chain of ownership (provenance), and all modifications made to it.

Software systems used to generate or analyze redistricting plans can be complex, impossible to reproduce, or impossible to correctly understand without documentation. Transparency thus requires that:

• Software used to automatically create or improve redistricting plans must be either open-source or provide documentation sufficient for the public to replicate the results using independent software.
• Software used to generate reports that analyze redistricting plans must be accompanied by documentation of data, methods, and procedures sufficient for the reports to be verified by the public.

Services offered to the public to create or evaluate redistricting plans and community boundaries are often opaque and subject to misinterpretation unless adequately documented. Transparency thus requires that:

• Software necessary to replicate the creation or analysis of redistricting plans and community boundaries produced by the service must be publicly available.
• The service must provide the public with the ability to make available all published redistricting plans and community boundaries in non-proprietary formats that are easily read and analyzed with commonly-used geographic information software.
• Services must provide documentation of any organizations providing significant contributions to their operation.

Promoting Public Participation

New technologies provide opportunities to broaden public participation in the redistricting process. These technologies should aim to realize the potential benefits described and be consistent with the articulated transparency principles.

Redistricting is a legally and technically complex process. District creation and analysis software can encourage broad participation by: being widely accessible and easy to use; providing mapping and evaluating tools that help the public to create legal redistricting plans, as well as maps identifying local communities; be accompanied by training materials to assist the public to successfully create and evaluate legal redistricting plans and define community boundaries; have publication capabilities that allow the public to examine maps in situations where there is no access to the software; and promoting social networking and allow the public to compare, exchange and comment on both official and community-produced maps.

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Official Endorsement from Organizations – Americans for Redistricting Reform, Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, Campaign Legal Center, Center for Governmental Studies, Center for Voting and Democracy, Common Cause, Demos, and the League of Women Voters of the United States.

Attending board members – Nancy Bekavac, Director, Scientists and Engineers for America; Derek Cressman, Western Regional Director of State Operations, Common Cause; Anthony Fairfax, President, Census Channel; Representative Mike Fortner (R), Illinois General Assembly; Karin Mac Donald, Director, Statewide Database, Berkeley Law, University of California, Berkeley; Leah Rush, Executive Director, Midwest Democracy Network; Mary Wilson, President, League of Women Voters.

Editors – Micah Altman, Harvard University and the Brookings Institution; Thomas E. Mann, Brookings Institution; Michael P. McDonald, George Mason University and the Brookings Institution; Norman J. Ornstein, American Enterprise Institute.

This project is funded by a grant from the Sloan Foundation to the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute.

      

Every 10 years — unfortunately, sometimes more frequently — legislative district lines are redrawn to balance population for demographic changes revealed by the census. What goes on is much more than a simple technical adjustment of boundaries, with ramifications that largely escape public notice.

Politicians often use redistricting as an opportunity to cut unfavorable constituents and potential challengers out of their districts. Barack Obama, for example, learned the rough and tumble of redistricting politics when Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) carved Obama's Chicago home out of Rush's congressional district after losing a 2000 primary challenge to Obama, then a state senator.

Incumbents can also use redistricting to move favorable constituents into their districts. Obama himself used the state legislative redistricting to extend his predominantly African American district north into a wealthy area of Illinois known as the Gold Coast. This new constituency allowed Obama to hone an effective biracial campaigning style that served him well when he ran for the U.S. Senate and the presidency.

Critically, these decisions are made with little or no public input or accountability. While Arizona and California are among the few states that give the public a chance to see and participate in how the boundaries are set, by using open redistricting commissions, most states gerrymander legislative lines behind closed doors. Figures from both major parties tilt the electoral playing field so much that one party is essentially assured of winning a given district, controlling the state legislature or winning the most seats in the state's congressional delegation. In other words, the democratic process is subverted. In this system, politicians select voters rather than voters electing politicians.

A 2006 Pew survey found that 70 percent of registered voters had no opinion about congressional redistricting. Among the few that expressed an opinion, some mistook the question to be about school districts rather than congressional districts.

For many reasons it has been hard to fault the public. An immense amount of population data must be sifted and then assembled, much like a giant jigsaw puzzle, to ensure that districts satisfy complex federal requirements relating to equal population and the Voting Rights Act, and varying state requirements that may include compactness and respect for existing political boundaries or communities. And access to these data and the software necessary to assemble and analyze them have long been out of public reach.

In the previous round of redistricting, according to a 2002 survey of authorities we conducted with our colleague Karin Mac Donald, most states did not provide any tools, facilities, dedicated assistance or software to support the public in developing redistricting plans. Many states failed to provide even minimal transparency by making data available, providing information about their plans online or accepting publicly submitted plans. Many redistricting authorities have not made firm plans to support transparency or public participation in the current round of redistricting.

In the coming year, however, technological advancements will enable anyone with a Web browser and an interest in how he or she is represented to draw district maps of his or her community and state that meet the same requirements as official submissions. Under the direction of scholars at the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute, and with consultation from an array of experts in redistricting issues, we have developed a set of principles for transparency and public participation. These principles have been endorsed by an array of stakeholders, including Common Cause and the League of Women Voters of the United States.

Americans will be able to participate directly in their democracy by offering plans to be compared with the politician-drawn maps. The public and even the courts will no longer have to accept that whatever is devised by politicians in the backroom.

The Wizard of Oz appeared powerful because he hid behind a curtain -- until it was pulled back. The time has come to pull back the curtain on redistricting. A good place to start is by passing Rep. John Tanner's Redistricting Transparency Act, which has 38 co-sponsors from both parties. If Congress will not act, state governments can follow the lead of the few states that provide for meaningful transparency and public participation. Failure to provide for transparency and public participation should be recognized for what it is: an obviously self-serving act, placing the interests of politicians above the public interest.

      

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The drawing of legislative district boundaries is among the most self-interested and least transparent systems in American democratic governance. All too often, formal redistricting authorities maintain their control by imposing high barriers to transparency and to public participation in the process. Reform advocates believe that opening that process to the public could lead to different outcomes and better representation.

On January 20, Brookings hosted a briefing to review how redistricting in the 50 states will unfold in the months ahead and present a number of state-based initiatives designed to increase transparency and public participation in redistricting. Brookings Nonresident Senior Fellows Micah Altman and Michael McDonald unveiled open source mapping software which enables users to create and submit their own plans, based on current census and historical election data, to redistricting authorities and to disseminate them widely. Such alternative public maps could offer viable input to the formal redistricting process.

After each presentation, participants took audience questions.

Learn more about Michael McDonald's Public Mapping Project »

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Now that the 2010 Census is concluded, states will begin the process of reapportionment—re-drawing voting district lines to account for population shifts. Nonresident Senior Fellow Michael McDonald says redistricting has been fraught with controversy and corruption since the nation’s early days, when the first “gerrymandered” district was drawn. Two states—Arizona and California—have instituted redistricting commissions intended to insulate the process from political shenanigans, but politicians everywhere will continue to work the system to gain electoral advantage and the best chance of re-election for themselves and their parties.

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Voters are supposed to choose their representatives, but the flawed redistricting process in our nation too often allows representatives to choose their voters. This rigged game is in full flower in Virginia, which has an accelerated redistricting process this year because elections for its House of Delegates and Senate take place in November. State Senate Majority Leader Richard Saslaw (D) was stunningly candid in a recent radio interview in describing the process politicians would follow to redraw the lines:

“The House does theirs. The Senate does theirs. And I’m not gonna interfere with the lines the House draws for the House. And they’re not gonna interfere with the lines I draw for the Senate. And I would simply say, well, you know, our goal is to make the Democratic districts, particularly the marginal ones, a little bit better than they are now. I’m not greedy. I’m not trying to put all the Republicans out of business by any stretch. They didn’t do that to us 10 years ago. And we’re not gonna do that to them.”

Saslaw described a classic bipartisan incumbent gerrymander; the majority Democrats in the state Senate would let the majority Republicans in the state House stack the deck for its incumbents, and vice versa. The biggest losers? The voters of Virginia, denied competitive elections in which the outcomes reflect their collective preferences.

The situation is different but just as smelly for the redrawing of lines for Virginia’s 11 congressional seats. As Politico described last week, the 11 incumbents — three Democrats and eight Republicans — cut a deal to protect each other, solidifying the GOP’s 8-to-3 edge by making several competitive seats strongly Republican while allowing Democrats to make a sinecure out of the seat of Rep. Gerry Connolly, who barely won in 2010.

Around the country, comparable deals will be cut by pols intent on protecting each other or maximizing the number of seats a party controls (in a way that distorts the actual partisan balance in the state). Thanks to the Supreme Court, the only restraint, other than adhering to the requirements of the Voting Rights Act, is to make sure that all the districts are virtually equal in population. With the aid of sophisticated software, the one-person, one-vote rule allows ample scope for the self-interested manipulation of district boundaries.

Politicians could get away with this in the past because few others had access to the tools to create districts using official census data and past election returns.

No more.

Michael McDonald of George Mason University and Micah Altman of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard, working in conjunction with our two think tanks, have created the Public Mapping Project, an open-source software package that enables anybody to create districts for any state that balance such desirable qualities as compactness and the protection of communities of interest with competitiveness and partisan fairness, all while satisfying one-person, one-vote and the Voting Rights Act.

The first important use of the software is coming in Virginia. To his credit, Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) has created an independent redistricting commission that can recommend more objective and public-interest-oriented plans than the ones produced by the pols. Unfortunately, McDonnell’s commission has no teeth beyond its public profile and ability to showcase plans that can point up, by their quality, the folly of rigged plans. The commission has agreed to give serious weight to the best plans produced by a competition created by George Mason and Christopher Newport universities. Teams of students from 13 colleges and universities in Virginia produced 57 plans for Congress, the House of Delegates and the state Senate. Unlike the plans politicians are crafting behind closed doors, all of the student plans are online (at districtbuilder.varedistrictingcompetition.org).

The two of us judged the plans (awards will be presented in Richmond on Tuesday) and were deeply impressed with what these students — most of them undergraduates but including a team from William and Mary Law School — accomplished. They weighed how to draw district maps that respected federal and state requirements without bending to the interests of incumbent officeholders or political parties. They created two sets of maps: one, through a politically blind process that prioritized contiguous and compact districts respecting Virginia’s communities of interest, including cities and counties, and sensitive to the representation of minorities; the other, by adding to these standards an explicit effort to create as many competitive districts as possible and to fairly reflect public support for the two parties. This was not easy, given the substantial changes in Virginia’s population since the last census, the need to create districts that are virtually equal in population and the trade-offs required when redistricting criteria conflict.

The best student plans show that it is possible to create more legitimate and responsive districts — and that with the right tools, citizens anywhere can create better plans to choose their representatives than the representatives do to protect their own careers. While politicians may fight to keep the process closed, the tools are available to enable us to do better. Virginia’s college students have demonstrated that. The challenge is to replicate their efforts across the country and to harness informed and empowered public participation to improve the quality of our democracy.

       

Thomas Mann joins Sean O’Brien and Nate Persily on the Diane Rehm Show to examine what the U.S. Constitution says about drawing congressional and legislative districts and how court decisions have further shaped those guidelines.

DIANE REHM: Thanks for joining, us I'm Diane Rehm. The framers of the U.S. Constitution did not use the word district when they outlined how Congressional representatives would be chosen. Article 1, Section 2 of the document states only how to choose the number of lawmakers. Today, the redistricting process has become at times contentious and blatantly partisan. As part of our "Constitution Today" series, we look at what the document says about the process of redistricting and how court cases have furthered shaped those guidelines.

Joining me here in the studio are Sean O'Brien of the Center for the Constitution at James Madison's Montpelier, Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution and joining us from Columbia Law School where he is The Beekman Professor of Law and Political Science, is Nate Persily. Throughout the hour, we'll welcome your calls, questions, 800-433-8850. Send us your e-mail to drshow@wamu.org. Good morning, gentlemen. Thank you for joining me.

SEAN O'BRIEN: Good morning.

THOMAS MANN: Good morning.

NATE PERSILY: Good morning.

REHM: Sean O'Brien, let me start with you. What does the constitution actually say about legislative districts and I'm glad that you have a copy of the constitution right in front of you, good. Nate Persily has his as well.

O'BRIEN: As you indicated in the opening it's very, very vague, as are many things in the constitution, and we have to figure out how to implement what this constitution says. Really what they did initially was set up the initial representation and came up with the number of representatives that each state would have before they knew how many people lived there and set up a minimum number of representatives that each state could have and the maximum size, which they could be.

And so they basically -- it just says here the actual enumeration shall be made within three years after the first meeting of the Congress of the United States and within every subsequent term of 10 years, in a manner as they shall by law direct. The number of representatives shall not exceed one for every 30,000, but each state shall have at least one representative. And until such enumeration shall be made and then they lay out which states get how many members of Congress in the first Congress.

And that gets into an interesting story that Tom and I were talking about out in the lobby, but again, it's pretty open and that's why we have a lot of opportunities to continue to talk about this issue right now.

REHM: All right. And turning to you, Nate Persily, when did the word district first come into play?

PERSILY: Well, for hundreds of years now, we've had districts, but as Sean said, there's no constitutional requirement that we have it. We have since the Supreme Court decisions in the 1960s abided by a rule of population equality for congressional and other districts and are drawn but Congress then has passed statutes, various apportionment statutes over time that have required single member districts and the one that currently exists today is about 90 years old.

REHM: Ninety years old? Tom Mann.

MANN: It's important to remember the other provision of the constitution that is relevant here is Article 1, Section 4, the times, places and manner of holding elections for senators and representatives shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof. So it was the states that were given the authority to decide how those representatives would be elected. They could have set up a proportional representation system, everyone running at large statewide in which case redistricting would never have arisen as a problem.

Listen to the interview or read the full transcript at thedianerehmshow.org »

       

Following each decennial Census, states re-draw the boundaries of their voting districts, often to the benefit of one party over another. Some states which have lost population lose seats in the House of Representatives and some growing states gain. This highly-charged political process is taking place against a backdrop of fierce partisanship at the national and local levels at a time when sophisticated redistricting technology is widely available and when the decisions made by state governments will reverberate in the coming elections.

On April 20, Thomas Mann answered your questions on the status of the redistricting process, and efforts for reform around the nation, in a live web chat moderated by David Mark, senior editor at POLITICO.

The transcript of this chat follows:

12:31 David Mark: Welcome to the chat. I'll open the discussion by asking about Texas, which will get four new House seats through reapportionment. Will Republicans realistically be able to add four new seats or will gains be limited by Voting Rights Act regulations?

12:33 Tom Mann: This is a case in which complete partisan control of the redistricting process is no guarantee that the majority party will reap the benefits of additional seats in the state delegation. Over a majority of the population gains in Texas have come from Hispanics and many of them are concentrated in urban areas. They will almost certainly garner at least two of the four new seats and the odds are that Democrats will win those seats.

12:36 David Mark: California for the first time will draw districts based on recommendations by a non-partisan citizens panel. Will this put incumbents in danger and how else might it affect the redistricting process?

12:40 Tom Mann: California has specialized in eliminating competitive House districts through the redistricting process. No other state comes close to them. The new commission is almost certain to put some incumbents in both parties in more competitive districts. However, it is not clear that one party will gain. The current lineup of seats by party pretty much reflects their statewide strength.

12:40 [Comment From Dan: ] Who’s got the edge in the redistricting process across the country – Democrats or Republicans, and why?

12:45 Tom Mann: Republicans have a clear advantage because of their success in the 2010 midterm elections, in which they took control of many governorships and state legislatures. They control the process in 17 states with roughly 200 seats while the Democrats are in charge in only 7 states with 49 seats. But there are other factors limiting Republican gains, including the fact that they now have many seats in districts won by Obama in 2008 (60). Republicans will likely put a higher priority on shoring up some of their vulnerable incumbents than in drawing new Republican districts.

12:45 [Comment From Sally: ] Is it all 50 states that will see new congressional district boundaries? I have heard only about Texas and Ohio. Is that where the big fights are?

12:46 [Comment From Stephanie: ] We’ve limited the House to 435 members for many years now, but there was a time when the size of the House changed with the Census. What’s the history on that? Why did they decide to cap it, and should it stay capped?

12:47 Tom Mann: States with only a single House district have no congressional boundaries to redraw. All of the others have to redistrict to account for seat gains/losses and/or population shifts within states. Major battles are shaping up in Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Illinois, Georgia and North Carolina as well.

12:48 [Comment From John: ] It looks like the south and the west will gain seats, while the industrial northeast and the farm heartland will lose. Who makes the ultimate decision on which states will win or lose a seat? Is that process complete?

12:50 Tom Mann: That Apportionment process is complete. It is determined by a congressionally-approved formula applied to new census data. Ten states, mostly in the industrial north/midwest, will lose 12 seats. Eight states, including 4 in Texas and 2 in Florida, will gain a total of 12 seats.

12:50 [Comment From Rebecca: ] You’ve written about how political this process is, and some call redistricting the “incumbent protection” process. Is that good or bad?

12:56 Tom Mann: Redistricting in most states in done through the normal legislative process. (A few states use a bipartisan or independent redistricting commission.) Political self-interest -- protecting the interests of incumbents and/or the dominant party -- drives the process and is constrained only by requirements for equal population, protection of minority interests, and some other criteria specified by individual states. I believe this self-interest should not automatically prevail over broader public interest in competitive elections, accountable elected officials, and communties of interest.

12:56 [Comment From Don: ] How can we best reform the redistricting process and remove the partisanship that seems to dominate it?

1:02 Tom Mann: There are a variety of approaches. One is to alter the basic electoral system by moving from single-members districts to some form of proportional representation. Another is to lodge redistricting authority with independent, nonpartisan or bipartisan commissions. Arizona and now California are two examples of this. Yet another is to build into state (or federal) law requirements for competitive elections and partisan fairness. Finally, a new effort underway this cycle is to rely on transparency and public participation to create alternative maps and use them to bring pressure to bear on those with formal redistricting authority. I've been involved in a collaborative effort to develop open-source mapping software to do just that. It is being picked up by individuals and groups around the country. You can get information at publicmapping.org.

1:02 [Comment From Joe: ] How can ordinary citizens get involved? The whole redistricting system seems rigged to me.

1:02 Tom Mann: My last answer is directly responsive to your question.
Wednesday April 20, 2011 1:02 Tom Mann

1:03 [Comment From Tom: ] I saw Rep. Dennis Kuchinich on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and he said his district was going to disappear entirely. Does that really happen?

1:05 Tom Mann: Ohio will lose two seats. That means two current incumbents will be out of a job in Ohio, 12 nationally, just because of reapportionment. Kuchinich may well survive this process but it will be driven by Republicans, since they control the process.

1:05 David Mark: Thanks for joining us today.

       

Every decade since 1790, a census of the entire U.S. population is used by state governments to apportion representatives in the U.S. House of Representatives. But the redrawing of congressional districts that follows the census is an exercise in pure politics, says expert Thomas Mann. With the power to redistrict in the hands of incumbents in state legislatures, coupled with powerful mapping technologies, a state’s representation in Congress often bears little relation to the actual partisan makeup of its population, he says.

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Often considered among the most self-interested and least transparent systems in American democracy, the decennial process to redraw legislative district boundaries is now in full swing. On Monday, experts will review the results coming in from the states and discuss initiatives—from public mapping to independent commissions—to open up redistricting. Thomas Mann explains how this round may be a start toward transparency.

       

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The drawing of legislative district boundaries is arguably among the most self-interested and least transparent systems in American democracy. Every ten years redistricting authorities, usually state legislatures, redraw congressional and legislative lines in accordance with Census reapportionment and population shifts within states. Most state redistricting authorities are in the midst of their redistricting process, while others have already finished redrawing their state and congressional boundaries. A number of initiatives—from public mapping competitions to independent shadow commissions—have been launched to open up the process to the public during this round of redrawing district lines.

On July 18, Brookings hosted a panel of experts to review the results coming in from the states and discuss how the rest of the process is likely to unfold. Panelists focused on evidence of partisan or bipartisan gerrymandering, the outcome of transparency and public mapping initiatives, and minority redistricting.

After the panel discussion, participants took audience questions.

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Executive Summary

During the first decade of the 21^st century the six states of the Mountain West — Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah — experienced unprecedented political and demographic changes. Population growth in all six states exceeded the national average and the region is home to the four states that underwent the largest population gains between 2000 and 2010. As a consequence, the region is now home to some of the most demographically diverse and geographically concentrated states in the country— factors that helped to transform the Mountain West from a Republican stronghold into America’s new swing region. This paper examines the impact that increased diversity and density are exerting on reapportionment and redistricting in each Mountain West state and assesses the implications that redistricting outcomes will exert both nationally and within each state in the coming decade.  Nationally, the region’s clout will increase due to the addition of three seats in the House of Representatives (one each in Arizona, Nevada, and Utah) and electoral contexts in Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico that will result in competitive presidential and senate elections throughout the decade. At the state level, the combination of term limits, demographic change, and the reapportionment of state legislative seats from rural to urban areas will alter the composition of these states’ legislatures and should facilitate the realignment of policy outcomes that traditionally benefitted rural interests at the expense of urban needs.

Introduction

As reapportionment and redistricting plans across the 50 states are finalized and candidate recruitment begins in earnest, the contours of the 2012 election are coming into focus. One region of the country where reapportionment (redistributing seats to account for population shifts) and redistricting (drawing boundaries for state legislative and congressional districts) are likely to have significant consequences in 2012 and beyond is in the six states of the Mountain West: Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah. Driven by explosive growth during the past decade, the Mountain West is now home to some of the most demographically diverse and geographically concentrated states in the country. As a consequence, the region has increasingly become more hospitable to Democrats, particularly Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico and to a lesser extent Arizona. In this paper, I examine how these changes are affecting reapportionment and redistricting across the region. Specifically, after summarizing some of the key regional demographic and political changes, I offer a brief overview of the institutional contexts in which the maps are being drawn. This is followed by an assessment of outcomes in each state. I conclude with a discussion of the national and state level implications that reapportionment and redistricting are likely to engender across the Mountain West.

A Region in Transition

Between 2000 and 2010 population growth in all six Mountain West states outpaced the national average of 9.7 percent and the region contains the four states that experienced the largest percent population increase in the country (Nevada = 35.1 percent; Arizona = 24.6 percent; Utah = 23.8 percent, and Idaho = 21.1 percent).[i] As a consequence, Nevada and Utah each gained their fourth seats in the House of Representative and Arizona was awarded its ninth. Beginning with the 2012 election, the Mountain West will have 29 U.S. House seats (Idaho has two House seats, New Mexico has three, and Colorado has seven) and 41 Electoral College votes.

Across the Mountain West, population growth was concentrated in the region’s largest metropolitan statistical area (MSA).[ii] Most notably, the Las Vegas metro area is now home to nearly three out of four Nevadans — the mostly highly concentrated space in the region. In Arizona, roughly two-thirds of the population now resides in the Phoenix MSA, which grew by nearly 30 percent. The Albuquerque MSA experienced the largest overall increase as a share of total population (nearly 25 percent) and now contains 44 percent of New Mexico’s population. And while Idaho remains the state in the region with the least dense population, growth in the Boise MSA significantly outpaced that state’s overall population gain and nearly 40 percent of all Idahoans reside in and around Boise. On the other end of the spectrum are the Salt Lake City and Denver MSAs, which as shares of the Colorado and Utah populations decreased slightly from 2000. Still, better than half (50.57 percent) of all Coloradoans live in Denver and its suburbs and around 41 percent of Utah’s population is concentrated in the Salt Lake City MSA.

In addition to further urbanizing the region, the prior decade’s growth continued to transform the region’s demographics as all six Mountain West states are now more ethnically diverse as compared to a decade ago.[iii] The largest changes occurred in Nevada where the minority population increased by over 11 percent and now better than 45 percent of Nevadans are classified as non-white. While the bulk of this growth was among Hispanics, whose share of the population increased by 7 percent and are now 26.5 percent of all Nevadans, the Silver State also recorded large increases among Asian and Pacific Islanders. Arizona experienced similar increases as that state’s minority population mushroomed from 36.2 percent to 42.2 percent with Hispanics now constituting 30 percent of the population. In Colorado, the minority population increased by 3.5 percent to 30 percent. Nearly all of this change was caused by an increase in Hispanics, who now constitute 20.7 percent of the state’s population. New Mexico continues to be the Mountain West’s most diverse state as nearly three out of five New Mexicans are minorities and the state contains the region’s largest Hispanic population (46 percent). And while Idaho and Utah remain overwhelmingly white, both states’ non-white populations grew at levels similar to Colorado. Idaho is now 16 percent non-white (including a Hispanic population of 11.2 percent) and nearly one in five Utahans is a minority. Between 2000 and 2010, Hispanics increased by 4 percent to constitute 13 percent of Utah’s population.

Politically, these changes helped to create competitive electoral contexts across the region. Indeed, with the obvious exceptions of Idaho and Utah, the Mountain West is now more hospitable to the Democratic Party than it was in 2000. In particular, Democrats were able to make significant gains in Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico and effectively flipped those states from Republican leaning in 2000 to Democratic leaning in 2010. In Arizona, the Democratic performance was highly variable and moved in near perfect tandem with the broader national political environment. At the same time, the downturn in Democratic support in 2010 indicates that the party has not yet consolidated its gains. Riding a favorable 2010 macro-environment, Mountain West Republicans gained one governorship (New Mexico), seats in ten of the region’s 12 state legislative chambers, and seven House seats (out of a total of 26 in the region).[iv] Thus, heading into the 2011 redistricting cycle, Republicans control the executive and legislative branches in Arizona, Idaho, and Utah and there are no Mpuntain West states where the Democrats have unified control as the partisan composition of the Colorado legislature is divided and Nevada and New Mexico have Republican governors and Democratic legislatures.

The Institutional Context

Because of variation in the institutional arrangements governing how each state approaches reapportionment and redistricting, the impact that the demographic and political changes outlined above are exerting on map drawing differs across the region. To be sure, there are a number of commonalities across the states such as requirements of equally populated U.S. House districts, minimum population variation for state legislative districts, and boundary lines that are compact, contiguous, and maintain communities of interests. 

Beyond these constraints, mapmakers across the region are afforded different degrees of latitude in how they go about doing their work. For instance, in Nevada and New Mexico, the residency of incumbents can be considered, while Idaho forbids it. Idaho allows for twice as much inter-district population variation for state legislative districts as Colorado and New Mexico, and Idaho only allows state legislative districts to cross county lines if the counties are linked by a highway. Arizona and Idaho mandate that two lower chamber districts be nested within the boundaries of a state senate seat, while Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah do not. Nevada also allows for multi-member member state legislative districts. Lastly, Arizona’s redistricting plans must be pre-cleared by the U.S. Department of Justice. While Arizona is the only state in the region subject to preclearance, protection of minority voting rights also has been a point of contention in prior redistricting cycles in New Mexico.

The Mountain West states also vary in terms of who oversees the redistricting process. State legislators control the process in Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah, while Arizona and Idaho use commissions. In Colorado, the General Assembly draws the map for the state’s seven U.S. House seats, while a commission oversees the drawing of state legislative maps. For the three states that use commissions for either all or part of their processes, commission size and composition differs significantly and only the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission (AIRC) is charged with drawing maps that are competitive.[v] 

However, the most significant constraint on reapportionment and redistricting in the Mountain West is the small size of the region’s state legislatures.[vi] The mix of small chambers, increased urbanization, and large geographic spaces means very large and increasingly, fewer and fewer stand- alone rural districts. This dynamic also helps to explain the region’s history of malapportionment that often allocated seats by county regardless of population.[vii] 

State Summaries

Based upon the overview presented above, expectations about the general contours of reapportionment and redistricting in the Mountain West are fairly straightforward: the clout of urban and minority interests will increase and to the degree that those factors benefit the Democrats, the Democrats should gain some partisan advantage. Realizing these outcomes, however, has proven to be less than amicable. With the exception of Utah, all other states in the region have had various aspects of their processes litigated, and map drawing for Colorado’s U.S. House seats and all of Nevada and New Mexico’s redistricting is being completed in state courts. Below, I summarize the status of reapportionment and redistricting in each state.

Arizona

Beginning its work amid criticism of its composition, calls for its abolishment, and an investigation by the Arizona attorney general, the voter-initiated Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission (AIRC) has struggled to balance the conflicting demands of drawing competitive districts with the protection of minority voting rights. The commission’s work has been further hindered by Republican Governor Jan Brewer’s unsuccessful attempt to impeach the commission’s nonpartisan chair. In addition, Arizona has filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging the state’s preclearance requirement.

Republican attempts to undermine the AIRC stem from the fact that given unified Republican control of the Arizona governorship and legislature, Republicans would otherwise be in a position to implement a partisan gerrymander. At the same time, the GOP’s present dominance is partially an artifact of the 2001 redistricting. To gain preclearance in 2001, the AIRC’s maps created a large number of majority-minority state legislative districts and minority-friendly U.S House seats by packing Democratic voters into these districts. In so doing, Democratic support in the surrounding districts was weakened; allowing Republicans to more efficiently translate their votes into seats.[viii] Thus, despite a slight partisan voter registration advantage (4.35 percent as of July 2011), Republicans presently hold more than two-thirds of the state legislative seats and five of eight U.S. House seats.

Given Arizona’s growth patterns between 2000 and 2010 coupled with the AIRC’s charge of creating competitive district, drawing a map as favorable to the GOP in 2011 is virtually impossible unless the size of the Arizona legislature is increased. Still, in order to protect minority voting rights, Arizona’s final maps are likely to tilt in favor of the GOP — just not to the degree that they have in the past. In particular, the elimination and consolidation of rural state legislative districts and a more urban orientation for Arizona’s nine U.S. House districts should provide the Democrats with electoral opportunities that will only increase as Arizona’s population continues to diversity and urbanize.

Colorado

As noted above, Colorado uses a commission (the Colorado Redistricting Commission) for redistricting state legislative seats and the Colorado General Assembly draws the maps for the state’s seven U.S. House seats. Neither process has gone smoothly. For the state’s seven U.S. House seats, the Democratic-dominated state senate and the Republican-controlled lower chamber failed to find common ground after exchanging two rounds of maps. Because Democratic governor John Hickenlooper refused to call a special session, redistricting of Colorado U.S. House seats was completed in state court. After a good deal of legal wrangling, the Colorado Supreme Court upheld a map favored by Colorado Democrats that creates two safe Republican districts, one safe Democratic district, and four districts where neither party’s registration advantage exceeds 4 percent. As a consequence, Colorado will feature a number of competitive U.S. House elections throughout the coming decade.

Map drawing for state legislative seats by the CRC has also been hindered by partisanship. Hoping to break a partisan stalemate, in late summer the nonpartisan chair of the CRC offered maps that combined parts of prior Democratic and Republican proposals to create thirty-three competitive seats (out of a total of 100) and twenty-four seats with Hispanic populations of 30 percent or more. After being approved by the CRC with some Republican dissents, the plan was rejected by the Colorado Supreme Court, which must sign-off on the CRC’s plans before they can be implemented. By attempting to draw more competitive maps — a criterion that the CRC is not obligated to consider – the CRC’s maps undermined its charge of producing districts that keep communities of interest intact. The CRC’s second set maps, which were widely viewed as favoring the Democrats, were upheld by the Colorado Supreme Court.

Idaho

While partisan considerations have loomed large in the reapportionment and redistricting processes in Arizona and Colorado, in Republican-dominated Idaho the main points of contention have been spatial. Indeed, because of the difficulty of satisfying a constitutional requirement limiting county splits and a state law constraining how geographic areas can be combined, the Idaho’s Citizen Commission for Reapportionment (ICCR) failed to reach an agreement before its constitutionally imposed deadline. After sorting through a number of legal and constitutional questions, a second set of commissioners were impaneled and completed their work in less than three weeks. Given Idaho’s partisan composition, the final maps are a regional anomaly as they benefit the GOP while being somewhat more urban oriented. This was accomplished by moving rural Republican voters into urban Democratic state legislative districts and adjusting the lines of Idaho’s 1st House district to shed roughly 50,000 citizens. At the same time, because of Idaho’s strict constraints on how cities and counties can be divided, the map for the state legislature paired a number of incumbents in the same district and one district contains the residences of five incumbents, setting up a number of competitive primary elections.

While growth patterns and demographic and partisan change in Nevada between 2000 and 2010 insured a redistricting process that would favor Democrats, Nevada Republicans sought to delay this inevitability as long as possible. The state’s Republican governor, Brian Sandoval, vetoed two sets of maps passed by the Democratic controlled legislature and Sandoval refused to call a special session to complete redistricting. Instead, he and his party hoped for a better outcome in state court. Despite drawing a supervising judge who was the son of a former Republican Governor, Nevada Republicans fared no better in state court. Ultimately, the process was turned over to three special masters who rejected Nevada Republicans’ claim that section 2 of the Voting Rights Act required a majority Hispanic U.S. House district.[ix] As a consequence, two of Nevada’s U.S. House seats favor Democrats, one is safely Republican, and the fourth is a swing district. In the Nevada legislature the representation of urban interests will increase as parts of or all of forty-seven of the sixty-three seats in the Nevada legislature are now located in the Democratic stronghold of Clark County. 

New Mexico

The 2011 process in New Mexico has essentially been a rerun of the gridlock that engulfed the state’s 2001 redistricting debate. Once again, the Democrats sought to use their control over both chambers of the New Mexico legislature to preserve their majorities and draw the boundaries for the state’s three U.S. House seats in manner favorable to the party. However, because of bickering among Democrats the legislature failed to approve its map for the state’s three U.S. House seats prior to the end of the special session and the plans for the state legislature that were passed on party line votes were vetoed by Republican governor Susana Martinez. Thus, once again, New Mexico’s divided state government coupled with the state’s history of litigating redistricting plans (in 2001 map drawing and court battles cost the state roughly $3.5 million) means that redistricting will be completed in state court. While the Republicans may be able to gain some concessions through the courts, New Mexico is the most Democratic state in the Mountain West and, as noted above, the state’s growth during the prior decade was concentrated in heavily Democratic Albuquerque and its suburbs. Thus, as in 2001, the likely outcome in New Mexico is a redistricting plan that will be favorable to the Democrats and weaken the influence of rural interests.

Utah

Utah is the only state in the region where conditions exist (e.g., unified partisan control in a non-commission state) for the implementation of a partisan gerrymander. However, to accomplish this end required the slicing and dicing of communities and municipalities particularly those in and around the state’s urban center. Most notably, in drawing the state’s four U.S. House seats, Republicans divided the Utah’s population center (Salt Lake City County) into four districts by combining parts of the urban core with rural counties - a plan that, not coincidentally, cracks the only part of the state where Democrats are able to compete. Similarly, maps for state legislative districts increase the number of seats that favor the GOP and, in many instances, protect incumbents from potential primary challengers by dividing communities into multiple districts. Democrats in Utah are so depleted that they were unable to get the Republicans to even agree to include recognition and protection of minority communities of interest to in Utah’s redistricting guidelines. Thus, despite constituting nearly 20 percent of the state’s population, minorities received no consideration in Utah’s 2011 redistricting.

Implications and Conclusions

Reapportionment and redistricting are often regarded as the most political activities in the United States; an expectation that is certainly being realized across the Mountain West. In the swing states where legislators draw the maps (for example, Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico) but where state government is divided, partisan considerations loomed large, causing all of these states to conclude all or parts of their redistricting processes in the courts. The conflicts between Arizona’s preclearance requirement and the AIRC’s commitment to drawing competitive districts have partisan consequences as well. In one-party Idaho and Utah, the politics of space were at issue.  Geographic constraints on district boundaries imposed through statute and the Idaho constitution ensured that more rural seats were preserved and that the growing influence of urban interests will be checked. In Utah, Republicans moved in the opposite direction by carving up the very communities from which they are elected in order to implement a partisan gerrymander. 

Another school of thought, however, argues that the most typical redistricting outcome is not partisan gain or loss, but an uncertainty that shakes up the state political environment and facilitates political renewal. In the case of the Mountain West, there is evidence to support that claim as well. The biggest source of uncertainty will continue to be growth. While the economic downturn has slowed migration to the region, the Mountain West states remain poised to keep expanding in a manner that will further concentrate and diversify their populations. A second source of uncertainty is the region’s large number of nonpartisans. While redistricting is often framed as a zero-sum game played between Democrats and Republicans, the electoral hopes for either party hinges on its ability to attract the support of the region’s expanding nonpartisan demographic.[x] 

At the state level, with the exception of Idaho, the most significant consequence will be a reduction in rural influence. The combination of term limits in Arizona, Nevada, and Colorado, small legislative chambers, and fast growing urban populations will continue to decrease the number of entrenched rural legislators and the number of stand-alone rural districts. Consequently, urban interests should be positioned to align state policy with demographic reality. The void created by the demise of rural legislators will be filled by minorities, particularly Hispanics. To date, the increased political activism of Hispanic communities across the region has primarily benefited Democrats; helped in no small part by the hard-line rhetoric and policies championed by some Mountain West Republicans.[xi] More generally, depending on growth patterns, by 2020 Nevada and perhaps Arizona may join New Mexico as states with majority-minority populations. Thus, with or without Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, minority legislators, primarily Hispanics, will increase their ranks significantly. The only question is whether all of these politicians will be taking office with a “D” next to their names or whether some will be elected as Republicans.  

Nationally, the impact of reapportionment and redistricting is mixed. Certainly, the addition of three U.S. House seats after the 2010 census will give more voice to regional issues in Washington D.C. At the same time, because the Mountain West’s House delegation will continue to be split along partisan lines and many of the region’s competitive House seats will rotate between the parties throughout the decade, it may be difficult for any but the safest Mountain West representatives to accrue the requisite seniority to become players in the House. Also, because of pending retirements in Arizona and New Mexico, a successful 2010 primary challenge in Utah, and a resignation in Nevada, the region’s influence in the U.S. Senate is likely to decline in the near term. Indeed, after the 2012 election the only senators from the region who will have served more than one term will be Nevada’s Harry Reid, Arizona’s John McCain, Idaho’s Mike Crapo, and Utah’s Orrin Hatch (presuming a successful 2012 reelection).

Thus, the arena where the region is likely to garner the most attention is in the coming decade’s three presidential elections. Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico were all battleground states in 2004 and 2008, with Republican George W. Bush narrowly winning all three in 2004 and Democrat Barack Obama flipping them blue in 2008 by wider margins. Obviously, Idaho and Utah will remain out of reach for the Democrats in statewide contests for some time.  However, Arizona is likely to become the region’s fourth swing state in the near future. Thus, continued investment in Arizona and throughout the region will allow the Democrats to further expand the number of Mountain West states in play while forcing the GOP to spend resources to defend turf that it once could safely call its own.

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• The Impact of Density and Diversity on Reapportionment and Redistricting in the Mountain West

       

Editor's Note: For full disclosure, Tom Mann (joined by Norm Ornstein) filed an amicus curiae brief in Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission.

James Madison would be pleased. The 5-4 decision announced today by the Supreme Court upholding Arizona’s use of the initiative to establish an independent redistricting commission is a model of constitutional reasoning and statutory interpretation. It underscores the essential connection between republican government and popular sovereignty, in which the people have the ultimate authority over who shall represent them in public office. The majority opinion quotes Madison to powerful effect: “The genius of republican liberty seems to demand . . . not only that all power should be derived from the people, but those entrusted with it should be kept in dependence on the people.”

Madison worried about the dangers of the manipulation of electoral rules to serve the immediate interests of political actors. He was himself the target of a gerrymander designed (unsuccessfully) to deny him a seat in the first Congress. The Elections Clause of the Constitution, by granting Congress the power to override state actions setting the time, place and manner of elections, was designed partly as a safety valve to contain the abuse of power by those in a position to determine which voters will hold them accountable.

Today’s intensely polarized politics drive major partisan campaigns to seize control of the redistricting authority in the states and to wield that power to boost prospects for majority standing in the House. Partisan gerrymandering is not the major source of our dysfunctional politics but it surely reinforces and exacerbates the tribal wars between the parties. A number of states have used the initiative device provided in their constitutions to establish independent commissions to replace or supplement the regular state legislative process in redrawing congressional and/or state legislative district boundaries. Such commissions are no panacea for partisan gerrymandering. Their composition and rules vary in ways that can shape the outcome. But the evidence suggests they can mitigate the conflicts of interest that are a part of the regular process and produce more timely plans less subject to judicial preemption.

The Court has upheld the right of those states to legislate electoral rules through a popular vote. Had the minority position prevailed, state laws governing many aspects of the electoral process would have been subject to constitutional challenge. And an important safety value available to the people of the states for responding to abuses of power by those in public office has been preserved.

This should not be read more broadly as a triumph of direct democracy over representative government. Many scholars who provided expert opinion supporting the majority opinion retain serious concerns about the overuse and misuse of initiatives and referendums. Instead, the decision strengthens the legitimacy of representative democracy by reinforcing the essential link between republican government and popular sovereignty.

       

       

       

       

       

       

For years, corporate campuses like Silicon Valley were known for innovation. Located in suburban corridors that were only accessible by car, these places put little emphasis on creating communities where people work, live and go out.

But now, as the economy emerges from the recession, a shift is occurring where innovation is taking place. Districts of innovation can be found in urban centres as disparate as Montreal, Seoul, Singapore, Medellin, Barcelona, and London. They are popping up in the downtowns and midtowns of cities like Atlanta, Cambridge, Philadelphia, and St. Louis.

These are places where advanced research universities, medical complexes, and clusters of tech and creative firms are attracting businesses and residents.

Other innovation districts can be found in Boston, Brooklyn, San Francisco, and Seattle, where older industrial areas are being re-imagined and remade, leveraging their enviable location near waterfronts and city centres and along transit lines. Innovative companies and talented workers are flocking to these areas in abundance.

Even traditional science parks like Research Triangle Park in Raleigh-Durham are scrambling to urbanise to keep pace with their workers' preference for walkable communities and their companies' desire to be near other firms.

In these districts, leading anchor institutions and start-ups are clustering and connecting with one another. They are coming together with spin-off companies, incubators, and accelerators in the relentless pursuit of new discoveries for the market.

These areas are small and accessible, growing talent, fostering open collaboration, and offering housing and office space as well as modern urban amenities. They are both competitive places and "cool" spaces.

The growth of innovation districts is being driven by private and civic actors like universities, philanthropies, business associations and business improvement districts. Yet local governments play an important role in accelerating the growth of districts and maximising their potential . Three roles stand out:

1) Mayors are leading efforts to designate districts

Barcelona's former mayor Joan Clos set his eyes on transforming his city into a "city of knowledge". Through extensive, focused public planning and investment, Clos designed an innovation district from the debris of a 494-acre industrial area, which was scarred and separated from the rest of the city by railroad tracks. His vision included burying these tracks, increasing access via a new public tram, designing walkable streets, and creating new public spaces and housing.

Today, the area is a 21st-century urban community with 4,500 firms, thousands of new housing units, and clusters of universities, technology centres, and incubators.

Across the Atlantic in Boston, former mayor Tom Menino declared the South Boston waterfront an innovation district in 2010. Menino persuaded innovators like MassChallenge to move to the district and exacted important concessions from developers (including land for innovation-oriented retail, shared labs and other spaces, and micro-housing) to help realise the district's vision.

2) Changing land-use laws to build spaces with a mix of facilities

Barcelona and Research Triangle Park, for example, developed bold master plans encouraging the "mixing" of large and small firms, research facilities, housing, restaurants, and retail and outlining where to create open spaces for networking. Cambridge, Massachusetts, by contrast, has allowed incremental moves from rigid, antiquated rules to encourage similar outcomes in Kendall Square .

3) Supporting scarce public resources with large private and civic investments

In New York , former mayor Michael Bloomberg deployed $100m in municipal capital to prepare the infrastructure necessary to lure Cornell and Technion universities to Roosevelt Island. In other cities, including St Louis and Seattle, local resources are financing infrastructure improvements to buttress and accelerate private growth.

Given that many innovation districts are adjacent to low-income neighbourhoods, cities like Philadelphia are considering smart use of school investments to prepare disadvantaged youth for good jobs in the Stem (science, technology, engineering, and math) economy.

As this decade unfolds, we should expect more cities to use their powers in the service of this new model of innovative, inclusive, and resilient growth.

This opinion originally appeared in The Guardian