![\"DSC_0063\"](\"http:\/\/harvardlpr.wpengine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/89\/2014\/04\/DSC_0063.jpg\")
<\/a>HLPR\u2019s Spring 2014 Symposium on Elections in America, held on Saturday, April 5, began with a panel on electoral districting.\u00a0 Districting is one of the most consequential aspects of elections\u2014often deciding outcomes, ensuring perennial incumbency, and strengthening or weakening the political influence of particular communities\u2014yet it is also one of the least transparent processes in our democracy.\u00a0 In most states, legislators are free to draw boundaries to preserve their own job security, with little public scrutiny. \u00a0Our panel featured four speakers, Shira Center, Myrna P\u00e9rez, Micah Altman, and Angelo Ancheta, each of whom is an expert on districting in his or her own right, while also bringing a unique perspective on the topic.<\/p>\nShira Center<\/a>, Politics Editor for DC\u2019s Roll Call<\/i> and Resident Fellow at Harvard\u2019s Institute of Politics, is an expert on congressional races and spearheaded Roll Call<\/i>\u2019s redistricting coverage.\u00a0 After nearly a decade covering politics and campaigns across the country, she has developed comprehensive knowledge of the geography and demographics of congressional districts.\u00a0 Ms. Center described the political consequences of redistricting, demonstrating its practical impact on Capitol Hill.\u00a0 She shared her reporting about the \u201cFive Ugliest Districts\u201d\u2014bizarre-looking, convoluted districts drawn carefully to include and exclude particular people. \u00a0Sometimes, Ms. Center noted, legislators\u2019 districting requests could be as specific as ensuring that their aunt is in their district, or even a particularly symbolic flagpole.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Myrna P\u00e9rez<\/a> is Deputy Director of the Democracy Program at NYU\u2019s Brennan Center for Justice, where she works on voting rights, redistricting, voter registration, and ballot access.\u00a0 Obama tapped Ms. P\u00e9rez to be an election assistance commissioner, to assist states to meet the requirements of the 2002 Help America Vote Act.\u00a0 Ms. P\u00e9rez provided an excellent overview of the practical and legal challenges of districting, as well as the problems currently caused by gerrymandering.\u00a0 She presented both the legal requirements and the ideal criteria for districting.\u00a0 Under the \u201cone-person-one-vote\u201d rule established in Baker v. Carr <\/i>and Reynolds v. Sims<\/i>, constitutional law requires districts (within the same election system) to have equal population, though the standard is stricter for congressional districts than state or local districts.\u00a0 The Voting Rights Act (VRA) protects against districts that discriminate by diluting minority voter strength.\u00a0 Districts violate Section 2 of the VRA if they deny minority voters an equal opportunity to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice.\u00a0 Section 5 of the VRA used to require preclearance of district lines (and other electoral changes) by the Department of Justice in covered jurisdictions, but the Supreme Court struck down the formula determining coverage in Shelby County v. Holder<\/i> last year, leaving no jurisdictions subject to Section 5 preclearance.\u00a0 Aside from these restrictions, districting is usually left to legislators\u2019 discretion, and they must balance between a set of often competing criteria including contiguity, compactness, competitiveness, preserving internal political boundaries, and recognizing communities of interest.\u00a0 Ms. P\u00e9rez noted that no one size fits all for a district, and that the visual simplicity or compactness of a district often will not maximize other criteria that we may value more highly.\u00a0 She also discussed the problem of prison gerrymandering, which occurs because prisoners are counted in the census in the district in which they are imprisoned even though they typically cannot vote, and therefore the other voters in that district have more influence than voters in other districts.<\/p>\n Dr. Micah Altman<\/a>, Director of Research and Head Scientist at the MIT Libraries\u2019 Program on Information Science, presented an alternative to state politicians drawing district lines on their own.\u00a0 Working with the Public Mapping Project<\/a>, Dr. Altman has developed an open source districting application, DistrictBuilder<\/a>.\u00a0 DistrictBuilder allows members of the public to generate their own redistricting plans online, through easy-to-use online mapping tools.\u00a0 Users can engage with the very technical process of districting as a visual mapping problem, by simply dragging district lines The application has some districting requirements, such as equipopulation, built in, and allows users to view shade maps to identify the presence or absence of other criteria.\u00a0 DistrictBuilder has already been used to create 1000 districting plans, and these public-generated plans have typically satisfied the various criteria more successfully than legislative plans.\u00a0 They have been less partisan, and have more accurately represented cohesive neighborhoods and communities.\u00a0 Dr. Altman argued that the transparency of the DistrictBuilder process, and the alternatives to legislative districting plans it creates, help hold legislators accountable in the generally unaccountable districting process.<\/p>\n Our final presenter was Angelo Ancheta<\/a>, clinical professor at the Santa Clara University School of Law, Director of the University\u2019s Katherine & George Alexander Community Law Center, and a member of the California Citizens Redistricting Commission<\/a>.\u00a0 The Citizens Redistricting Commission is another model for removing the districting process from self-interested legislators; Professor Ancheta published an article on the Commission in HLPR\u2019s Volume 8.1<\/a>.\u00a0 Established by a 2008 California ballot initiative, the Commission is an independent (not non-partisan) body charged with drawing new districting maps after the 2010 census for state offices and (after another ballot initiative in 2010) congressional districts.\u00a0 Drawing from his personal experience, Professor Ancheta explained the structure, selection process, and map drawing process of the commission.\u00a0 The Commission has 14 members\u2014five from the party with the most registered voters (Democrats), four from the party with the second-most registered voters (Republicans), and four from neither major party; this structure provides the minority party (Republicans) with much more influence on the districting process than the traditional process, which is dominated by the state legislature\u2019s majority party.\u00a0 These members were selected through an intensive, yearlong process, which included competitive applications, opportunity for the legislature to exercise peremptory strikes of a certain number of candidates, and a random selection out of the group of finalists.\u00a0 Professor Ancheta noted that this process resulted in a group that is diverse along ethnic and gender lines, although it does skew towards higher income and greater education; every Commission member has an advanced degree, and many are either lawyers or urban planners.<\/p>\n Once selected, the Commission members spent seven months producing the new districting map.\u00a0 In addition to complying with the population equality and VRA requirements, the Commission considered contiguity, geographic integrity (minimizing the division of cities, counties, neighborhoods, and communities of interest), compactness, and nesting (preserving whole sub-districts, such as including two whole Assembly districts within each Senate district.\u00a0 Importantly, the Commission could not<\/i> consider incumbency, potential candidates for a district, or the demographics of party affiliation, sharply distinguishing the Commission\u2019s redistricting process from that of most state legislatures\u2019 redistricting processes.\u00a0 Professor Ancheta said that drafting an initial map was a relatively easy process; the more challenging (and expensive) process was ensuring public input and transparency by allowing for extensive public comment before issuing the final map.\u00a0 The Commission solicited and considered input from 2,700 speakers and 20,000 submitted comments.\u00a0 Professor Ancheta stressed that this process was expensive, requiring advertisements in a variety of media to inform the public about the rather technical process of redistricting and about their opportunity to provide input.\u00a0 Generally, Professor Ancheta said that the public seemed to care most about preserving the unity (and therefore voting power) of their communities.\u00a0 This concern about preserving community had a dark side: some people sought to identify their communities in an exclusionary manner, asking the Commission to draw the lines to cut out nearby neighborhoods or groups considered undesirable.<\/p>\n Following their presentations, the panelists discussed a number of questions, including which of the many possible criteria for redistricting should be prioritized.\u00a0 Ms. P\u00e9rez noted that many of the criteria (e.g., compactness and contiguity) are really proxies for identifying communities of interest, because we care that communities can exercise group political choice, and that elected officials can represent groups with cohesive interests.\u00a0 However, this interest in preserving community representation rubs up against an interest in competitiveness, as the more cohesive an election might be, the less competitive an election will be in that district (at least between opposing ideologies in general elections\u2014choosing individual candidates in primaries may still be competitive in districts that are safe for one party).\u00a0 Generally, the panelists seemed to prioritize community representation over inter-party competitiveness; the California Citizens Redistricting Commission, for example, did not take competitiveness into account, although other independent districting commissions, such as Arizona\u2019s, do consider competitiveness.<\/p>\n Though the panelists did not come to a consensus on which districting criteria should be prioritized, they did agree that the legislative control of redistricting in most states leads to a whole host of problems: partisanship, self-interested incumbency, lack of transparency, and lack of public participation.\u00a0 The panelists presented different solutions to these districting pitfalls\u2014from technological solutions such as DistrictBuilder to solutions legislated through direct democracy like California\u2019s Commission\u2014but they were each directed at achieving a separation of self-interested legislators from the process.\u00a0 Dr. Altman noted that the United Kingdom and Canada have each taken steps to separate the self-interest from the districting process that U.S. states can look to as potential examples.\u00a0 Increasing transparency, panelists agreed, would not only improve the substantive results of the districting process, but would also increase the process\u2019s legitimacy. \u00a0At a time of especially low public faith in government, such legitimacy is particularly important, and would encourage greater public participation in elections and engagement with government.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" HLPR\u2019s Spring 2014 Symposium on Elections in America, held on Saturday, April 5, began with a panel on electoral 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